Roy Andrew Miller (1925–2014)

If you are not a scholar of Japanese or Turkish linguistics, then this book is not for you. The general thesis is that Proto-Japanese can be linguistically tied to Proto-Altaic and Old Turkish languages in the same manner as it can be tied to Mongol or early Korean. Miller's text is incredibly dense -- so much so that it doesn't bother to translate the German quotations it uses from other sources, so you have to add knowing German on top of everything else. Unless your current language show more professor hands you this to read or else you fail the course, then best to skip this one. show less

Cranky Roy Andrew Miller takes on Nihonjinron. Most interesting are his anecdotes, especially one about the first conference in Japan about teaching Japanese to foreigners where the Japanese involved said, "What kind of Japanese should we create for foreigners to learn? Because they will never able to speak real Japanese." Also, he has a chapter on how you get into Tokyo University: you go to the most expensive juku, where they show you exactly which chapters from Graham Greene and William show more Sommerset Maughm will be on the entrance exam. show less

Personally, I found Miller's argument that Japanese is related to other other Altaic languages convincing, but I am not really qualified to have an opinion, as the only other arguably Altaic language I know is Korean.

Roy Andrew Miller summons the power of structural linguistics to take down the misuse of Japanese language by the Japanese to assert their own uniqueness. His writing is a bit long-winded, but the content is very interesting.