The language of the Japanese has been a source of equal perplexity to the philologist. He is at a loss to understand certain marks of originality and isolation exhibited by this form of speech. It shows traces of an early Aryan influence, but such as rather to deepen than to clear up the mystery. One thing is clear -- that if the structure of the Japanese language was fundamentally Aryan, the separation from the parent tongue must have taken place at an early period, when the Aryan branch of the human speech was still in its infancy.
The language is extremely melodious in sound, and vigorous in expression. It is agglutinative -- that is, it preserves its roots in their simple form. In fact the peculiarities of the ancient Japanese tongue are so many that it is difficult to establish its true relationship to the other languages of the world. It has been enriched since A.D. 255 by the adoption of Chinese words, symbols, and written characters, much in the same way as the English is constantly being added to by the borrowing of Latin and Greek words for literary and scientific purposes.
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From General Nelson A. Miles
Thrilling Stories of The Russian-Japanese War, 1904
