Some dudes wrote...
Japanese, for example, did not even exist in any recognizable form >until long after Confucian-era texts which are still readable today.
The grammar is Japanese is almost unrelated to Chinese 'grammar' (what litle here is). As for reading Confucian-era texts, they are by no means readble today, and believe me I've tried. (Aside from how the characters have changed, Ancient Chinese has a lot of differences when compared to modern Chinese, which actually only goes back about a century.) But I would agree that a Chinese reader wanting to read Confucious would need to do a lot less work that a modern speaker of English trying to read Beowulf (which is prior to influence from the Latin languages, no?)How then can a claim be made that Japanese and Chinese are the same >age?
-TD
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