Leon Angelo Serafim (born May 23, 1945) is a retired American

academic An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of tertiary education. The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, founded approximately 386 BC at Akademia, a sanctuary of Athena, the go ...

. He is a

Japanologist , sometimes known as Japanology in Europe, is a sub-field of area studies or East Asian studies involved in social sciences and humanities research on Japan. It incorporates fields such as the study of Japanese language, History of Japan, history, ...

, linguistic historian and professor emeritus of the

University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa The University of Hawaii at Mānoa is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Honolulu, Hawaii, United States. It is the flagship campus of the University of Hawaiʻi system and houses the main offic ...

. Serafim is credited with coining the term "

Japonic languages Japonic or Japanese–Ryukyuan () is a language family comprising Japanese language, Japanese, spoken in the main islands of Japan, and the Ryukyuan languages, spoken in the Ryukyu Islands. The family is universally accepted by linguists, and sig ...

", now widely accepted among

linguists Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds and equivalent gestures ...

, to identify the

language family A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family. The term ''family'' is a metaphor borrowed from biology, with the tree model used in historical linguistics ...

of which

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

and the

Ryukyuan languages The , also Lewchewan or Luchuan (), are the indigenous languages of the Ryukyu Islands, the southernmost part of the Japanese archipelago. Along with the Japanese language and the Hachijō language, they make up the Japonic language family. Ju ...

are members.

Early life

Serafim earned a B.A. in Oriental Languages at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

in 1968, followed by an M.A. in East Asian Languages at

in 1976. His Ph.D. in Linguistics was conferred by

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...

in 1984.University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
Leon Serafim

Career

Serafim was a member of the faculty of the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures at the

for many years, and was associated with the University's Center for Japanese Studies. Serafim was the founding Director of the Center for Okinawan Studies. His on-going research investigates the relationship of changes in language, culture, and demography of the Ryukyus.

Selected works

In a statistical overview derived from writings by and about Leon Serafim,

OCLC OCLC, Inc. See also: is an American nonprofit cooperative organization "that provides shared technology services, original research, and community programs for its membership and the library community at large". It was founded in 1967 as the ...

WorldCat WorldCat is a union catalog that itemizes the collections of tens of thousands of institutions (mostly libraries), in many countries, that are current or past members of the OCLC global cooperative. It is operated by OCLC, Inc. Many of the O ...

encompasses roughly 6 works in 10+ publications in 2 languages and 100 library holdings. WorldCat Identities

Serafim, Leon Angelo
/ref> *''Shodon: the Prehistory of a Northern Ryukyuan Dialect of Japanese'' (1984) *''Early Japanese Vocalism and Vowel Concord'' (1976)

Notes

1945 births Living people University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa faculty American Japanologists Linguists of Japanese Linguists from the United States {{US-linguist-stub