Leon Serafim
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Leon Angelo Serafim (born May 23, 1945) is a retired American academic.[1] He is a Japanologist, historical linguist, and professor emeritus of the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.
Serafim is credited with coining the term "Japonic languages", now widely accepted among linguists, to identify the language family of which Japanese and the Ryukyuan languages are members.
Serafim earned a B.A. in Oriental Languages at the University of California, Berkeley in 1968, followed by an M.A. in East Asian Languages at University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa in 1976. His Ph.D. in Linguistics was conferred by Yale University in 1984.[2]
