4 ms·

I'm not sure how you came to that conclusion. Words can independently change and evolve over time, while still using the same base. As a Chinese speaker, Korea

by gibolt 6y ago

I'm not sure how you came to that conclusion. Words can independently change and evolve over time, while still using the same base. As a Chinese speaker, Korean very much sounds closeish and Japanese is often similar enough to realize a distant split. It is important to remember that all branches of a tree grow. China has thousands of dialects all co-evolving and we don't know which the others could have split from and how far either has changed

awl130 6y ago
His conclusion is sound while yours is not. Korean is not a dialect of Chinese, which seems to be your implication. Neither is it a "branch" of a tree of which Chinese is the trunk. In linguistic terms it is called a "language isolate". In the past, linguists tended to group Korean and Japanese together; I believe largely for political reasons they have been separated--but that's another topic. Korean uses many Chinese loan words (in the same way that English uses Greek loan words) but the sentence structure, pronunciation and grammar are totally different. You would not say English is a dialect or branch of Greek for the same reason. I speak both Korean, Japanese and am currently studying Chinese. Korean does not sound like Mandarin at all because it is not a tonal language. It does sound similar to Mongolian and Manchurian. That is not surprising because the roots of Koreans (and probably their current language) come from the area north of Korea near Manchuria.
- gibolt 6y ago
  That is not my implication, just as humans are not evolved from gorillas. The likely share a common base. That may have been 500, 1000, or more years ago and each continuously absorbed neighboring language features from trade or due to local social structures.
  - kazagistar 6y ago
    Sure, but according to linguistic research still wrong. The ancestor seems so far back you might as well include english in your language family.
  - James_Henry 6y ago
    Korean gets about 60% of its vocabulary from Chinese: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Korean_vocabulary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Korean_vocabulary This is why many of the words sound Chinese (and a particularly old version of Chinese).
- lehi 6y ago
  > It does sound similar to Mongolian and Manchurian. Mongolian phonology doesn't sound like any other East Asian language I've heard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkU9Zd0LQjg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkU9Zd0LQjg
- samatman 6y ago
  In fact, Greek and English, being both Indo-European languages, are more closely related than Korean and the various Chinese languages. There is a controversial theory that Korean, Mongolian, and Machurian, are all a part of an Altaic superfamily — along with Japanese, Turkish, and a number of others. This was broadly accepted fifty years ago, and less so today.
  - magicsmoke 6y ago
    Given that we have writings from Indo-European speaking empires since 1000 BC that we can mine for phonological clues and trace evolutionary changes with while the languages of supposed Altaic only began to be written after 700 AD, it's not surprising that there's less evidence to be found and not enough for a hypothesis bold enough to link those disparate cultures together. The idea that Hindi, Persian, Latin, Russian, and English are linked together is already very surprising.
solidsnack9000 6y ago
Although there are a tremendous number of borrowings out of Chinese into both languages, there aren't many structural similarities between Chinese and Korean or Chinese and Japanese. For example, Chinese has no system of verb conjugation, whereas Korean and Japanese both do, conjugating for the past and present, among other aspects. Chinese also does not have a system of adjective inflection, whereas Korean and Japanese do. Adjectives in these languages inflect to indicate speech level as well as to indicate tense (which is to say, adjectives have a "past form", kind of like verbs). There are many other structural differences of note. Beware of arguments based on things we don't know, technically "argument from ignorance". That we don't know which one they might have split from is no reason to believe that this is actually happened! What we don't know didn't happen can't go in place of what we do know did happen.
- magicsmoke 6y ago
  The null hypothesis we use in the absence of proof reflects our cultural assumptions, and I think this is a case where Chinese and European assumptions collide. From the European standpoint, "we don't know the origin of this language, so our null hypothesis is that it developed independently" contrasts with China's "we don't know the origin of this language, so our null hypothesis is that it's related to another language nearby." Given the long documented history of various Chinese languages and culture in East Asia and the lack of competing origins with equally dense documented history, it's quite common for a laymen to assume that everything is linked in some way to Ancient China. Old Chinese has records dating back to 1000 BC, while Old Japanese and Old Korean both have their oldest writings from post 700 CE. That's a 1700 year gap for our null hypothesis to fill. In a 1700 year gap where we only have records of Chinese, then suddenly we start getting records of Korean and Japanese, the idea that there's some kind of cross pollination from Chinese we aren't aware of in that undocumented period isn't too big of a leap. Another language origin could have been nomadic peoples to the north traveling across the Eurasian steppes, and frankly I'm more inclined to believe that's where Korean and Japanese actually originate from. However, despite the growing study of these peoples that have been neglected in traditional Chinese historiography, they don't leave behind enough archeological evidence for us to prove something like the Altaic language family convincingly, so we're back to null hypothesis and cultural assumptions.

by gibolt 6y ago

awl130 6y ago

His conclusion is sound while yours is not. Korean is not a dialect of Chinese, which seems to be your implication. Neither is it a "branch" of a tree of which Chinese is the trunk. In linguistic terms it is called a "language isolate". In the past, linguists tended to group Korean and Japanese together; I believe largely for political reasons they have been separated--but that's another topic. Korean uses many Chinese loan words (in the same way that English uses Greek loan words) but the sentence structure, pronunciation and grammar are totally different. You would not say English is a dialect or branch of Greek for the same reason. I speak both Korean, Japanese and am currently studying Chinese. Korean does not sound like Mandarin at all because it is not a tonal language. It does sound similar to Mongolian and Manchurian. That is not surprising because the roots of Koreans (and probably their current language) come from the area north of Korea near Manchuria.

gibolt 6y ago
That is not my implication, just as humans are not evolved from gorillas. The likely share a common base. That may have been 500, 1000, or more years ago and each continuously absorbed neighboring language features from trade or due to local social structures.
- kazagistar 6y ago
  Sure, but according to linguistic research still wrong. The ancestor seems so far back you might as well include english in your language family.
- James_Henry 6y ago
  Korean gets about 60% of its vocabulary from Chinese: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Korean_vocabulary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Korean_vocabulary This is why many of the words sound Chinese (and a particularly old version of Chinese).
lehi 6y ago
> It does sound similar to Mongolian and Manchurian. Mongolian phonology doesn't sound like any other East Asian language I've heard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkU9Zd0LQjg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkU9Zd0LQjg
samatman 6y ago
In fact, Greek and English, being both Indo-European languages, are more closely related than Korean and the various Chinese languages. There is a controversial theory that Korean, Mongolian, and Machurian, are all a part of an Altaic superfamily — along with Japanese, Turkish, and a number of others. This was broadly accepted fifty years ago, and less so today.
- magicsmoke 6y ago
  Given that we have writings from Indo-European speaking empires since 1000 BC that we can mine for phonological clues and trace evolutionary changes with while the languages of supposed Altaic only began to be written after 700 AD, it's not surprising that there's less evidence to be found and not enough for a hypothesis bold enough to link those disparate cultures together. The idea that Hindi, Persian, Latin, Russian, and English are linked together is already very surprising.

solidsnack9000 6y ago

Although there are a tremendous number of borrowings out of Chinese into both languages, there aren't many structural similarities between Chinese and Korean or Chinese and Japanese. For example, Chinese has no system of verb conjugation, whereas Korean and Japanese both do, conjugating for the past and present, among other aspects. Chinese also does not have a system of adjective inflection, whereas Korean and Japanese do. Adjectives in these languages inflect to indicate speech level as well as to indicate tense (which is to say, adjectives have a "past form", kind of like verbs). There are many other structural differences of note. Beware of arguments based on things we don't know, technically "argument from ignorance". That we don't know which one they might have split from is no reason to believe that this is actually happened! What we don't know didn't happen can't go in place of what we do know did happen.

magicsmoke 6y ago
The null hypothesis we use in the absence of proof reflects our cultural assumptions, and I think this is a case where Chinese and European assumptions collide. From the European standpoint, "we don't know the origin of this language, so our null hypothesis is that it developed independently" contrasts with China's "we don't know the origin of this language, so our null hypothesis is that it's related to another language nearby." Given the long documented history of various Chinese languages and culture in East Asia and the lack of competing origins with equally dense documented history, it's quite common for a laymen to assume that everything is linked in some way to Ancient China. Old Chinese has records dating back to 1000 BC, while Old Japanese and Old Korean both have their oldest writings from post 700 CE. That's a 1700 year gap for our null hypothesis to fill. In a 1700 year gap where we only have records of Chinese, then suddenly we start getting records of Korean and Japanese, the idea that there's some kind of cross pollination from Chinese we aren't aware of in that undocumented period isn't too big of a leap. Another language origin could have been nomadic peoples to the north traveling across the Eurasian steppes, and frankly I'm more inclined to believe that's where Korean and Japanese actually originate from. However, despite the growing study of these peoples that have been neglected in traditional Chinese historiography, they don't leave behind enough archeological evidence for us to prove something like the Altaic language family convincingly, so we're back to null hypothesis and cultural assumptions.