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Speaking of similar sound system of Finnish and Japenese, I think we should highlight the discredited language family claim of Uralic-Altaic, see https://en.wik

Speaking of similar sound system of Finnish and Japenese, I think we should highlight the discredited language family claim of Uralic-Altaic, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ural-Altaic_languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ural-Altaic_languages You can still find tons of other theories of "what else could be related to Uralic"... So far, no African languages were included in these theories. But that's probably just a question of time and politics (and definitely not linguistic research...)

fsckboy 2y ago
>the discredited language family claim of Uralic-Altaic I'd substitute "doubtful" for "discredited". The article you link says nothing more damning than "It is now generally agreed [wrt Ural-Altaic] that even the Altaic languages [themselves] do not share a common descent: the similarities between Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic are better explained by diffusion and borrowing", but that wiki comment is a paraphrasal of a source that says "a pattern [that] is easily explainable by borrowing and diffusion rather than common descent", i.e. not "better", just weakening that alternate claim. Also, the Altaic article says that there is still a small group of scholars who adhere to an "Altaic" grouping. And I would add, the lack of existence of an "Altaic" common ancestor to Mongolic, Turkic, Tungusic, and Koreanic says nothing about potential connections between Uralic and any of those 4 independent languages. I'm not expert enough to advocate any position, but I'm interested and it's irritating when I pursue researching my interest to discover people slightly misquoting others or ignoring additional possiblities to make their own pov stronger.
- canjobear 2y ago
  I’d say the situation is worse than “doubtful”—-There was never any really good evidence for Ural-Altaic. Altaic is a little more complicated, but whatever it is, it doesn’t seem to be a linguistic family tree in the same way that Indo-European is.

fsckboy 2y ago

>the discredited language family claim of Uralic-Altaic I'd substitute "doubtful" for "discredited". The article you link says nothing more damning than "It is now generally agreed [wrt Ural-Altaic] that even the Altaic languages [themselves] do not share a common descent: the similarities between Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic are better explained by diffusion and borrowing", but that wiki comment is a paraphrasal of a source that says "a pattern [that] is easily explainable by borrowing and diffusion rather than common descent", i.e. not "better", just weakening that alternate claim. Also, the Altaic article says that there is still a small group of scholars who adhere to an "Altaic" grouping. And I would add, the lack of existence of an "Altaic" common ancestor to Mongolic, Turkic, Tungusic, and Koreanic says nothing about potential connections between Uralic and any of those 4 independent languages. I'm not expert enough to advocate any position, but I'm interested and it's irritating when I pursue researching my interest to discover people slightly misquoting others or ignoring additional possiblities to make their own pov stronger.

canjobear 2y ago
I’d say the situation is worse than “doubtful”—-There was never any really good evidence for Ural-Altaic. Altaic is a little more complicated, but whatever it is, it doesn’t seem to be a linguistic family tree in the same way that Indo-European is.