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I keep hearing from #Mongols #Turks and now #Uyghurs living in #Japan that #Japanese is relatively easy for them to learn, as the grammar and structure is similar to their languages. That can't be a (social.coop)

submitted 2 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Yet, linguists claim they are unrelated languages. Why the contradiction? Is it #Japanese nationalism? Or #western academic elitism?

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (2 children)

@[email protected] ? As far I learnt in high school they are loosely related languages, see:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altaic_languages

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

@[email protected] These days, it's considered its own language family - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japonic_languages

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

@[email protected] seems like a ongoing mystery
"...both (Koreanic and Japaonic) are still so different from the Core Altaic languages that we can even speak of an independent Japanese-Korean type of grammar. Given also that there is neither a strong proof of common Proto-Altaic lexical items nor solid regular sound correspondences but, rather, only lexical and structural borrowings between languages of the Altaic typology..."