this post was submitted on 20 Jan 2025
1 points (100.0% liked)

Japan

1 readers
2 users here now

For all things related to Japan. We aim to be a hub for Japanese news and Japanese users

Rules

  1. Keep all topic related to Japan

  2. Language can be either in English or Japanese

  3. If posting a news article, please provide a link as source

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
1
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]
4 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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 coincidence, seems like there is a likely common linguistic heritage, no?

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

top 4 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago (1 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 1 day 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 1 day 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..."

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

@[email protected]

I feel like what you're doing here is trying to answer a high-complexity question with a low complexity observation. A bit similar to "this winter is very cold, global warming is supposed to make things warmer. Why the contradiction?"

Whether certain linguists have some sort of bias, which they very well may have, or not, the way they look at languages definitely is a lot more complex and detailed than a general "the grammar and structure are similar" just like climate scientists...