[KS] Is Korean an Altaic language?

[Eugene Y. Park]

Dear all,

On a somewhat related note: what is the latest consensus, if any, among
historical linguists on whether Korean (as well as Japanese) is an
Altaic language? I am not a linguist, but would it be fair for me to
tell my students that Korean is either a member of an Altaic language
family or a language isolate to which Altaic languages, more than any
others, are probably most closely related? My own very limited
understanding of the literature on historical linguistics seems to
suggest to me that if one were to place Korean in a language family,
then the Altaic seems to be the best choice.

Best,

Gene
---

Eugene Y. Park
Korea Foundation Associate Professor of History
Director, James Joo-Jin Kim Program in Korean Studies
University of Pennsylvania
http://www.history.upenn.edu/faculty/park.shtml


On 5/26/2012 11:02 PM, gkl1 at columbia.edu wrote:
> Hi List,
>
> Admittedly a huge number of Chinese words and compounds have become
> part of Korean's vocabulary, just as a huge number of Greek and and
> Latin words have become a part of the vocabulary of English (and the
> other European languages too). But it's distressing to learn that
> people might think ANY Korean word would be writable with Chinese
> characters. If that were so, then Korean would be a language in the
> Sino-Tibetan family. It's hard enough to get scholarly agreement on
> what language family CAN claim Korean's ancestry, but any linguistic
> reference work would make it clear that it's not a Chinese-type language.
>
> Gari Ledyard
>
> Quoting Clark W Sorensen <sangok at u.washington.edu>:
>
>> Caren,
>>
>> Namaksin is a native Korean word, so it doesn't have corresponding
>> Chinese characters. However, any of the on-line dictionaries will give
>> the characters for Korean words such as at naver.com. The problem is
>> you have to input the Korean in hangul.
>>
>> Clark Sorensen
>>
>> On Fri, 25 May 2012, Freeman, Caren (cwf8q) wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> I’m asking this question on behalf of a colleague who is a
>>> sinologist. He asks:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> “i want to see what chinese characters correspond to korean
>>> "Namaksin" wooden clogs. Namaksin (나막신)
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Is there an online dictionary that gives the classic readings for
>>> korean words entered in pinyin type western alphabet?”
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Many thanks for your recommendations,
>>>
>>> Caren Freeman
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>
>
>
>