[KS] Is Korean an Altaic language?

[Henny Savenije]

I am not a linguist either but I do remember that 
Turkish and Hungarians and even Finnish have a 
relative easy time learning Korean. I have met 
people from each group telling me so. Which 
indicates to me the similarity between the languages.

At 02:29 PM 5/27/2012, you wrote:
>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 (³ª¸·½Å)
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> 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
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >
> >
> >
> >

                  _   _
                 (o) (o)
      oOOO----(_)----OOOo---
Henny (Lee Hae Kang)
-----------------------------
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