[KS] Is Korean an Altaic language?

[Adam Bohnet]

Dear Eugene


I suppose that I should leave this topic to the linguists, but one  
problem with Altaic is that a fair number of linguists doubt the  
existence of an Altaic language family.

Yours,

Adam

Quoting "Eugene Y. Park" <epa at sas.upenn.edu>:

> 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
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>