[KS] Is Korean an Altaic language?

Mon May 28 06:55:58 EDT 2012

Dear Eugene:

My own fealing, having read a little bit about it as a non-specialist,  
is that the safest course is to tell students that there is a great  
deal of debate concerning Korea's relationship to Japanese and the  
so-called Altaic languages, and that otherwise it has no obvious or  
undisputed connection to any other language. I then direct students to  
Sasha Vovin, etc. My own impression (no doubt based on insufficiently  
deep reading) was that all of the participants in the debate were able  
to claim that what other scholars treated as evidence of a genetic  
relationship was actually just the result of borrowing of words, so  
that unless one really wants to wade deep into the waters of this  
debate, it is best to stay dry and on the edge.

In response to Henny's comment, note that Eugene's question was not  
concerned with simple "similarity"  but with language families. Note  
that English speakers have a notoriously hard time learning Sanskrit,  
although Sanskrit is also an Indo-European language. Perhaps I might  
direct list-members to a comment made by Sasha Vovin on the Yahoo  
Manchu Studies List. His comment concerns Manchu, but in some respects  
it applies to Korean as well.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ManchuStudy/message/390

"Manchu belongs to the Tungusic language family, namely to its South
(Nanaic) branch. The Tungusic language family is spread from Western
Siberia to Pacific, and includes about a dozen languages, among which
Ewenki, Ewen, and Nanai alongside with the Sibo dialect of Manchu in
Xinjiang have the most number of speakers. Manchu, as well as other
Tungusic languages have a remarkable similarity to languages belonging
to languages families found in Central and East Asia (Turkic,
Mongolic, Korean, and Japonic) that used to be called 'Altaic', but
the similarity is superficial, mainly due to the fact that all these
languages have SOV word order. Students of Manchu who make use of the
Japanese translation of the Manwen laodang will notice that the
Japanese text placed beneath each line of Manchu text follows the same
word order as Manchu. But they should keep in mind that a similar
translation into Hindi or the Sepik language (a Papuan language) would
enjoy the same privilege, as these languages are also SOV. Meanwhile,
this will not work for Ewen, which, although obviously related to
Manchu, has developed SVO order in certain types of clauses. Though
linguists have debated whether Altaic languages are actually
genetically linked or whether their similarities merely reflect
extensive borrowings from one another, most of Western and Japanese
specialists in 'Altaic' languages believe that these similarities are
the result of centuries long contacts. In other words, we deal here
with a Sprachbund situation."

Quoting Henny Savenije <webmaster at henny-savenije.pe.kr>:

> 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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