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?
@ncoca@social.coop ? As far I learnt in high school they are loosely related languages, see:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altaic_languages@kofanchen@g0v.social These days, it’s considered its own language family - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japonic_languages
@ncoca@social.coop 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…”
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…
