"Altaic" languages and cultures

[Bouks]

I researched a bit about the origins of the Korean language, and in my reading I gathered that certain linguists and historians seem to classify Hungarian in the same language family. Does this mean the cultures are related as well? If so, that would be very very cool, because I have some Hungarian ancestry in my family.

What I do know about the Hungarian link to Asia is that the Uygur people of modern Xinjang Province (they're not native Chinese) are related to the Hungarian Magyar people. It seems that the Magyars migrated over to Eastern Europe back in the day. But the language and culture connection between Hungary and Korea is less obvious. Do Koreans know this, agree with it, or have their own understanding about it?

[Keith]

actually Koreans believe that Mongols and Koreans are very similar. And the Mongols include Uygur. And probably also Magyar. I'm not an anthropologist by any means, but I think what you said is generally true. That whole are with the Altaic languages, are all fairly similar in language at least. And I think language and cultures are intertwined... so at least SOME of the culture has to be similar

[Brakenjan]

Japonic, Turkic languagas, and ongolic languages are in there with korean. This does not hwever relate them all historically. Some of them are but japonic and korean are really only there because of some simmilarities, and if you look at them they are very minor. Japanese and Korean and generally taken as isolated languages that cannot be historically linked to ny other languages (apart from the later influence from chinese and so on)

[javiskefka]

I fin d the concept of language isolates to be pretty questionable. Japanese speakers may have a strange accent, but they didn't come from the moon. Why not just say that the language classification is undetermined?

[Brakenjan]

Sure they arent from te moon, but why cant a language develop on earth from nothing?? Are you saying that all languages must be linked in some way.
What then do you make of Germanic or the old slavic languages?
Afrikaans for example (yes its first in my list) is not a language isolate because you can track it back and find that many other languages share the same ancestor language (Germanic in this case).
Japanese is not classified as a language isolate either since you can also technically track back to Proto Japonic (I dont know where linguists got that from but its supposed to be japanese just a bit different - like all languages change with time) which is shared by the Ryukyuan languages. This is a much smaller fmily though and the languages are very similar therefore i prefer to just think of it as a language isolate and a few dialects. So really a language isolate is just a language that didnt end up forming may other languages like germanic did..hows that hard to beleive?

[javiskefka]

Proto-Japonic is a name for a theoretical root language that Japanese and other languages on those islands could have come from. I'm not sure what you want me to say about Germanic or Slavonic without providing more context for your question. Afrikaans pretty obviously came from Dutch settlers in South Africa.

In order for a language to come from nothing more than once, there would have to be a group of people isolated from other groups that had never experienced the concept of language before. Are you saying that people managed to sail or row across the sea to the Japanese islands all while grunting and waving their arms at eachother because they hadn't developed a language yet?

[Brakenjan]

I know its only a theoretical languag but you see my point.
As for the other languages what i was trying to say is that at some point those languages were all isolate languages, they then just expanded.

Whos to say that they werent there from the start? And if not why could they not have started speaking the language where they come from, without having been isolated from other groups.
If you are suggesting that they had to get there from the cradle of humankind then they would certainly have had contact with other groups.

Anyway, I dont know much of the very early history of mankind, not nearly enough to relate it to language families anyway. I do get what you are trying to say and feel that i agree somewhat, however i dont know of any languages that are similar to japanese apart from the ryukyuan languages which in my opinion are dialects anyway.

[tormsen]

I'd say that Japonic and Korean languages, as well as other language isolates, perhaps had common roots with the language families we know but have been lost in time. I'd say a large percent of human complex language has been lost forever in the mists of time, without anyone to record it.

Plus, language isolates may not always have been language isolates. I've heard the Basque-like languages were once widely spoken in Europe but we displaced and retired to easily defensible Basque country. If the English had succeeded in wiping out Welsh and Scottish, then Irish would have become a language isolate as well, perhaps as full of mystery as Japanese and Korean are in our history.

[exoglycerin]

It is and has for some time been widely accepted on the Korean peninsula that Korean is part of a language family, originally consisting of the Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic languages. This however in the west is not so widely accepted. Japanese has also at times been lumped in this language family. Admittedly there are some very basic and obvious syntactical similarities between Japanese and Korean (both of which I have studied a bit of). Now positing a genetic relationship between them or with the other language groups previously mentioned is not always warranted. There are other explanations for this phenomenon i.e. a Sprachbund effect.
As to Hungarian/Magyar there is today no accepted theory to connect these languages. Magyar or Hungarian is a Uralic language, related to Estonian and Finnish as well as some minority languages of Russia and Scandinavia. There are some grammatical similarities between the Uralic and the Altaic languages, but certainly not enough to warrant a linguistic relationship, at least at this point.
Personally I find linguistic relationships very fascinating, but there is one very important caviat. One's language can change due to external circumstances, one's DNA cannot. To blindly conflate a linguistic relationship with some sort of racial or genetic relationship is faulty logic and one needs to be mindful of it.
In summary: Magyar and Korean have no widely accepted relationship and Korea's existence within the Altaic language family is still not very widely accepted.

[gulanb]

Well I am Turkish and I have found it relatively easy to learn Korean than any other language. The sentence structure and such are very similar. In addition, the culture seems to be similar too. I have observed ordinary people's behaviour in kdramas and found it very similar to ours. For example, we too have parents who chase us with a slipper in their hand when they're mad Or we drag people by the hand or arm and force them to do what we want (of course if we are close friends or family). In western cultures these behaviours are considered rude or uncivil, but for us they are just normal.
By the way, we consider Uigurs as the remaining of the first Turkish people in Asia, most of which later on moved to Europe, etc.
Oh, and I remember learning in history class that Magyars were once Turkish people who started out from central Asia ,crossed Russia and arrived at Europe. Their religion and language changed but i heard from someone that in language some Turkish words are still there.
Well at least we still use the name Attila.