Comparison of Japanese and Korean

The geographically close Japanese and Korean languages have a considerable amount of similarities in grammar and phonology, among other features, while showing almost no lexical resemblances and being written in distinct scripts. Yet, observing the said similarities, linguists have formulated different theories proposing a genetic relantionship between them,[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8] though these studies either lack conclusive evidence or have suffered large discredit (like versions of the well-known Altaic hypothesis).[9][10][11][12]

Grammar

Japanese and Korean both have an agglutinative morphology where verbs may function as prefixes[13] and a subject–object–verb (SOV) typology.[14][15][16] This allows words of different parts of speech to be placed in exactly the same order if some sentences are intended to be translated from one language to another, revealing that Japanese and Korean are grammatically similar.

Vocabulary

The two languages are not thought to share any cognates (other than loanwords),[4] for their vocabularies do not phonetically resemble each other. However, some linguists analysed a tiny amount of translations which may be perceived as phonetic parallels. This is exemplified in the following table:

term Korean
(RRK)		 Japanese
(Hepburn)		 Notes
we uri ore-ra Both have alternative forms
not ani, an -na-, -nu ('be not (in a certain place), have not')
to scratch geulg- kak-
sun hae hi, -bi IPA approximates /hɛ/ and /hi/, respectively; the first may also mean "year", the second may also mean "day" or "fire"
water mul mizu
lake mos mizuumi
cloud gureum kumo
island seom shima
bear gom kuma
to be hard gud- kata-

Writing

Korean is written in the Korean featural alphabet (known as Hangul in South Korea and Chosŏn'gŭl in North Korea), while Japanese is written with a combination of kanji (Chinese characters adapted for Japanese) and kana (two writing systems representing the same sounds, composed primarily of syllables, each used for different purposes).[17][18] This makes modern Korean and Japanese essentially different in writing, although they both used solely Chinese characters in their early writing stages, with the writing experiencing a gradual mutation through centuries into its modern form.[19]

Other features

Both languages have an elaborate system of honorifics. See Japanese honorifics and Korean honorifics.

References

  1. ↑ Andrew Logie. "Are Korean and Japanese related? The Altaic hypothesis continued..". Koreanology. Retrieved 2016-02-17.
  2. ↑ Kornicki, Peter. Aston, Cambrige and Korea Archived May 29, 2008, at the Wayback Machine.
  3. ↑ Poppe 1965:137
  4. 1 2 Martin, Samuel (1990).
  5. ↑ Whitman, John (1985).
  6. ↑ E. Riley, Barbara (2004).
  7. ↑ Starostin, Sergei (Moscow, 1991). The Altaic Problem and the Origins of the Japanese Language.
  8. ↑ Georg et al. 1999:72, 74
  9. ↑ "While 'Altaic' is repeated in encyclopedias and handbooks most specialists in these languages no longer believe that the three traditional supposed Altaic groups, Turkic, Mongolian and Tungusic, are related." Lyle Campbell & Mauricio J. Mixco, A Glossary of Historical Linguistics (2007, University of Utah Press), pg. 7.
  10. ↑ "When cognates proved not to be valid, Altaic was abandoned, and the received view now is that Turkic, Mongolian, and Tungusic are unrelated." Johanna Nichols, Linguistic Diversity in Space and Time (1992, Chicago), pg. 4.
  11. ↑ "Careful examination indicates that the established families, Turkic, Mongolian, and Tungusic, form a linguistic area (called Altaic)...Sufficient criteria have not been given that would justify talking of a genetic relationship here." R.M.W. Dixon, The Rise and Fall of Languages (1997, Cambridge), pg. 32.
  12. ↑ "...[T]his selection of features does not provide good evidence for common descent" and "we can observe convergence rather than divergence between Turkic and Mongolic languages--a pattern than is easily explainable by borrowing and diffusion rather than common descent", Asya Pereltsvaig, Languages of the World, An Introduction (2012, Cambridge) has a good discussion of the Altaic hypothesis (pp. 211-216).
  13. ↑ Bernard Comrie: "Introduction", p. 7 and 9 in Comrie (1990).
  14. ↑ S. Tomlin, Russell. Surveyed in the 1980s.
  15. ↑ Introducing English Linguistics International Student Edition by Charles F. Meyer
  16. ↑ Russell Tomlin, "Basic Word Order: Functional Principles", Croom Helm, London, 1986, page 22
  17. ↑ Advances in Psychology Research. Google Books. Books.google.co.uk. Retrieved on 2013-08-24.
  18. ↑ Learning Japanese in the Network Society. Google Books. Books.google.co.uk. Retrieved on 2013-08-24.
  19. ↑ The Handbook of Korean Linguistics By Jaehoon Yeon

See also

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