Are Japanese and Korean related languages?

zbeckabee

Many consider Korean a language isolate. Others believe that Japanese and Korean may be related; still others believe this is not so, and any similarities are simply due to a sprachbund effect – see here for morphological features shared among languages of the East Asian sprachbund. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_language Jul 08 06, 7:59 PM

What-A-Mess

Actually..... Most Koreans can read Chinese. Korean is a lnguage that is, like Japanese, derived from Chinese. The Koreans borrowed a huge number of Chinese words, gave Korean readings and/or meanings to some of the Chinese characters and also invented about 150 new characters, most of which are rare or used mainly for personal or place names. The Korean alphabet was invented in 1444 and promulgated it in 1446 during the reign of King Sejong (r.1418-1450), the fourth king of the Joseon Dynasty. The alphabet was originally called Hunmin jeongeum, or "The correct sounds for the instruction of the people", but has also been known as Eonmeun (vulgar script) and Gukmeun (national writing). The modern name for the alphabet, Hangeul, was coined by a Korean linguist called Ju Si-gyeong (1876-1914). A number of my Korean clients have their business communicatios written in Chinese so they could be understood by both Nations thusly creating a larger base for business. http://www.omniglot.com/writing/korean.htm http://www.omniglot.com/writing/korean.htm Jul 10 06, 7:52 AM

What-A-Mess

Knowing that BOTH Korean and Japanese are adaptations of the same root language, chinese, it is fair to say that they are related. Japanese has no known linguistic relatives though is possibly distantly related to the Altaic family of languages, which includes Korean, Mongolian and Turkic languages. Japanese is not related to Chinese, though it does contain a huge number of Chinese 'loan' words, in fact perhaps 50% of the words used in Japanse are of Chinese origin. http://www.omniglot.com/writing/japanese_language.htm http://www.omniglot.com/writing/japanese_language.htm Jul 10 06, 7:56 AM

Baloo55th

Neither Japanese nor Korean are derived from Chinese, although both contain many loanwords. Korean is believed to be a distant offshoot of the Altaic languages (Turkic, Tungusic and Mongolian group. Japanese has no known relatives (not even the geographically close Ainu). The scripts used for both have a resemblance to Chinese (so far as Westerners are concerned, at least). The Japanese writing system does derive from Chinese, but that doesn't mean any connection between the languages. English and Basque are written in the same alphabet, after all. Korean is written in a different way to both Japanese and Chinese. The Korean alphabet (as opposed to syllabary) is attributed to King Sejong in about 1443 CE, and is regarded as one of the most efficient in terms of information conveying. (English is faster to write, however!) Jul 10 06, 2:36 PM

easy_learner

"The similarities of Japanese and Korean syntax are remarkable by any standards. To begin with what is usually considered a superficial point: Word order is almost the same, not just in broad SOV (subject-object-verb) terms but often down to the tiniest quirks of linguistic device. I would guess they are nearly as close as English and Danish at the everyday conversation level. But Danish is not only closely related to English; it seems the Vikings additionally Scandinavianised English word order. That Japanese and Korean have retained a similar degree of closeness down the centuries may not mean anything, as many linguists say, but it is certainly suggestive." http://www.translationdirectory.com/article527.htm Dec 16 07, 2:12 PM

Baloo55th

Word order is similar in English and Chinese, but the two are not related. English and German are related, but the word order often differs considerably. Dec 16 07, 3:21 PM

easy_learner

Probably there are no two languages which are so closely similar in syntax and grammar than Japanese and Korean. Any person able to converse in both languages fluently will tell you this much. For example one can perfectly mix japanese and korean sentences together. Start a Japanese sentence and end it as a korean sentence or vice versa. Or mix and match as one wishes. One could easily learn both Japanese and Korean as a single language and combine the vocabularies of both language. Dec 16 07, 5:13 PM

easy_learner

It's a common myth that english and chinese share same syntax and grammar. Anyone knowledgeable at all about chinese language for example could easily tell you that syntax and grammar in Chinese is nothing like english beyond most superficial level. For example: I come from England wo shi cong yingguo lai de (I am from England come) I am going to bejing tomorrow wor mingtyen chew bayjing (I tomorrow go beijing) It would be a very bad idea indeed to try to mix chinese and english in one sentence, as all the grammar and syntax details would be wrong. Dec 16 07, 5:28 PM