About the Korean Language

[hoopstats (Matias Barmat)]

There was as huge debate over if Korean is or not an isolate language. But… Korean has a strange mixture of Altaic elements with Sino-Tibetan elements. As you know, Altaic languages are, for example, Turkish, Azeri, Turkmen, Kazakh, Uzbek, Kirgiz, Mongol, Manchu and Tungus among others. They have as features agglutination and vowel harmony.
By the other way, Sino-Tibetan languages are made with particles, each one is a true stem (a true lexema), and the order of its components and its prosody and tone are the elements which determine the meaning of its sentences.
Well, Korean has elements of both. It has partial vowel harmony, it has partial tonal harmony, it has agglutination and it has isolation of particles. All of this. Even though: the alphabet designed by King Se-Jong in 1443 reflexes brillitantly how to deal with both issues: a 24-letter phonemic alphabet who is able to stack into syllables, like radicals in Chinese characters.

[Miriam (Miriam Zeilinger)]

I don’t believe that Korean is an isolate. The Japanese and Korean grammar are so similar. I think it’s because of political reasons that they say that these two languages aren’t related. But I haven’t researched this topic. It’s just my experience as learner of these two languages.

[Ryck (Ricardo Vernaut Junior)]

Some sentences in Korean

» https://tatoeba.org/eng/sentences/search?query=&from=kor&to=und

[Ewan (Ewan Smith)]

Hi there! I’ve been studying Kazakh recently and I’ve noticed many similarities with Korean - word order, case markers/postpositions (학교에/мектепке), evidentials (나갔대/кетіпті), a similar way of forming relative clauses (제가 샀던 컴퓨터/мен сатып алған компьютер) and others. I find these similarities interesting, but it’s hard to say whether they are a result of contact or a linguistic ancestor.

[Takashi]

@Miriam
Korean and Japanese don’t share the vocabulary (except Chinese-related words), which is one of the main reasons why their relationship is not proved yet. It’s not a political reason.

@Ewan
"제가 산 컴퓨터"는 카자흐어로 어떻게 해요?

[hoopstats (Matias Barmat)]

Well, Ewan, in that sense Kazakh is a Turkic language. But I wonder if Korean has Altaic elements itself without being necessarily an Altaic language.

[Ewan (Ewan Smith)]

'샀던’과 ‘산’ 사이에 큰 차이가 있을까요?

아무튼 제 알기로는 ‘제가 산 컴퓨터’ = ‘мен сатып алған компьютер’.
Мен = 제가 (주어)
сатып алу = 사다 (-ған 이라는 어미는 과거형이고 관계사절을 만들 수 있습니다)
Компьютер = 컴퓨터

저는 아직 카자흐어 초보자라서 틀릴 수도 있어요.

[Takashi]

@Ewan
의미 차이가 아니고 그냥 "-ㄴ"과 어형이 비슷한 것도 카자흐어에 있는지 좀 알고 싶었어요. 대답해 주셔서 고맙습니다 ^^

[PaulW (paul douglas walther)]

Yeah, I’ve discussed how I think the languages are obviously related with a language partner who was Japanese with Korean heritage. She was very polite in listening but had nothing to say on the topic at all and seemed to think me very brave or foolish to do so. At least that was my impression.

[Ewan (Ewan Smith)]

Yeah many of the Koreans I have met baulk at the idea that Korean is related to Japanese, although to be honest I’ve met many who think it’s likely too. I think they must share an ancestor somewhere, even if the genetic links are hard to prove. Two languages right next to each other that share so many structural similarities seems like perfect candidates for related languages to me

[Takashi]

그건 그냥 언어학적으로 아직 증명되지 않은 뿐이고 절대 관계가 없는 건 아닌 것 같아요. 저는 명확한 증거가 없으면 긍정도 부정도 하고 싶지 않은데 언젠가 관계가 정식으로 증명되면 재미있겠네요.

[Ewan (Ewan Smith)]

저도 그렇게 생각해요. 관계가 있다면 흥미로운데 저는 절대적인 결정을 내릴 자격이 없는 것 같아요. 그냥 제가 알고 있는 바로는 관계가 있는 모양이예요.