Ayumi Hamasaki Sekai - View Single Post - Why can Koreans learn Japanese so quickly?
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Old 25th February 2007, 11:14 AM
*Petit* *Petit* is offline
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Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Bruxelles
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Quote:
Originally Posted by emiko View Post
YE

But yeah, is it possible that Korean is somehow related to Japanese?
Cory should be posting on this, but whether japanese and korean is related or not and how close this is is very disputed. They are nowhere near the same as most european language and much more different than english and german or even english and russian.

Chinese is not related to japanese, but using the same "letters" helps a bit.

Both korean and japanese are considered language isolates, which means they may not be related to any others languages, except so way back it's imposible to trace. Some even linked japanese up to turkish.

The article on wikipedia on this is actually quite accurate for a change (It resembles stuff I*ve read in (validated) books), it's an interesting subject:
[QUOTE]
The genetic affiliation of the Japonic family is uncertain. Numerous theories have been proposed, relating it to a wide variety of other languages and families, including extinct languages spoken by historic cultures of the Korean Peninsula; the Korean language; the Altaic languages; and the Austronesian languages, among many others. It is also often suggested that it may be a creole language combining more than one of these. The various theories are detailed in the main article. At this point, no one theory is generally accepted as correct, and the issue is likely to remain controversial.[/QUOTE
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Last edited by *Petit*; 10th March 2007 at 08:28 PM.
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