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From: deb5@ellis.uchicago.edu (Daniel von Brighoff)
Subject: Re: Uralic-Altaic lang. & Korean
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Date: Sun, 5 Mar 1995 03:41:21 GMT
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	I'm following up to sci.lang where there are posters who
know considerably more about these issues than I do.

In article <3io6lc$6bp@lyra.csx.cam.ac.uk>,
Mikpf <jong@mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk> wrote:
>The Skiti relics's distribution shows that Korean race is one
>of the nordic which was covering nearly the whole upper 
>northern Eurasia. 

If by 'Skiti', you mean "Scythians," you are dead wrong.  The
original Scythians were Iranian, but the name later became
misapplied to Turkic groups who moved into Scythia.  Since
the steppe cultures of Central Asia are so similar culturally
(there's not much variation to life on the plains) and 
archaeological remains are so sparse, it's tough to prove 
anything about the region's proto-history.
>
>I have talked with a few Turkish students and tried to find 
>some conserved words.

This is completely the wrong way to go about it.  Please read 
a work on historical linguistics first!  Chance resemblances are
nothing to build a relationship on.  After all, compare English
"two" and Korean "tu(l)" or "barley" and "pori" or "mare" and
"mal" or "soot" and "sut" [spelled with final 'ch'ieut'.  Does 
this mean they are related?

>Also, Turkish show their respect to the dead on big occasions
>like new year's day etc in a very similar way. Koean people may
>think it is originated from confucianism but it is more to do 
>with Korean culture. Another point is that in Confuscious time
>Korean races were very dominent in the present nothern 
>part of Asia, a lot of chinese cultures derive from them. China
>is a complex of various cultures. 

This is more like it:  a lot of resemblace between the cultures of
the Altaic (Mongol/Turkic/Tungus) peoples and the Koreans is the
result of borrowing.  After all, the Jurchens (a Tungusic people
whose language is demonstrably related to Turkic) lived near the
Koreans from the dawn of recorded history; many became Koreasised
(it's thought that many of the 'paekcheong' may have had Jurchen
ancestors).

Furthermore, both the Mongols and the Jurchens (under the name
'Manchu') conquered Korea.  Most of the Korean falconry vocabulary,
for instance, is borrowed from Mongol.  A lot of what you may think
is ancient shared culture may actually be the result of borrowing
in historic times.

>I know a Korean who immigrated Finland. He says it was so
>easy to adapt to Finland as the language was so easy to learn.
>Finnish is another Ural Altaic.

This proves nothing.  Have you ever compared Hungarian and Finnish?
They are *very* different in phonology, yet they are a lot more closely
related than either is with Korean (if they are in fact related to
Korean at all).  For instance, Finnish has no final consonant clusters;
Hungarian has such scary ones as in "konyv" (the 'ny' is one sound, like
French 'gn' or Korean 'n' before 'i') and "Pest" (the 's' is a [sh] like
in "English" or Korean 's' before 'i'). 

>Ural Altaic again belongs to Nordic whish includes
>Indo-European while Chinese is a completely different from
>Ural Altaic and Indo-European.

First of all, there is no "Nordic" family or phylum.  "Nordic"
is equivalent to "Scandanavian" and can refer to a branch of the
Germanic languages.  You may be thinking of "Nostratic" which is a 
proposed "superphylum" embracing IE, UA, and many other phyla.

Considering that many linguists (including me) do not accept the
concept of "Ural-Altaic", the validity of Nostratic is considered
iffy at best.  I've seen some of the cognate sets (lists of words
which are supposedly related), and they're not very convincing or
plentiful.

Summary:  The Turkic and Korean languages may be distantly related,
but it's too soon to tell.  A lot of work remains to be done on
reconstructing the antecedants of both languages.  A lot of cultural
borrowing has gone on between the two cultures, making it difficult
if not impossible to decide the origins of certaim customs.  There is
always the strong possibility that some evolved independently.

Yang Taemun
-- 
	 Daniel "Da" von Brighoff    /\          Dilettanten
	(deb5@midway.uchicago.edu)  /__\         erhebt Euch
				   /____\      gegen die Kunst!
