The geographically proximate languages of Japanese (part of the Japonic languages) and Korean (part of the Koreanic languages) share considerable similarity in syntactic and morphological typology while having a small number of lexical resemblances. Observing the said similarities and probable history of Korean influence on Japanese culture, linguists have formulated different theories proposing a genetic relationship between them,[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8] though these studies either lack conclusive evidence or were subsets of theories that have largely been discredited (like versions of the well-known Altaic hypothesis that mainly attempted to group the Turkic, Mongolian and Tungusic languages together).[9][10][11][12] There has been new research which has revived the possibility of a genealogical link, such as the Transeurasian hypothesis (a neo-Altaic proposal) by Robbeets et al., supported by computational linguistics and archaeological evidence, but this view has received significant criticism as well.[13][14]
Map of Koreanic (left) and Japonic languages and dialects
Korean and Japanese have very different native scripts (Hangul and kana, respectively), although they both make use of Chinese characters to some extent; Kanji still are a core part of modern Japanese orthography, while Hanja were historically used to write Korean. Today, Hanja are only used in South Korea for limited academic, legal, media, stylistic and disambiguation purposes and are not used at all in North Korea. Although both Hangul and the two modern kana systems (katakana and hiragana) show syllable/mora boundaries, Hangul syllable blocks break down into a featural alphabet, while the kana are essentially pure syllabaries.
More information Korean, Japanese ...
Close
The two languages have been thought to not share any cognates (other than loanwords),[4] for their vocabularies do not phonetically resemble each other.
There is a minority theory attributing the name of the city Nara to a loanword from Korean (see: Nara, Nara#Etymology).
Numerals
Similarities have been drawn between the four attested numerals of Goguryeo, an ancient Korean relative, and its equivalents in Old Japanese.[19][20]
More information Numeral, Goguryeo ...
Numeral | Goguryeo | Old Japanese |
3 | mil | mi1 |
5 | uc | itu |
7 | na-nin | nana |
10 | dok | to2 / to2wo |
Close
Note: See Jōdai Tokushu Kanazukai for information on Old Japanese subscript notation.
Both languages use, to some extent, a combination of native scripts and Chinese characters.
Korean is mostly written in the Korean featural alphabet (known as Hangul in South Korea and Chosŏn'gŭl in North Korea). The traditional hanja (Chinese characters adapted for Korean) are sometimes used in South Korea, but only for specific purposes such as to clarify homophones (especially in TV show subtitles), linguistic or historic study, artistic expression, legal documents, and newspapers. Native Korean words do not use hanja anymore. In North Korea, the hanja have been largely suppressed in an attempt to remove Chinese influence, although they are still used in some cases and the number of hanja taught in North Korean schools is greater than that of South Korean schools.[21]
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).[22][23] Unlike Korean hanja, however, kanji can be used to write both Sino-Japanese words and native Japanese words.
Historically, both Korean and Japanese were written solely with Chinese characters, with the writing experiencing a gradual mutation through centuries into its modern form.[24]
E. Riley, Barbara (2004).
Starostin, Sergei (Moscow, 1991). The Altaic Problem and the Origins of the Japanese Language. "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.
"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.
"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.
"...[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). Tian, Zheng; Tao, Yuxin; Zhu, Kongyang; Jacques, Guillaume; Ryder, Robin J.; de la Fuente, José Andrés Alonso; Antonov, Anton; Xia, Ziyang; Zhang, Yuxuan; Ji, Xiaoyan; Ren, Xiaoying; He, Guanglin; Guo, Jianxin; Wang, Rui; Yang, Xiaomin; Zhao, Jing; Xu, Dan; Gray, Russell D.; Zhang, Menghan; Wen, Shaoqing; Wang, Chuan-Chao; Pellard, Thomas (June 12, 2022), Triangulation fails when neither linguistic, genetic, nor archaeological data support the Transeurasian narrative, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, doi:10.1101/2022.06.09.495471, S2CID 249649524 Bernard Comrie: "Introduction", p. 7 and 9 in Comrie (1990).
S. Tomlin, Russell. Surveyed in the 1980s.
Russell Tomlin, "Basic Word Order: Functional Principles", Croom Helm, London, 1986, page 22
Shinmura, Izuru (1916). "國語及び朝 鮮語の數詞について [Regarding numerals in Japanese and Korean]". Geibun. 7.2–7.4.
Yi, Ki-Mun (1972). "Kugosa Kaesol [Introduction to the history of Korean]". Seoul: Minjung Sogwan.
Hannas 1997: 68. "Although North Korea has removed Chinese characters from its written materials, it has, paradoxically, ended up with an educational program that teaches more characters than either South Korea or Japan, as Table 2 shows."
The Handbook of Korean Linguistics By Jaehoon Yeon
Brown, Lucien (2008). "Contrasts Between Korean and Japanese Honorifics". Rivista Degli Studi Orientali. 81 (1/4): 369–385. JSTOR 41913346.