NationStates Jolt Archive

I would be interested in know how non-western languages are related to each other, anyone who can answer these questions?
1. How close are far-east languages as mandarin, cantonese, japanese and korean related to each other?

2. Are indian (indian as America's native population, not aryan) languages very similar to each other and are they descendants from any still-existing Asian languages?

I would be interested in know how non-western languages are related to each other, anyone who can answer these questions?
1. How close are far-east languages as mandarin, cantonese, japanese and korean related to each other?

2. Are indian (indian as America's native population, not aryan) languages very similar to each other and are they descendants from any still-existing Asian languages?
http://www.ship.edu/~cgboeree/languagefamilies.html

Holy crap that is a great site.

http://www.ship.edu/~cgboeree/languagefamilies.html

Thanks.

I would be interested in know how non-western languages are related to each other, anyone who can answer these questions?
1. How close are far-east languages as mandarin, cantonese, japanese and korean related to each other?

2. Are indian (indian as America's native population, not aryan) languages very similar to each other and are they descendants from any still-existing Asian languages?

There are a lot of linguistic families in the world. Some are even a family of one.

Some of the people I know tell me that Chinese, Korean, and Japanese bear absolutely no resemblance to each other. Not even like German and English, or German and Spanish for that matter.

I didn't like seeing all of the American languages clumped up in one big group in the site mentioned. They are very different from each other and have no relation to Asian languages (it's been several thousand years after all). The current issue of National Geographic Magazine did a much better job, at least for North America.

2. Are indian (indian as America's native population, not aryan) languages very similar to each other and are they descendants from any still-existing Asian languages?

according to what i learned in an anthropology and language class, amerindian languages are something of a puzzle because there are just so many of them with quite a lot of differences between them. there is some evidence to suggest breaking them up into 3 or so super-families, but i don't know that there is any generally accepted opinion on the subject. the only language group that is still close to any asian languages is that of the northernmost groups, who also happen to be the most recent arrivals. somewhere i have a really good article on the subject, i'll see if i can dig it up.

мы не родствены!

1. How close are far-east languages as mandarin, cantonese, japanese and korean related to each other?

Mandarin and Cantonese are closely related. Japanese and Korean are probably distantly related. The Chinese languages and Japanese have no relation to eachother, though.

2. Are indian (indian as America's native population, not aryan) languages very similar to each other and are they descendants from any still-existing Asian languages?

The Native Americans arrived here over 10,000 thousand years ago, so any language in Asia related to theirs is long since dead. The NA languages are pretty diverse, but have a tendency toward polysyntheticism or at least agglutination.

Mandarin and Cantonese are closely related. Japanese and Korean are probably distantly related. The Chinese languages and Japanese have no relation to eachother, though.

I tried to learn Japanese for a while, and did some business trips in Korea. The alphabets are completely different (Japanese is Chinese-derived, Korean is made up from scratch), but the spoken languages seem a lot more similar than either country would like to admit.

Japanese uses a lot of Chinese characters (kanji) in written form, which are often pronounced the same or similar way as in Chinese, but Chinese is a tonal language which Japanese is not, which makes Chinese a lot more complicated.

Mandarin and Cantonese are different dialects of Chinese, about as different as British and American English. They use a common written form.

I tried to learn Japanese for a while, and did some business trips in Korea. The alphabets are completely different (Japanese is Chinese-derived, Korean is made up from scratch), but the spoken languages seem a lot more similar than either country would like to admit.
The thing that determines whether two language are related are the grammatical structures and the simple vocabulary words. The grammar of the three east Asian languages are very different from each other. Chinese grammar is especially different from Korean and Japanese grammar. Korean and Japanese both borrow many vocabulary words from Chinese but that is just a superficial similarity; the core vocabulary (basic verbs and nouns for example) are not alike. For example English has borrowed many words from Greek and Latin but English is still considered much closer to German than Greek. English speakers generally learn German faster than they would Greek. And what do you mean by the countries not admitting that they borrow from each other? Both the Japanese and Koreans call their character systems "Chinese writing", and the Chinese simplified character system has a lot of borrowings from Japanese.

Mandarin and Cantonese are different dialects of Chinese, about as different as British and American English. They use a common written form.
British and Americans can easily understand each other. Mandarin and Cantonese are completely mutually unintelligible.

but the spoken languages seem a lot more similar than either country would like to admit.

They do share the whole überhierarchial honorific thing.

They do share the whole überhierarchial honorific thing.
What uberhierarchical honorific thing?

What uberhierarchical honorific thing?

-kun, -san, -sama, etc. The honorifics, surely you've heard of them?

The Japanese are extremely, uniquely sensitive to these minute social graces but you are incorrect to say that this is shared by all the East Asian languages.

I dont know the "science" behind it, but I know that cantonese and mandarin are more different from each other then english is different from spanish.
Chinese "written form" is not like the western concept of writting.
It is very uncommon for any one Chinese to even know every Hanzi(Chinese Character) to which there are over 10,000.
Imagine if your alphabet had ten thousand letters.
Calling something a "Dialect" of chinese is not reasonable.
China has many languages.
Japanese is related to languages found in China, as the main land has effected the Island and vice versa.

http://www.ship.edu/~cgboeree/languagefamilies.html

WHat a site. that was mad.

I dont know the "science" behind it, but I know that cantonese and mandarin are more different from each other then english is different from spanish.
No, Mandarin and Cantonese are much, much closer than English is to Spanish. Mandarin and Cantonese grammar are 100% identical. But none of the word pronunciations are the same. And since the written systems are exactly the same, that means Mandarin and Cantonese speakers can communicate perfectly by writing but cannot understand each other's speech.

Chinese "written form" is not like the western concept of writting.
It is very uncommon for any one Chinese to even know every Hanzi(Chinese Character) to which there are over 10,000.
Imagine if your alphabet had ten thousand letters.
Calling something a "Dialect" of chinese is not reasonable.
China has many languages.
There is only one Chinese written language which speakers of all the mutually unintelligible Chinese spoken languages can understand with equal ease.


Japanese is related to languages found in China, as the main land has effected the Island and vice versa.
Japanese written language was influenced by Chinese written language, but Japanese spoken language is not related to spoken Chinese.

I would be interested in know how non-western languages are related to each other, anyone who can answer these questions?
1. How close are far-east languages as mandarin, cantonese, japanese and korean related to each other?

2. Are indian (indian as America's native population, not aryan) languages very similar to each other and are they descendants from any still-existing Asian languages?

I pretty sure that Japanese Mandarin Cantonese and Korean have no grammatical relation (I hear Japanese is somehow related to Turkish somewhere) but I know that they sort of share a writing system. All Japanese charatcers are distantly related to Chinese ones, and many are taken directly from teh modern language, called kanji. Korean uses a system similar to kanji called I think hanzi. but the alphabet was made up by the government a little while ago.

The Japanese are extremely, uniquely sensitive to these minute social graces but you are incorrect to say that this is shared by all the East Asian languages.

I know both Japanese and Korean have them, but the Chinese languages don't.

First, a couple of good sites:
http://www.krysstal.com/langfams.html
http://home.wanadoo.nl/arjenbolhuis/language-family-trees/

Second, language families are distinguished by more than just grammar. The sounds used (known as phonemes), the ways of combining sounds, the vocabulary, and syntax/grammar are all important in distinguishing languages. (For example, in another thread, I recognized the roots of another posters constructed language (con-lang) as polynesian simply from the sounds he was using and the manner in which they were put together.)

For more, look here: http://peace.saumag.edu/faculty/Kardas/Courses/Learning/language.html

Cantonese and Mandarin are dialects, as they use the same grammar and writting system. They are part of the Sino-Tibetian Family.

Japanese and Korean are sometimes put in the Altaic family, sometimes in the Uralic, and sometimes considered isolates. To confuse matters, some linguist put forth a classification as Ural-Altaic.
Uralic includes Hunagrian, Estonian, and Finnish. Altaic includes Mongolian, Turkish, and Manchu.



Korean and Japanese both use Chinese ideograms in the written language, although I understand they are less frequent in Korean. Vietnamese also uses them. In Korean they are known as Hanzi. In Japanese, Kanji. Korean uses a native sustem of writting known as Hangul. Japanese uses two native systems, both mostly derived from simplified Kanji, known as Hiragana and Katakana. Japanese also pronounce the words represented by Kanji in two different ways, Japanese roots and Chinese roots.

Japanese and Korean are not the only languages expressing hierarchy. I believe some of the Dravidian languages are even more nuanced in this matter.

I know both Japanese and Korean have them, but the Chinese languages don't.
Yes Korean and Japanese both have various honorifics, and the Japanese especially emphasize social structure reinforced by cues from their language. But Chinese society and the common Chinese languages spoken by nearly 1 billion people are extremely informal, almost crude and vulgar. Chinese will pay respect to friends and kin but people will act very disrespectfully toward strangers. However literary Chinese in my opinion is one of the most beautiful languages.

Cantonese and Mandarin are dialects, as they use the same grammar and writting system. They are part of the Sino-Tibetian Family.
Hmmm, Cantonese and Mandarin I think should be characterized as separate languages, because they are completely mutually unintelligeble. Although Cantonese and Mandarin speakers communicate fine through writing...


Japanese and Korean are not the only languages expressing hierarchy. I believe some of the Dravidian languages are even more nuanced in this matter.
Interesting, I did not know that. I read about a theory linking Japanese and the Dravidian languages... maybe the shared preoccupation with hierarchy reflect this possible distant relation.

-kun, -san, -sama, etc. The honorifics, surely you've heard of them?

As opposed to English, which has Mr., Mrs., Miss...along with Dr. and Professor. Japanese just tacks them onto the end of words and throws them around more generously than English does...

As opposed to English, which has Mr., Mrs., Miss...along with Dr. and Professor. Japanese just tacks them onto the end of words and throws them around more generously than English does...
Actually in Korean and Japanese there are a lot more inflections that denote various levels of respect... suffixes on words can make it reverential, polite, blunt, familiar, intimate, or neutral, etc. Questions of request in Japanese always use a lot of passive verbs and fluffy sounding words such as "would honored elder be willing to do such and such." Kun, san, and sama are not like "Mr," or "Mrs."... Japanese have titles based not only on profession but also takes into account the age of the addressed in relation to the age of the addressee. Sama I believe is for addressing someone older than you, san is for someone around your age, and kun is for addressing a younger person.

Actually in Korean and Japanese there are a lot more inflections that denote various levels of respect... suffixes on words can make it reverential, polite, blunt, familiar, intimate, or neutral, etc. Questions of request in Japanese always use a lot of passive verbs and fluffy sounding words such as "would honored elder be willing to do such and such." Kun, san, and sama are not like "Mr," or "Mrs."... Japanese have titles based not only on profession but also takes into account the age of the addressed in relation to the age of the addressee. Sama I believe is for addressing someone older than you, san is for someone around your age, and kun is for addressing a younger person.

The way I learned it, -san is for people you have something of a professional relationship with (co-workers, your boss, etc.) and -kun is for close friends, commonly used among men. -Sama is for addressing a social superior, commonly seen in customer service (The Japanese saying about customer service translates roughly to "The Customer is God...") There are others that are less used (-Sensei is for teachers, obviously...) and some that have likely died out. I took a year of college Japanese and this is how I learned it...from an American raised in Japan, a 20-something Japanese grad student, and a Korean woman who, I am convinced, was somewhat insane. This hardly means that I am an irrefutable source of Japanese culture (having turned down the chance to go to Japan for a year) but I do have at least a bit of a background in this.

I pretty sure that Japanese Mandarin Cantonese and Korean have no grammatical relation (I hear Japanese is somehow related to Turkish somewhere) but I know that they sort of share a writing system. All Japanese charatcers are distantly related to Chinese ones, and many are taken directly from teh modern language, called kanji. Korean uses a system similar to kanji called I think hanzi. but the alphabet was made up by the government a little while ago.


Korea uses Hangul. Hangul was invented in the 15th century by King Sejong the Great. It is in no way similar to Kanji. It is much more simple and easier to use than hanzi/kanji/hanja However, hangul didn't take root until the late 19th century. North Korea uses Hangul exclusively. South Korea uses Hangul as well as some Chinese charecters.

Chinese scholars came to Japan and Korea and introduced their writing system, however the Chinese charecters came into conflict with the native languages, so native alphabets developed such as Katakana and Hiragana in Japan (Japan uses a mix of Katakana, Hiragana, Kanji, and Romanji--the Roman alphabet) and Hangul in Korea. Another reason was that the Chinese system was much too complex and difficult to learn, so new simplified writing systems were developed so literacy wouldn't be restricted to the elite.

Kanji are Japanese-adapted Chinese characters.

Hanzi are plain Chinese characters.

Hanja are Korean-adapated Chinese characters, though it is almost similar.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanja
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanzi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sejong
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hangul
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katakana
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiragana

Hmmm, Cantonese and Mandarin I think should be characterized as separate languages, because they are completely mutually unintelligeble. Although Cantonese and Mandarin speakers communicate fine through writing...

Unfortunately that idea falls apart when linguists consider the phonomology, morphology, and syntax, which is why Mandarin and Cantonese are dialects not separtate languages.

Interesting, I did not know that. I read about a theory linking Japanese and the Dravidian languages... maybe the shared preoccupation with hierarchy reflect this possible distant relation.

They arent linked, as far as I know. That was just pointing out shared features. Many languages share similar features without being linked. Japanese and German both have an S-O-V syntax structure, for example, but they are not linked.

Unfortunately that idea falls apart when linguists consider the phonomology, morphology, and syntax, which is why Mandarin and Cantonese are dialects not separtate languages.
Morphologically all the isolating languages are pretty much identical (Mandarin, Cantonese, Vietnamese). And I don't know if comparative phonology is used often to determine linguistic relations in the case of Chinese. In terms of tonal phonology Cantonese is much closer to Vietnamese than to Mandarin. In terms of the phonology of consonants, Cantonese has more in common with English or Japanese than with Mandarin. The compelling argument for Mandarin and Cantonese being mere dialects is the totally identical syntax.

They arent linked, as far as I know. That was just pointing out shared features. Many languages share similar features without being linked. Japanese and German both have an S-O-V syntax structure, for example, but they are not linked.
There exists a theory that links Dravidian and Japanese. I am not saying that this particular shared shared feature - hierarchy specifications - definitively confirms that theory or if that theory is even correct, but the shared emphasis on social station may be one aspect of the possible link between the two languages.

The way I learned it, -san is for people you have something of a professional relationship with (co-workers, your boss, etc.) and -kun is for close friends, commonly used among men. -Sama is for addressing a social superior, commonly seen in customer service (The Japanese saying about customer service translates roughly to "The Customer is God...") There are others that are less used (-Sensei is for teachers, obviously...) and some that have likely died out. I took a year of college Japanese and this is how I learned it...from an American raised in Japan, a 20-something Japanese grad student, and a Korean woman who, I am convinced, was somewhat insane. This hardly means that I am an irrefutable source of Japanese culture (having turned down the chance to go to Japan for a year) but I do have at least a bit of a background in this.
Yes Japanese are very nit picky about even the most basic conversation... to avoid offending them a foreigner has to be very familiar with the highly nuanced rules of respect in speech.