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When this was on the Japanese language page, someone kept putting in something about how Japanese and Tamil have retroflex pronunciation for both /l/ and /r/. Leaving aside the fact that Japanese has only one liquid consonant, it is important to note that Japanese, unlike Tamil, has no retroflexes, which are a prominent characteristic of Indian languages in general. It is still important to note here that the phonetics of Japanese and Tamil differ greatly in this respect, so I have put that part back in. Godfrey Daniel 00:05, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
Oh, and as for the scholarly support, "very little" isn't strong enough: of all the scholars I know who specialize in Japanese (and I know most of the non-Japanese ones and many of the Japanese researchers, too), NONE accept the Tamil hypothesis as even remotely plausible. Godfrey Daniel 00:10, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
The term is written too much in the negative about this hypothesis. Since it is lack of NPOV, I think, I will revise. thanks.--Midville 17:47, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
The term Japanese language classification includes self-inconsistency. Since the Japanese language is considered to be a "hybrid" or a "multistorey" language. Although most (esp. Japanese) people who believe "only one japan" will deny that scholarly fact for political reasons or innocent wishful thinking, it is the foundation of NPOV-understanding of the term. Concerning the Japanese language, it is (not only encyclopediacly) nonsense to believe "only one hypothesis is true" and to choose a hypothesis and to abandon (or to deny) the other hypothesis. Ladies and gentlemen, how should that be reflected in the main article?--Midville 11:35, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
Somebody put in the following false statement in the 'Other connections' section at the end of the article:
, though in the 1990s, Christopher Beckwith proposed a Japanese-Chinese connection. His efforts were sharply criticized by specialists in Japanese. Now, Beckwith is a proponent of the hypothesis linking Japonic to the extinct Manchurian and Korean Peninsular languages of Goguryeo, Baekje, Buyeo, and Gojoseon.
This is completely untrue. There is no doubt that there are early Chinese loanwords in Japanese (I am not the only one who has studied them), but I never claimed the two languages were related. Note that the statement gives no citation. In short, I am the accused and I never made any such claim.Chris B 05:06, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
I added the 'no references/sources' template to this section. I'm not sure if I was right in doing so, but I didn't see any links to sources there. If the sources for this section are simply referenced elsewhere in the article, feel free to remove this template. --TheSlyFox 11:48, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
I have started to formulate a theory that some words in the Japanese language, especially certain botanical names, have been borrowed into the ancestor of the Japanese language from an ancient language of the Korean Peninsula that has left some relics in the modern dialects of the Gyeongsang region of southeastern Korea. Gyeongsang is, of course, the region in which the capital of the ancient kingdom of Silla was located, so it might be possible to identify these words as "ancient Silla dialect words." One example is the Japanese word yuri ("lily"), which I believe is related to the modern Gyeongsang dialect word 돌개 dolgae ("Chinese bellflower, Platycodon grandiflorum"). In Japan, lilies have traditionally been considered a source of food, as their bulbs were often dug up and eaten like onions. As for the Chinese bellflower, its root is a common foodstuff even in today's Korean cuisine. Gyeongsang dialect dolgae appears to ultimately be cognate with Standard Korean 도라지 doraji ("Chinese bellflower"), but I think it is likely that Japanese yuri was borrowed from an ancient Korean form that was directly ancestral to either Gyeongsang dialect dolgae or Standard Korean doraji. I would also point out that various Japanese dialects have aberrant forms for "lily," such as dore (Toyama Prefecture), dōren (another part of Toyama Prefecture), inera (Hachijoo-jima), and *yure or *yore > yuri (Nakijin dialect of Kunigami language in Okinawa; regularly corresponding form would be *yui). Has anyone else encountered a theory that tries to explain some of the Japanese botanical names that display a high degree of irregular correspondences among Japanese dialects as ancient loanwords from a Korean language? Ebizur 05:00, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
I find the section about CI Beckwith's theory too enthusiastic : his theory, as he has presented it, has not gained general approvment from other scholars, and it has been criticized on several important points. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tomaaru (talk • contribs)
What is the reason to link "Chinese 'zodiacal dog' 戌 *zyüt" to Altaic? Surely, there is no mainstream scholar connecting Chinese and Altaic? If anything, *zyüt must be an early loanword. 惑乱 分からん * \)/ (\ (< \) (2 /) /)/ * 10:32, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
The wording of the first paragraph is rather confusing. What I think it's trying to say, but doesn't actually spell out, is that the "Japanese is an isolate" school of thought assumes that Ryukyu was just a bunch of dialects, but now they're considered languages of their own, and hence it's the Japonic languages together that are in a class of their own. Jpatokal 19:04, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
Restored some necessary connective tissue to the final section. In particular, it is important to emphasize that relationships can be correctly perceived (e.g. in lexis, phonology, or morphosyntactic alignment) without this perception necessarily resolving by itself whether the relationships are genetic or diffusional. This represents the crux of many controversies in language classification. It isn’t superfluous.
It is also necessary to indicate the interrelationship of the methodological issues in linguistics referred to and future progress in classifying Japanese: only the dialectic between theory and praxis is likely to resolve the more difficult and controversial cases. This too is not superfluous.
VikSol 19:09, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
Some nameless user keeps adding a list of unsourced "correspondences" between Japanese and Korean vocabulary. This list is ridiculously amateurish; I might as well make a section for "Japanese relationship to Chinese" and a list of Japanese words that sound sort of similar to Chinese words. You have claimed that Korean /i-/ (copula) is cognate with Japanese /i-/ ([animate] to be), but this is untenable; Modern Japanese /i-/ descends from Classical Japanese /wi-/, and the Korean and Japanese forms are completely different in usage. I might as well claim that Japanese /wi-/ > /i-/ is related to Chinese 為 wéi ("to be; to serve as"). The Japanese and the Chinese forms are historically much closer to each other, both phonetically and semantically, than either is to the Korean copula, /i-/ (which occurs only after consonant-final stems, by the way; this /i-/ morpheme has an allomorph, a null/zero/empty form, which occurs after vowel-final stems).
If you are going to add your list of supposed Japanese-Korean cognates, then I will add a list of Japanese-Chinese cognates and Korean-Ainu cognates, too (e.g. Korean /nun/ "eye" vs. Ainu /nu-kar/ [v.t.] "to see", Korean /ijaki/ "speech, story" vs. Ainu /itak(-i)/ "speech, story," Korean /pjə/ "rice" vs. Ainu /pi(-ye)/ "seed," Korean /ni/ > /i/ "tooth" vs. Ainu /ni-mak/ "tooth" and /ni-rus/ "gums," etc.). This is just a small list that I came up with off the top of my head in less than five minutes; it is amazing how many meaningless similarities human beings are able to convince themselves of seeing even when there is no real pattern in the data.
Anyway, you need to understand that language families are not established on the basis of irregular "lookalikes" of the sort that you have presented on the main page. Please refrain from reposting such irrelevant nonsense, especially without citation of a reliable published source. Ebizur (talk) 08:09, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
That nameless user is me, and I've studied the subject for a couple of years, though it was a long time ago. What worries me most is that some idiot keeps adding a comment stating that Samuel Martin based his JK relationship on "typological similarities" which is simply not true. This idiocy seems to be epidemic. What he did was collecting potential cognates. It is your right to argue that J could also be related to anything else, but you have no logical right to delete other people's argumentation. My "nonsense" goes straight to the point. And please, I understand and know about the subject much more than you imagine. The source is largely in *Martin's work*. Please look up the article and stop inserting the absurd about "typology". I'll remove the i- root, if that worries you. Repeating the widespread bull about "seeing patterns", "Big Bad Ugly Mass Comparison" and other witch-hunt stuff is not going to work, because not seeing the obvious is just as bad as seeing things. Inability to see patterns where they are is an organic deasease commonly known as "stupidity", or "lack of intellect". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.200.185.214 (talk) 10:25, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
Stay back from the Korean theory! If you think I'm going to settle it with you "like scientists do", you're sadly mistaken. You ignored my references three times, and put back your "typo-" stuff without giving it a second thought, without knowing anything about the lexical part of the JK theory, and now you accuse of me being amateurish! Wanna play a copy-paste game? Don't drive me mad... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.200.185.214 (talk) 11:35, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
Ebizur, "-en" was from "-masen", although I agree this was not correct (masu+ na > masen). If you think something is "spurious" (using word "specious" is a logical error, because you have to prove that they're not correct which you have not done), please correct THU-SPE-CI-FIC part, you old fart conservative jerk who's read too much Vovin's crap!... ...It's enough to take a look at dumb, half-sadistic Vovin's pig face (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Vovin) to realize how intelligent he is, and how much of a critic he is. Please stop bugging me, and realize the JK theory is rather well-supported (though not without problems). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.200.179.209 (talk) 10:55, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
I have switched the reference style of the article from footnotes to author-date referencing. If anyone has strong objections to this, I have no problems with switching it back. However, I believe the change is helpful to the article for the following reasons:
The controversies over the relations of Japanese or absence thereof have a very large bibliography, and it is visually easier to survey this in a list of works than in a series of endnotes, which are necessarily interspersed with other material.
I think the bibliography of this article needs to be very substantially expanded.
A list of literature thereby becomes essential, and it would overlap in a confusing way with the notes already given if these are not integrated into the list.
It should be noted that author-date citations have become an extremely popular style of citation in scholarly publications and are an entirely acceptable form of citation on Wikipedia (Wikipedia:Citing sources).
While Wikipedia suggests not changing the established reference style of an article in order to discourage pointless switching back and forth, in this case the need to expand the bibliography seems to me to decide the issue in favor of the change proposed. I hope others will agree. With regards to all. VikSol 01:13, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
I consider the following passage highly dubious:
Whatever term you use for Greenberg's methods, the point of his critics stands: he does not establish relationships between individual members of his putative families with sufficient rigor, relies too much on "false friend" cognates, and uses data of dubious provenance. --Peter Farago (talk) 20:26, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
ishi = taş yo = dört
Erm... if you allow words to be that different to register as corresponding, wouldn't you statistically expect to see a lot of cognates between independent datasets? Shinobu (talk) 11:05, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
I've noticed most of the sources listed in the References section of the article deal with individual hypotheses rather than giving a general overview. I've had a look around for some sources which give a general overview of the different hypotheses on the origins of Japanese, and here's one I find on JSTOR:
((citation))
: CS1 maint: date and year (link)Regards, Jagged 85 (talk) 23:11, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
Licqua has claimed Japanese is known as a "Buyeo language" and that the claim Japanese is an Altaic language is more generally accepted than the claim it is related to the Buyeo language. I also deal with the Buyeo claim on the talk page of Eurasiatic languages. The classification of Japanese as a "Buyeo language" is unusual and recherché. It cannot possibly be presented as the general consensus of linguists. Moreover, calling Korean a "Buyeo language" is also problematic, since Korean is probably descended from the language of Silla, which is not normally classed as a Buyeo language. Also, the evidence for a relationship between Japanese and the Buyeo-Goguryeo languages is thin and is not generally accepted by linguists, though often mentioned as an intriguing possibility.
With regard to Licqua's putting the Altaic hypothesis before the Goguryeo hypothesis, it has absolutely no basis in fact. The relationship of Japanese (or better Japonic) to the Goguryeo languages is only mildly controversial, that of Japanese to Altaic is highly controversial, as is the Altaic family itself. These facts are generally known among those interested in these languages, who will not take any counter-claims seriously, whatever their personal opinions on the ulterior relations of Japanese may be. VikSol 19:34, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
Let's call a spade a spade: you are vandalizing this page. Your reasons for doing so are obscure (though, perhaps, not impenetrable) but not relevant here. What is relevant is that, for the third time, you have failed to provide a shred of evidence for your "edits". And that is all we need to know. VikSol (talk) 19:54, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
Oh I'm vandalizing am I? Well that nice little remark of yours shows you're nothing but a troll - you're more interested in insulting me than in discussing the last suggestion I tried on the article. Licqua (talk) 12:40, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
I have been a Wikipedia contributor since 2005 and have never done anything remotedly resembling vandalism. You have been a Wikipedia contributor for one month and not all of your edits have been well-received. You have rejected every opportunity to provide even a shred of evidence for your changes to this article. VikSol 00:21, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
I have blocked Licqua for returning to edit warring. Licqua, your edit comments suggest that you think it is up to us to debate your edits, and that the default response to disagreement is to do whatever you want. No, you need to present and justify your ideas, not just revert to them because we haven't bothered to address them point by point in the absence of any input from you. You say, "It is impossible to go build consensus on the talk page when no one is telling [us] what they disapprove of in the article." Exactly. You have hit upon what you need to do. kwami (talk) 08:17, 4 April 2009 (UTC)
No one talks of a "Buyeo-Goguryeo" language family in relation to the Japonic languages. When Licqua cites a single linguist who does we can take his claim seriously. But don't hold your breath. For example, Christopher Beckwith, the leading expert on the proposed Japonic-Goguryeo grouping, calls this grouping the "Japanese-Koguryoic family" and their hypothetical proto-language "Proto-Japanese-Koguryoic" (see the table of contents of his book Koguryo, searchable through Google).
In a review of Beckwith's book in Korean Studies (also easily searchable), Thomas Pellard summarizes Beckwith's position:
VikSol 00:05, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
What Licqua demands we accept as his position is a moving target. He began by claiming (in Eurasiatic languages) that the "Buyeo languages" are Japanese (!), Korean (!!), and Ainu (!!!), as everyone can verify in the history of that article. Now he wants us to believe that all he is saying is that "Buyeo ... is the Japonic-Koguryoic grouping", an improvement - though still problematic, since the Buyeo family, if correct, would include several other languages besides Japonic and Koguryŏ (see Buyeo languages). The key points remain: (1) Those linguists who accept the Japonic-Koguryŏ link call it "Japanese-Koguryoic" or the like, not "Buyeo". (2) Licqua has declined to cite a single linguist who uses the terminology he advocates, despite repeated invitations to do so. This is really not too much to ask. (3) Not all experts accept that the Buyeo languages are related to the Koguryŏ language (see Buyeo languages). Similarly, Professor Robbeets, in an article in the well-known book Korea in the Middle, argues that the evidence for the Buyeo language is too fragmentary to constitute reliable evidence.
I also note that Licqua speaks of "Koguryeo" two entries up, which is an incoherent mixing of two separate systems for transcribing Korean - Goguryeo or Koguryŏ would be correct. This suggests he is not well-versed in the subject.
Licqua has also taken it upon himself to formally accuse me and Physiognome of being sockpuppets, which is ludicrous - I have no idea who Physiognome is. However, Licqua himself shows a suspicious familiarity with the procedures of Wikipedia for someone who has only been on it for a month. Such malicious behavior is its own best refutation. VikSol (talk) 00:33, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
As Kwami implies, Beckwith is the leading advocate of a Japonic-Koguryŏ connection. The complete list of chapters in Beckwith's book, Koguryo: The Language of Japan's Continental Relatives (Brill, 2004), is:
VikSol 00:46, 11 April 2009 (UTC)
I've just found a Beckwith article online (see the "Works cited" section). "Japanese-Koguryoic" is in the title, but in the abstract, he mentions "Puyo-Koguryo, a language related to Japanese". In the Conference Report in the same pdf, it is stated that "According to Beckwith the language of early Paekche kingdom [was] Puyo-Paekche, a dialect of Koguryo, ..." Confusing, huh? The article discussed here is ok, though, the one on Buyeo could be better, but at the end of the day, the entire discussion here is quite futile and besides the point of making an encyclopedia. Which is exactly why I don't edit much: It's often not worth the energy. Cheers! --Physiognome (talk) 19:33, 11 April 2009 (UTC)
A user identified as 124.214.131.55 has added a "No footnotes" tag to this article, which produces the following message:
User 124.214.131.55 has maintained in an edit comment (accessible on the "history" tab) that author-date citations are "not acceptable" on Wikipedia.
I have reverted this change because this article uses author-date referencing. Clicking on "inline citations" in the message above links to a description of the different styles of inline citations accepted on Wikipedia. Scrolling down will find first "Footnote system" and second "Parenthetical referencing", of which author-date referencing is a form. There details on each system can be found.
With regard to the present article, note that (boldface added) "Author-date references are the most commonly used citation style in the physical and social sciences (Ritter 2002) (whereas author-title or author-page citations are the most commonly used style in the arts and the humanities)." Linguistics is a social science, hence author-date referencing is particularly appropriate for the "Classification of Japanese" article.
Scrolling up to "How to present citations" will find the following points (quoted from same, boldface added):
However, it is recommended that previously established styles be continued within each individual article (boldface added):
User 124.214.131.55 raises in an edit comment the objection that "The list of resources does not indicate which portions of the article where generated from which pages of the references". The way author-date referencing works is this (as stated under "Inline references"):
I hope this clears things up. Regards, VikSol 02:02, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
I did not misquote you. What I said, as everybody can seen on the "history" page, is "this article uses author-date referencing, one of the types of inline citations accepted on Wikipedia." What you said is "No, it is not acceptable." Of course it's acceptable. If you are trying to make some other point, I (or someone else) will respond to it once you do so clearly. VikSol 02:41, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
Allow me respectfully to disagree. If you would click the link "inline citations" in the template box above, as I suggested, you will see that "author-date references" are a form of "inline citations". Many people are under the impression that "inline citations" refer to numbered footnotes only, but it is just not so.
You are raising another point, I think (reading between the lines), which I find more useful. Although this article uses author-date referencing, it does not do so as rigorously as it might. Author-date referencing depends on each citation, typically something like (Poppe 1965:137), being accompanied by a full reference in a list of works cited, typically something like:
Yet in this article, the works actually cited have been mixed in with material merely added for background, making it impossible, as you say, to see easily what the sources of the article actually are. To meet this difficulty, I have split the former "References" section into two, titled "Works cited" and "Further reading", and retitled the whole "Bibliography" (all standard section titles). I believe the result is significantly clearer. VikSol 03:46, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
References
The cite tag has been on the 1907 ref for the Koguryo section for quite a while. I know nothing about it, but wiki-ja mentions Izuru Shinmura (1916), who noted that the Koguryo numerals 3, 5, 7, and 10 were very similar to Japanese. wiki-ja also gives some cognates: 古次 "mouth" (modern Sino-Korean koch'a, modern Japanese kuchi), 波且 "sea" (p'ach'a : umi—seems to be an error in here somewhere), 伏 "deep" (pok : fuka < *puka), 尸臘 "white" (shirap : shiro), 烏斯含 "rabbit" (osaham < *osakam : usagi), 烏 "boar" (o : wi), 旦 "valley" (tan : tani). kwami (talk) 07:13, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
FYI, the suggestion that the hypothetical link to Kokuryo dates to 1907 was added by User:Cibeckwith on 15 November 2006. Cnilep (talk) 17:28, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
Sorry im not an expert; just a common reader. But is there a reason why the language does not fall under the Chinese language family tree? Or why the possibility does not arise? The article Sino-Japanese vocabulary says that 60% of the words in a Japanese dictionary are of Chinese origin, or something like that. Just curious. ќמшמφטтгמtorque 00:28, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
User:Kwamikagami protected Classification of Japanese, however the current content reflects the modification by User:Trikemike. This portion was last modified by User:Kwamikagami on 10 June 2008[1] and have never been modified since then. So I think User:Kwamikagami's version should be the current consensus and a start point. User:Trikemike, formerly banned user name User:Izumidebito made repetitive edits without any explanation on Talk page. If his/her edit were permitted and included, Wikipedia's credibility would be denied. ―― Phoenix7777 (talk) 03:06, 24 October 2009 (UTC)
I'm not sure if I'm even correct in my understanding, let alone transliteration/spelling, but I was watching a Japanese film in which the line "Nan de Kyoto desu-ka?" was used, which as far as I can surmise means something to the effect of "Why in Kyoto?". This same sentence, in Turkish, would be "Neden (ne+den) Kyoto'da (ki)?". I thought that might make an interesting addition :P —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.169.196.247 (talk) 21:10, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
all words in current korean table are similar also with english and several i know are similar to udmurt(finno ugric, uralic) and turkic. current state of the table:
Comparison with Japanese | |||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Old Japanese | Japanese | meaning | Mid-Korean | Korean | meaning | ||||||||
midu | mizu | water | myr | mul | water | ||||||||
midu | mizu | water | mos | mot | lake | ||||||||
k-u | k-uru | to come | ka- | ka-da | to go | ||||||||
kata-si | kata-i | hard | kut- | kud-yn kut-yn |
hard | ||||||||
wi-ru | i-ru | to be | ' | i-da | to be | ||||||||
naɸ-u | na-i | not | an | anh | not | ||||||||
mïna | mina | all, everyone | man-ha- | manh- | many | ||||||||
kasa | kasa | hat | gat | gat | hat |
so, these words, i think, are not enough to show that japan language should be grouped with korean, these only show that they all are nostratic or eurasiatic. though, but though these all are like words in english, korean and japan have in addition similar grammatics, so, yes, they show... but grammatic structure similarity should be mentioned in the section. --Qdinar (talk) 14:55, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
In the Korean-Japanese relation, it says that a Korean relation might not deny a Koguryoic relationship. So is there any linguists or scholars supporting the theory that Koguryoic might be a Altaic language? And what is the Chinese "zodiacal dog" doing here? Is anyone also supporting that the Sino-Tibetan languages may be part of the Altaic languages? Also, is there any cognates of Tamil and Japanese? Thanks. Kanzler31 (talk) 20:50, 7 November 2010 (UTC)
I think the problem is that Koguryoic is for all practical purposes an unattested language. it may be related to Korean, or Japanese, or both, how are you going to tell without any decent data base. At least Korean and Japanese are known languages that can be compared, so even if that comparison is inconclusive, the inconclusiveness is at least the result of a comparison between known entities. It's probably a bit like Illyrian and Albanian: sure they may somehow be related, but how are you going to tell if one of two languages under comparison is simply unknown. --dab (𒁳) 12:11, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
Please expand on these hypotheses based on Yevgeny Polivanov's work. Here is the excerpt from the Japanese article. --Shinkansen Fan (talk) 11:21, 9 January 2011 (UTC)
References
I have removed the tag added to the head of the article in February 2011 reading
((Merge to|Japonic languages|date=February 2011)) .
While it may seem a good idea to group material related to the same subject in one place, experience has shown Wikipedians that this can easily lead to overloaded articles and it is often preferable to split up a complex subject into several articles. This is clearly the case here. Any glance at this article shows it is already fairly long and would hopelessly overload the article Japonic languages, at least if the subject was to be treated in any kind of adequate detail. As the subject of the classification of Japanese is an important one, it should not be confined to a few sentences in some more general article.
I also note that the person posting this tag did not actually offer any arguments for the merger they suggested. If you want to make a proposal, make one, otherwise do not expect the rest of us to do your work for you. Finally, there has been no discussion of this tag since it was posted, suggesting there is no very strong sentiment for the merger proposed.
For all these reasons, I have removed the tag. Let the article remain.
VikSol (talk) 18:00, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
I cleaned up the language some under the Koguryoic hypothesis - It was written as if Beckwith's theories are now an accepted conclusion. I removed definitive language such as "clearly related," and the phrase "obvious to anyone familiar with both languages," implying that anyone who disagrees only does so because of their unfamiliarity with the topic. While I happen to support the Goguryeo-Japonic connection (especially since Lee and Hasegawa's phylogenetic analysis) I don't think it was appropriate for the article to imply that the controversy is over. -- Tallasse (talk) 14:10, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
The inclusion of Japanese 火山 (kazan, "volcano") as evidence of Japanese's relationship to Turkish is spurious. That word is not a native Japanese word. Rather it was borrowed into Japanese from Chinese (granted, more than a thousand years ago, but still significantly later than when the language's supposed relationship with Turkish would have ended.) The use of the Chinese readings of these characters proves the word's true origin. Is that enough to simply remove it from the article? evin290 (talk) 20:52, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
That whole table looks suspicious. You might want to verify how much of it is really from Starostin's database. A whole sentence like "What is this?" sounds unlikely to be there. For genuine cognates, it would be better to cite Proto-Altaic and the protolanguages of all branches, as in Proto-Altaic#Selected_cognates, which actually contains two of the same comparisons, for "stone" and "four". --JWB (talk) 05:55, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
Deleted some of the table and changed some more per Starostin. — kwami (talk) 08:09, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
There are serious problems with the order of mention and the attestation as to which theories have the most currency. 1. The Altaic theory still has the most currency internationally. 2. The Koguryoic theory is not widely accepted, and if included it should be part of the wider Altaic theory. 3. The Austronesian hypotheses deserve a mention; as you can see from the above mention of the Japanese page it has many supporters among Japanese scholars, especially as a substratum to an Altaic superstratum. This theory has the most currency in Japan (at least in the loose sense that no one denies both Austronesian and Altaic influence in the make-up of Japonic). 4. The Gaya or Kara should not get any mention, as there is no linguistic evidence whatsoever, only an ad hoc mention by Beckwith in one page of his new book. 5. If Nostratic and Eurasiatic macro families deserve a mention, so does the Austro-Tai theory. The basic conclusion is, the theories outlines here are not representative of the whole scholarly community involved in the issue. Some minor theories are blown out of proportion (Koguryo), some theories that lack almost any support get a mention (Nostratic/Eurasiatic, Dravidian) while others don't (Austro-Thai), and some significant scholarly developments are completely omitted (Austronesian). Ramentei (talk) 03:31, 10 August 2012 (UTC)
The Koguryoic hypothesis is NOT the more widely accepted, full stop. Altaic, with all its problems, (and I don't buy any of it either) still is the most accepted hypothesis. And where is the reference to a linguistic relationship with Kara? It is complete nonsense and should definitely not be in the first paragraph of the article. Ramentei (talk) 06:42, 10 August 2012 (UTC)
Beckwith is proposing that Kara was an Japanese outpost or even a colony on the Korean Peninsula. This is what many Japanese scholars believe too. If this were true, then that would mean that the language spoken in Kara was simply Japanese, and to say that Japanese is genetically related to Kara is like saying Indian English is related to British English. No, they are simply the same languages spoken by the same ethnic people. But this is a more controversial with many political implications as well, and I think this is quite well covered in the articles about Gaya confederacy, and it has very little or nothing to do with the origins of Japonic. Also, to say that Japonic consists of Yayoi and Ryukyu is inaccurate, as the Ryukyu language split after the Yayoi period, or at earliest at the end of the Yayoi period. If you believe the Japanese-Koguryoic is independent of the Kara connection, then don't you agree that this sentence should be revised? "possibility of a genetic relationship to the Goguryeo (Koguryŏ) languages, or perhaps more specifically to Kara (Gaya), has the most currency." Ramentei (talk) 07:21, 10 August 2012 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just added archive links to one external link on Classification of Japonic languages. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add ((cbignore))
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Cheers.—cyberbot IITalk to my owner:Online 10:25, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
The examples in the table in this section are extremely dubious. For example claiming that orera is the Japanese for "we" is dubious, because it consists of the element for "I" (ore) with a productive group marker -ra. I just removed another one which is obviously bogus: the word for "liver" (organ) borrowed from Chinese. The mystery is that a very quick look at the Starostin database immediately yield vastly more plausible examples, such as this one:
Meanwhile, everyone ignores the elephant in the room: the fact that Japanese and Korean are essentially structurally identical. Hmm. Imaginatorium (talk) 09:22, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
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Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 00:01, 26 November 2016 (UTC)
I have included newer information about proposed relations if the Japanese language.
The first research show why japanese and korean are not demonstrateable related and explain similarities with intense language contact in past.
The second research is about the reconstruction of Proto-Japanese and its morphology. The research show strong similarities to several southeast asian languages but no similarities to norther languages.
My edit is well sourced and it is a update of more recent researches. Wikipedia should be actuall and must mention newer versions of linguistic census. The current version implies as would the korean/goguryeo relation be accepted. But it is not accepted and still controversial. Most linguists now agree that japonic is not related to goguryeo/korean.
But my edits get reverted because of unknown reason. No explanation why a revert was done.
Also a current research summary explain why the austronesian hypothesis will get more support in future. As stated in the research, in past not much was cared about a relation to austronesian but after the research if Alexander vovin and the linguistic census debunking the controversial altaic theory it get more and more attention. I can also included this research summary if needed.
Please explain why this got reverted and please help to update this page.
Greetings212.95.7.183 (talk) 17:07, 10 May 2017 (UTC)
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Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 00:46, 9 August 2017 (UTC)
In the Sino-Tibetan theory section, the article claims that "early Sino-Tibetan was non-tonal and had SOV grammar order," which I believe is true, "like still today Tibetan language" is not so. While there isn't necessarily agreement on how many tones Tibetan has, it definitely has contrastive tone. Can this section be fixed? Calahagus (talk) 15:00, 11 October 2017 (UTC)Calahagus
I have again removed the following text:
This is cited to Janhunen (2003), which can be found in the Further reading section, but does not reflect what that article says. The cited article does not mention Sino-Tibetan or Burmese at all. On page 483, he says that Pre-Proto-Japanese had a tonal system and monosyllabic roots, a typology similar to Tai-Kadai, Miao-Yao, Chinese and Vietnamese, indicating that it must have been contiguous with one of these languages – he suggests Shandong. On page 484, he says that whether Pre-Proto-Japanese had any relatives is an unsolved problem.
I have also deleted the table of "Similarities between ancient Japanese and ancient Chinese languages", which is uncited and appears to be original research. Some of the words listed (kuni 'county' and ume 'plum') are generally accepted as early loans from Chinese, while zeni 'money' must be a later loan, as voiced initials were not permitted in Old Japanese. Kanguole 16:52, 14 August 2018 (UTC)
Several IP vandalize this lage and keep pushing a tai-kadai relation to japanese. The siurce of vovin(1998) does not mention tai-kadai but is about the theory that the yayoi/early japanese spoke a language related to Austroasiatic. I also griuped the tai-theory to Austronesian (see austro-tai) because the headline tai-kadai Austroasiatic theory makes no sense as they are not thought to be related. AmurTiger18 (talk) 07:49, 21 October 2018 (UTC)