Altaic: Rise and Fall of a Linguistic Hypothesis

[@yanamed6477]

I went to a finnish language course once with all participants only being able to speak indogermanic languages beforehand besides one who spoke turkish. Everytime we learned some new grammer he said 'Oh, thats so cool, thats just like in turkish'. Needless to say it was completly new for everyone else. Was great fun ;)

[@deejayaech4519]

Could be a sprachbund.

[@PC_Simo]

@Cu6upckuû As a Finn, I noticed the same similarity. Well, we Finns *_DID_* come from the Urals (hence: ”Uralic”), around where there are lots of Turkic peoples (including Tatars, I believe); and Hungarian (another Uralic, Finno-Ugric language) shares *_VERY_* similar grammar, in my mind, to Turkic languages. 🤔

[@PC_Simo]

@@deejayaech4519 Probably is 🤔.

[@ЕленаБорисова-щ8е]

The similiarity of formants is important. Moreover some roots are also evedentli the same, the word tjat means fish for example. There must bencommon.Ural-Altaic ancestor.

[@PC_Simo]

@Cu6upckuû Finnish was included in the Ural-Altaic (or Uraltaic) mega-family-hypothesis, together with all the other Uralic languages, though.

[@christosvoskresye]

Even biologists trying to reconstruct the "tree of life" have realized the tree metaphor is a dangerous oversimplification. We STILL have lateral gene transfer between distantly related species today, and once it enters the germ line and becomes inherited, these genes make the idea of a simple family tree ultimately meaningless. In the distant past, when eukaryotes were first emerging, the situation was even more complicated. If that's true in genetics, it's true in spades in linguistics. This is not a case of "my tree good, your tree bad." ALL trees are potentially dangerous oversimplifications.

[@christosvoskresye]

To sum up, it is never a tree, but always a net.

[@Mercure250]

@@christosvoskresye Amen to that

[@BygoneT]

That's literally what we humans do all the time. Shit is too complex so we try to make it simple and misunderstand. Problems with the economy? Print more money, if people have more everything will be fine. (Looks at Zimbabwe) Is Yellowstone going to erupt in 40 years Max? Let's try to use cool gases to avoid that (Almost triggers the apocalypse before its time). And so on.

[@Lewa263]

Ha, I was going to comment about this too, since I just read David Quammen's The Tangled Tree. The human desire to classify things neatly is a mental trap.

[@hedgehog3180]

> We STILL have lateral gene transfer between distantly related species today Ehh that is definitely overstating this. Gene transfer can happen between species but definitely not distantly related ones since they wouldn't be able to actually mate. The closest thing would be retroviruses but where viruses sit on the tree of life is difficult to say. In bacteria it is true that genes can transfer between pretty distantly related species but it isn't true for multi cellular life. The tree of life model is still a very good one for understanding the broader history of life on Earth but when we have to look closer it tends to be drawn differently these days. It's not a model that can be used to understand evolution on an individual scale but it works on the broader scale.

[@NativLang]

I got more in character, swapping between what each side was saying. Spending so much time on color-coded quotes was a change. For me, this was more about sharing the story than about asking you to weigh in on a conflict. Are there other tales would you'd like to see animated like this?

[@Alfonso162008]

I know nothing about linguistics, so I don't have any recommendations regarding the field, but this video was great and it made me invested in the story, so I'd say you're doing an awesome job :)

[@falnica]

I want an overview of all accepted language families

[@HenrikP97]

I might be personally biased, being a speaker, but history around the Uralic family is rather interesting. Also, the origins of Malagasy in comparison to the continent closest by is a fun oddity to explore.

[@NativLang]

@@Alfonso162008 Thank you!

[@finnsalsa9304]

I would absolutely love a video about Uralic languages (as a speaker myself). It's very hard to find good KZbin videos about them.

[@Xidnaf]

I was always curious about this myself, one of the oldest ideas for a video on my list. Awesome to see it presented so well here! :D

[@MDzaki-uk2ll]

Hey Xidnaf :)

[@timmyturner327]

nice to see you Xidnaf! I've liked a lot of your vids.

[@MihcaelTube]

Greetings to you from Berlin, Germany!

[@himssendol6512]

Hello! Love your videos.

[@ekvedrek]

Upload

[@mailasun]

Turns out I’m one of the rare people who still knows Manchu. ᠮᡠᠰᡝᡳ ᠮᠠᠨᠵᡠ ᡤᡳᠰᡠᠨ ᠪᡝ ᠪᠠᡳᠨᡩᡠᡥᡝ ᠠᠮᠪᡠᠯᠠ ᠪᠠᠨᡳᡥᠠ᠉

[@wasserruebenvergilbungsvirus]

Really the coolest writing system there is imo.

[@mailasun]

@@wasserruebenvergilbungsvirus It's actually traditional mongolian script. We borrowed their script alphabet. However, they ditched this script and went cyrillic since 1941. They actually decided last week, yes, on March 19, 2020, that they are going to re-adopt the traditional Mongolian script, but imo it's gonna be hard. They have lost this script for 3-4 generations already.

[@Ida-xe8pg]

@@mailasun Btw the horizontally written mongolic looks like the Wadiyan script

[@mailasun]

mini francis sorry, I don’t know what “wadiyan script” is.

[@Ida-xe8pg]

@@mailasun Its not a real script its the script used in a fictional nation of Wadiya in the movie Dictator

[@weilongguan6329]

I'm a Manchu from Beijing, I speak a little Manchu and a little Mongol, when I learned Turkish in Istanbul I found the grammar and vocab surprisingly matching (excluding Islamic borrowings in Turkish and Tibetan Buddhist borrowings in Manchu/Mongol). All those suffixes and conjugations are nearly the same. Other than that my grandpa (Manchu) and grandma (Mongolian) could communicate with each other speaking their native languages (plus Chinese and Tibetan)

[@AD-yq8rl]

I totally agree with you

[@lisamanoban2957]

So true.

[@goldeviolets4314]

That makes sense considering that Altaic is a sprachbund

[@ek3200]

We Turks always see Mongols and Manchurians as brothers. Also, wr have some same words. Like kut(holy).

[@LMvdB02]

@@goldeviolets4314 with such grammatical similarity

[@Jerimbo]

LANGFOCUS AND NATIVLANG VIDEOS IN ONE DAY OH THE LORD HAS BLESSED US, IMMEDIATELY CLICKED Last time I was this early, altaic was still an accepted proposal

[@grimhavenz]

Idk why but I thought I was the only one who watched both!

[@davidlericain]

@@grimhavenz Nope, me too.

[@torspedia]

@@grimhavenz Watched both as well :-)

[@LeoStaley]

Nativlang is like 2 teirs above langfocus in quality. Which is just to say nativlang is SS+ teir, the top.

[@canko15]

Except langfocus is shit I'm happy about NativLang tho

[@alice_atari]

I think the failure of the Altaic hypothesis actually opens up some interesting questions about how languages form. I suspect when we understand creolization better we will see that it is a fundamental part of the formation of new languages.

[@MartaRzehorz]

Well, let's build public schools for the deaf in the places where there are none and we can study it.

[@Nemo_Anom]

I think that Dixon's theory is fairly reasonable. "The Rise and Fall of Languages" by RWM Dixon.

[@SchmulKrieger]

Creolisation means that there have to be more than one language already existing. This is not how a language branch come up.

[@SchmulKrieger]

@Erkinbek Mongolhan, Mongolian seems to be elder and Turkish as Turkic is much younger. Turkic and Mongolian could be of Paleosibirian ancestry. Where Turkic is the new branch. It is similar to Indo-Aryan which is part of the greater family branch Indo-Germanic (Indo-European). But Persian/Farsi has a Sprachbund with Arabic and the Hindi languages have a Sprachbund with the Dravidian.

[@SchmulKrieger]

@veryserioz, nope. Yeniseian languages have no ancestry to Turkic or Mongolian. They are just part of the Paleosibirian Sprachbund.

[@eyuin5716]

To me Altaic is more of a cultural region rather than a related family. Kind of similar to languages in Mesoamerica.

[@askovtk4834]

Same here and it makes sense, since the nations and tribes have all kind of cultural exchange with each others through all ages, with all these wars, envoys, trades, invasions and occupation. Language is just one of those thing their share and exchange.

[@Odinsday]

I prefer to call it a cultural family linguistic tree. I wish it was talked about more often.

[@morganalabeille5004]

Linguistic found family

[@heitorb7765]

There is some issue. Anthropologists use language family to classify the ethnic groups

[@heitorb7765]

@Philosophy is pain i'm agreed with, it's just our way to make the world more simple to understand. But, i agree too languages related have more cultural similarity, so...

[@quaternarytetrad4039]

So today I learned how to provoke a language nerds

[@Oceanleighside]

#triggered 🤓😂

[@ajavisk]

Do you want to provoke even more? Say you agree with the Ural-Altaic hypothesis

[@MartaRzehorz]

there are so many ways to provoke language nerds

[@Lexivor]

@@ajavisk I like to call it Uraltaic.

[@LuisAldamiz]

No, you didn't: try throwing at them a mass lexical comparison, they'll bite and start a nulclear war of words, of very ugly words!

[@zanderrose]

I’ve been told by people from Turkey that the Altaic hypothesis is still taught as fact there, even in university level linguistics courses

[@marcoadmiralis_1497]

Propaganda purposes

[@bonbonbons]

It is in Korea too tbh

[@yuilchoi2799]

@@bonbonbons Nobody knows what altaic is in Korea. I'm Korean in Korea

[@Kara_Pabuc]

I can confirm this as a 28 years old Turkish. I still stan with this theory btw.

[@noelgomez7197]

Propaganda purposes. Modern day Turkish nationalism is somewhat opposed to Islam and the cultural heritage of that religion, starting with Atatürk's reforms on language and society. Today's nationalists and religious being opposite poles in politics. So they reach out to a distant pre-islamic past, and Altaic seems to be part of that construction of a glorious past.

[@KenKeenan1973]

Altaic: is there any more controversial linguistic theory than me? Nostratic: hold my beer

[@aaronmarks9366]

Amerind: hold my... fermented taiga berry brew?

[@indo-europeanbrotherhood7183]

Borean: Hello, fellows!

[@morganlefay195]

Basque: ahem...

[@Alchymicae]

Ken Keenan Na-dene-Caucasian

[@theyoshi202]

@BARBATVS 89 Germanic, Iberian, who cares. We’re all humans. This nationalistic group identification based only on ancestry is a source of many of today’s world problems. It’s ok to be proud of your history, but when it turns into “us good, them bad” it becomes an issue.

[@aaronmarks9366]

Altaic is so popular that it's even popped up in the Americas: during my MA program, I found a grammar of the Aymara language (spoken in Bolivia and Peru), in which the author, a native speaker, claimed dead on that Aymara is an Altaic language. He even claimed that the Aymaras are descended from Asian Altaic speakers that crossed from Asia to South America *by ship* sometime in the last few millennia. I guess to be fair, Aymara fits that pattern shown at the beginning pretty well, just that it doesn't have vowel harmony, and doesn't have pronouns in b- and s-.

[@irubjaejoong]

Okkk. I’m an Altaic proponent. But I stop short at claims the Altaic family entered the new world 😂 but bonus points to the author for creativity

[@QuinnTheTailor]

If you think about it, it is possible. The continents of America, Africa and Europe drifted apart millions of years ago, long before humans existed. And the only realistic way that humans would be able to reach Americas is through East Asia across to America. The Native Americans, Aztecs, Maya and the other ethnicities could not have come to America through Europe or Africa. So they must have come from Asia. The possibilty of if being somehow true is not completely zero.

[@rocknroll909]

That idea is contingent on so many conditions being true together that are still just hypotheses on their own. But damn if it isn't an interesting idea.

[@eneskurnaz8487]

Some of the Turks, including Atatürk was thinking this way too. In fact Atatürk gave a diplomat a task to inspect Mayan language to find similar patterns with Turkish and he even gave this man (Tahsin) the surname of "Mayatepek". (Maya for Mayans, "tepe/k" a common word in both languages which means hill)

[@gogojuice101]

@@eneskurnaz8487 that’s so interesting

[@Sophia-bm7pb]

As a Korean, Japanese, Turkish and Mongolian learner, I would say that although their grammar structures are very similar, but Turkish grammar is much more difficult than the others.

[@PimsleurTurkishLessons]

But Turkish grammar is very regular. So no need to memorize. Here are Worldwide Linguists' Opinions on Turkish Language Paul Roux: "Turkish is a mathematical language full of thought and intellect." *Moliere: "Turkish is language to be admired; you can express a great deal by a few words." *French Turcologist Jean Deny said: "The Turkish language suggests that it was formed as a result of the consultation and discussion of an elite committee of scholars. Turkish verbs have such a peculiarity that they cannot be found in any of the Arian languages. This feature is the power to form new words with affixes”. Jean Deny *Herbert W. Duda:“Turkish, which expresses all thoughts and feelings in the most perfect way, has such a rich vocabulary that everyone admires this language and accepts it as the most perfect scientific language.'”. *Herbert Jansky: “Turkish language is an extremely rich and easy-to-understand, easy-to-learn scientific language in terms of vocabulary, phonetics, orthography, syntax and vocabulary.” *Paul Roux: “Turkish is a mathematical language full of reason and thought.” *Max Mulller: "Turkish is the result of the creative power of the Turkish langugae. It is the product of human intellect's awesome might. There is no other language which can be understood as easily, or enjoyed as much as Turkish." It is a real pleasure to read a Turkish grammar, even though one may have no wish to acquire it practically. The ingenious manner in which the numerous grammatical forms are brought out, the regularity which pervades the system of declension and conjugation, the transparency and intelligibility of the whole structure, must strike all who have a sense of that wonderful power of the human mind which has displayed itself in language. Given so small a number of graphic and demonstrative roots as would hardly suffice to express the commonest wants of human beings, to produce an instrument that shall render the faintest shades of feeling and thought; given a vague infinitive or a stern imperative, to derive from it such moods as an optative or subjunctive, and tenses as an aorist or paulo-post future; given incoherent utterances, to arrange them into a system where all is uniform and regular, all combined and harmonious; such is the work of the human mind which we see realised in language. But in most languages nothing of this early process remains visible. They stand before us like solid rocks, and the microscope of the philologist alone can reveal the remains of organic life with which they are built up. In the grammar of the Turkic languages, on the contrary, we have before us a language of perfectly transparent structure, and a grammar the inner workings of which we can study, as if watching the building of cells in a crystal beehive. An eminent orientalist remarked, ‘ We might imagine Turkish to be the result of the deliberations of some eminent society of learned men *The Turkish language is neat, which can be considered to have been made after a long study and vote of an elite committee of scholars. The undisturbed smoothness and order in the inflectional form of the Turkish language, the ease of comprehension that comes from its structure, excite those who can understand this extraordinary power of expression created in the language. The most ingenious structure in Turkish is the verb structure. The Turkish language can explain the subtleties of meaning that no other language can or tries to explain with many words, with a single word.” MY OPINIONS ON TURKISH - Johan Vandewalle (The text is written by him. It is written by him in Turkish.) “…I think that a native Turkish speaker thinks in short sentences, and when speaking, he builds complex structures by connecting these short sentences in various ways. This "tendency to connect sentences" can be weak in some speakers, and strong in others, almost to the extent of a disease. The linguistic structures that emerged in this last situation reflect the superior possibilities of the human mind in the best way. Although I have studied many languages ​​belonging to different language groups, I can say that I have never come across a structure that fascinates me as much as complex sentence structures in Turkish. If you let me be a little sentimental, I sometimes say to myself, “I wish Chomsky had learned Turkish when he was younger too…”. I'm sure then modern linguistics would have been shaped according to Turkish, not English…” *Receiving the Babylonian World Award for speaking thirty-two languages, Belgium's Ghent University Center for Eastern Languages and Cultures, Dr. Johann Van De Walle explains why he is interested in Turkish today: “Turkish can be learned in a very short time. The rules in chess are logical, simple and few in number. Even a seven-year-old can learn to play chess. Despite this convenience, the person playing chess does not get bored throughout his life. The game possibilities are endless. It is a very magical feature that the same situation exists in the Turkish grammar system. Turkish grammar is a language that has a regular and unexceptional character almost as much as mathematics.

[@barbar5822]

Depends on your native language. What is it?

[@Sophia-bm7pb]

@@barbar5822 Cantonese

[@ggoddkkiller1342]

I would completely agree Turkish a lot harder than western languages like German, French or especially English but it is quite similar to Japanaese or Korean. If you learn it's harmony and how it effects suffixes you are good to go.

[@Sophia-bm7pb]

@@ggoddkkiller1342 So you meant Turkish is not difficult than Korean or Japanese?

[@tontonj97]

as a native kazakh, learning english and russian was very difficult and the languages didn’t make sense to me most of the time, I didn’t notice anything related to mine or if I did it was russian words borrowed from turkic NOW, when I started learning freaking KOREAN where I least expected that much similarities. Not only grammatical structures which was crazy but also phonetic pronunciations of vowels and consistency. In a year I was able to understand basic speech and now even though stopped learning I can understand what they basically mean when watching a content in korean, it’s fascinating. and mind you I spent four to five years to be somewhat fluent in english. similarities really show when you’re a native speaking and learning one of these languages, It’s easy bc they’re very similar

[@33y852]

9000 yıl önceki dillerimiz aynı, ister benim anadolu türkçem olsun, ister sizin kazaklara ve ailemin çoğu kazaklara benziyor!!

[@snowade]

thats really interesting to hear as a korean

[@parsifal40]

@@33y852 kazağa mı benziyorsunuz? Arada görüyorum tr de hep merak etmişimdir nerelisiniz? Doğudan geliyor bizim aile ve biz daha çok açık tenli araba benziyoruz

[@gankplankinportakalsular5077]

@@parsifal40 genelde iç anadoluda olur ben de kayseriliyim gözlerim çekik

[@anyarasan8529]

Kazaklar kipcak turkleri anadoludaki turkler oguz turkleridir. Anadoludaki turkler turkmenistandaki turkler ve azerbeycandaki turkler oguz turkleridir ve onlar anadolu kavimleri arablar ve perslerle cok karismistir.(kiz alip verme givi) o yuzden araba veya yunanlara (kivanc tatlitug) benzeyenler cok.

[@sudarshanas]

09:43 You're confusing Sergey Starostin (co-author of the dictionary) with his son Georgy Starostin (co-author of the article) :-)

[@Yanramich]

@BARBATVS 89 man wtf is wrong with you

[@slamalamadingdangdongdiggy5268]

For anyone wondering, the Turkic runes read "Tengri", which is an old word for God.

[@slamalamadingdangdongdiggy5268]

Something else I think is worth mentioning; I was taught in middle school that Turkish belonged not only to the Altaic family, but to the Ural-Altaic family. Nowadays schools settle for just Altaic.

[@sertankay86]

@@slamalamadingdangdongdiggy5268 modern Turkish very mixed language Turkic grammar with many Turkic word and added new Turkish words + persian > arabic > greek > french > english > german > slavic words. We should research Tuva, Sakha, Altai, Chuvash words not modern Turkish. People think Turkey represent whole Turkic world but actualy representhing Altai shaman(still) people and nations.

[@redwarrior9100]

@@sertankay86 To be fair, modern Turkish is more Turkic than Tuvan, Sakha or Altaic. The last three have many newly added Russian and Mongolic words, while Anatolian Turkish has a foreign influence of 14% according to the Turkish Language Foundation. (Türk Dil Kurumu) This would make Anatolian Turkish the purest form of Turkic, while Chuvash is just 50-60% Turkic.

[@aaronmarks9366]

Is that "Tanrı" in modern (Anatolian) Turkish?

[@aaronmarks9366]

@Nadir Kuleli That's awesome! Is that the primary word for "God" in modern Turkish, or is "Allah" also used, as is sometimes done by Persian and Urdu speakers?

[@ooo_Kim_Chi_ooo]

Living in Kyrgyzstan as an American and my family being Turkic as well ive been able to come into contact with Kyrgyz, Kazakh, Altai, Uyghur, and a few others and they have such incredible similarities and differences.

[@siyacer]

they are all turkic

[@joshuahillerup4290]

This reminds me of something I've been wondering about. Does it actually always make sense to talk about languages to actually have ancestry in the same way that asexual creatures have ancestry? I know there are creoles and whatnot, but could given enough time the borrowings that happen through contact render the concept of descent fuzzier and fuzzier until it becomes meaningless?

[@NativLang]

Good questions. I've been wanting to talk about alternatives to linguistic family trees, like the "wave theory". I know biologists/naturalists have long noticed the similar properties between languages and speciation, while linguists have talked about the "areal" issues not accounted for in "genealogical" linguistics.

[@joshuahillerup4290]

@@NativLang I also know that in biology especially with prokaryotic life that genetic relationships are often not simple trees as well, and languages more resemble that sort of thing than say genetic clones or whatnot.

[@Glandist]

@@NativLang That sounds fascinating, please do

[@Argacyan]

I'd agree that the mere nature of information renders a simplistic tree of origin a useless ghost-hunt.

[@dougsinthailand7176]

I think a key to this "family" is the development of mobility.

[@nurmakhanzholshybek3392]

I am Kazakh and I am very glad that my language was mentioned in this video

[@nurmakhanzholshybek3392]

@BARBATVS 89 In fact, no. In the Kazakh language there is no word "Satan". The name was changed because the first president transferred power to the Senate speaker.

[@aidadavletova768]

@BARBATVS 89 Astana literally meant "capital" in Kazakh, we have plenty of things named after the first president, so the government decided to add the city as well

[@aidadavletova768]

@BARBATVS 89 haha yeah it often feels like we're in hell

[@m.kostoglod7949]

@@nurmakhanzholshybek3392 Nazarbayev is crazy, isn't he?

[@tasbykekerey1203]

@BARBATVS 89 Astana is Capital in Kazakh language

[@VTPPGLVR]

I had an absolutely horrible day. This cloud of a particularly harsh panic attack hung over me, making existing difficult. I saw your video in my feed, and hearing a simple sorta-silly “Ever heard language nerds fight? Well you will!” actually made me smile. Thank you for reminding me that this crap today isn’t all my life and that there are nice things I can still access.

[@oliverduolingo867]

Going to take notes on this video! This theory of Mongolian, Turkish, and Manchu being one super-family fascinates me and I want to better understand it! Thanks for making a video on it and releasing it! You're my favourite language/linguistics youtuber! :D

[@danielzhang1916]

many peoples lived in Mongolia/Siberia/Central Asia, even the Slavs and others came from the east

[@hongkongcantonese501]

What a wonderfully animated and expressive video. I would watch a year's worth of this content just to get further into the details of how and why these languages appear to be similar. Outstanding work!

[@smuecke]

I wish you had included more actual examples, words and sentences. I feel like you barely scratched the surface..

[@KingoftheJuice18]

How could he not barely scratch the surface of such a complex, long-standing controversy about which tens of thousands of pages have been written in a twelve minute video?

[@smuecke]

@@KingoftheJuice18 By providing some example words and sentences 😄

[@KingoftheJuice18]

@@smuecke I know that seems like a simple proposal to you, but it's actually very complex when you consider how much background you need to provide in order to illustrate something in a meaningful way (except to specialists--who don't need this video anyway).

[@wheedler]

"They say that X and Y, which mean these things, are related because of this reason. Here's why it doesn't work. Also, this other example."

[@varana]

@@smuecke The problem is that to a layman, it would require lots of time and details to explain. Take the example he used - pali being related to palgaɳi seems somewhat logical, but explaining why that is considered a borrowing and not a word with common ancestry, would take some time. And then the other part - why is hirame supposed to be related to pali? And even if he mentioned the various linguistic processes that supposedly led to this, the audience wouldn't be able to tell how plausible it is to assume these things, and where the hypothesis may break down. Examples mean little out of context or without the necessary knowledge about how to deal with them.

[@oliverduolingo867]

It's always a great day when NativLang releases a video! :D

[@vincem3748]

Even better when it's on the same day as a new Langfocus video!

[@kx3z]

Imagine being a sprachbund 😎😎😎

[@andrewk9267]

Balkan gang form up

[@Stoneworks]

@Hernando Malinche yo what's up Hernando good to see you here

[@pedrosampaio7349]

West-Europe gang whattup

[@flaviusbelisarius7517]

@@pedrosampaio7349 well west continental Europe is entirely of the latin group (except the Basque). And no I don't count Germany as Western Europe

[@pedrosampaio7349]

@@flaviusbelisarius7517 I was more thinking the Former Frankish Empire: Dutch, French, German and Italian as well as the dialects/minor languages in between like Venetian, Occitan, Low Saxon, Walloon, etc. Side note: I don't like using the terms language and dialect. A language is just a dialect with an army and a navy after all, and the are dialect continua and such. Is there a better term that encompasses both that anyone can name?

[@SphereBoxCube]

I'm an undergrad doing a double major in Linguistics and East Asian studies. I have yet to read a single paper or book that *doesn't* describe Japanese and Korean as Altaic. My soul dies a bit every time.

[@KyrieFortune]

mine actually says the altaic theory has gotten out of fashion - which is very strange considering korean and japanese's basic structure is so uncanny similar it should be obvious they are related, even if distantly. besides, half of africa is pretty much thousands of languages who still have enough traits in common to be considered all Bantu languages, why can't Asia have a similar situation, considering the amount of migrations and invasions it went through?

[@SphereBoxCube]

@@thomaswinwood No, unfortunately. Those papers and books I mentioned aren't really about languages, and only mention it in general descriptions of the cultures and their similarities, but it's such a common recurring theme in works by non-linguists/non-philologists.

[@FOLIPE]

@@KyrieFortune I'm no expert, but isn't it possible that the similarities between Japanese and Korean are explained by convergent evolution rather than a common root, considering that their native vocabulary is quite different?

[@GPrinceps]

Muh Japonic-Koreanic theories. Muh lexical similarities. Muh final verbz. :D

[@FOLIPE]

@پاسدار فرد Александр Japanese and Korean isolated from one another? That's preposterous.

[@bismuth7398]

Ah, yes. The newest episode of Educational Linguistic ASMR.

[@evalight4317]

I was just asking myself why I was so interested yet felt so sleepy

[@Cosmic_Love]

Lol

[@roufamagga4453]

The man made a nice edit on Orkhon Inscriptions. I suggest you take a look. :) kzbin.info/www/bejne/mmK3en5rlpZke5o

[@itacom2199]

Here I am, watching a video I waited for so much, by one of my favourite youtubers, at 3:29 AM, in a city at the other side of the world respect to the place the video was published. That's amazing!

[@uchuuseijin]

So in other words... It's an Altaic sprachbund?

[@404Dannyboy]

That is at least where the debate rests now.

[@irubjaejoong]

R Lee a 6,000 mile wide sprachbund that covers 5 different language families is a joke. Clearly they have some genetic history. It’s just demonstrating that conclusively is a tall order.

[@zimriel]

@@irubjaejoong 6000 miles of flat prairie, with horsies. If it's a joke it's not a funny one.

[@irubjaejoong]

Jens Kosch the “sprachbunde” is nearly all grammatical ... tell me any other widespread 2,000 years apart sprachbunde that shares so much grammatical basis ? someone demonstrate how a grammatical sprachbunde can cover 6,000 miles with little current or sustained historical contact. Korean has so little historical contact with Turkic .. what is the reason for the shared grammatical features ? But Japanese and Korean had sustained contact with Chinese... so much so that up to 70% of their lexicon is of Chinese origin... and Chinese left very little imprint, if any, on these languages’ grammar and structure. Yet the Altaic grammatical structure and patterns persist despite years of sustain Chinese influence and near isolation from the rest of the family (save some brushes with Mongolian) That’s one stubborn grammatical sprachbunde.

[@uchuuseijin]

@@irubjaejoong if you think Chinese had little grammatical influence on Korean or Japanese, think again. That is demonstrably false.

[@oliverduolingo867]

One of the things I love about this video (and I'm only at 6:33 so far), is that you reference key quotes and studies, which make it easy to look them up! Thank you for doing that NativLang/Josh! :-)

[@JiyoungKim-j3l]

I'm Korean. I recently watched a Korean TV documentary suggesting that it could have been King Kim Alji (김알지) - who came from the north - brought in the Altaic culture, including language. Kim Alji opened a new blood line in the Shila dynasty in the first century. The docu suggested that he was named Alji because he came from the Altaic region. King Alji also brought in horses and other cultural stuff of the plain people(manchu area).

[@boburzod]

Koreans did not just pop out in Korean peninsula out of nowhere right. Like they came from somewhere and the place is mostly likely Siberia or a bit west - like today's Mongolia. Korean grammar is so similar to Turkic languages, and there are some contextual similarities like Nose represents kind of self-proud in Korean like 코가 높다, and this is same in many Turkic languages too including Uzbek

[@sharpasacueball]

@@boburzod Well that is pointless since if you say it like that, then we are all Africans

[@ggoddkkiller1342]

Could be King Kim Alji who increased Altaic influence in Korea. But i think it goes far before him simply because there is no contact between Japan and Altaic people in last two thousands years. Even then still Japanese also share pretty much exactly same grammar with Altaic languages. For example even the usage of tense suffixes is exactly same: kzbin.info/www/bejne/fIOwmZ6npNuVrbs I think there must be more contacts or migrations etc during unknown time period between 3-4 thousands years ago to cause such similarity.

[@ggoddkkiller1342]

@@sharpasacueball We don't share anything at all from our African past so your example doesn't make sense even a bit..

[@PC_Simo]

”Shun grammar, seize on vocabulary.” Well, there goes Korean and Japanese. Apart from loanwords, they don’t share common vocabulary; at least beyond random chance. Besides, wouldn’t vocabulary be the first thing that changes in a ”Sprachbund”? I guess they just focused on really basic vocabulary, like words on Swadesh lists. 🤔

[@kekeke8988]

What words are even shared in common that aren't loan words?

[@PC_Simo]

@@kekeke8988 In the case of ”Altaic”, I really don’t know. In general, though, cognates, words that are inherited from a common ancestor, like the English ”Holy” and the German ”Heilige”.

[@vernicethompson4825]

I have read an excellent book by a Jaoanese author who shows just how closely the vocabulary and grammar of Japanese and Korean are related. The ancestors of the Japanese had to pass through Korea to get to Japan, so it should not be surprising that they share similarities, however distantly related they may be.

[@haruzanfuucha]

@@vernicethompson4825 Similarities in grammar do not make for related languages.

[@vernicethompson4825]

@@haruzanfuucha Actually, yes, they do. In fact, grammar similarities are a key to language family relationships. More so than vocabulary.

[@elenaobradovic4181]

My WiFi froze just as I clicked on this and I wanted to cry

[@stijnjanssens1785]

Omg, what a lucky coincidence! I am doing my school research project on exactly this, which is due next month! (In the context of the language isolates of Basque and Etruscan)

[@wannabehistorian371]

Ah I remember when I had the chance to write essays a month in advance lol.

[@mtebid5658]

Göktürk runes. ❤

[@ringtailedfox]

I always thought Altaic wasn't necessarily a language macro-family like Indo-European or Afro-Asiatic or Uralic... but rather a sprachbund with lots of interaction and cross-pollination, like the Eastern Mediterranean one (Afro-Asiatic and Indo-European have shared words in the past, for example) or the big one in Meso-America with the Uto-Aztecan, Mayan, and other various languages of the region...

[@hanggaraaryagunarencagutuh7072]

There's a reference that I read, and it states that the first and foremost ancient Austronesians were actually Hebrewophones, or Hebrew-speaking peoples. It does even state that "Malayo-Polynesian languages" or what I call "Nusantara-Southern Pacific Islands languages" were actually related to Paleo-Hebrew.

[@lyd4712]

​@@hanggaraaryagunarencagutuh7072shut up

[@Jumpoable]

Hirame means "flat 平 eye 目" but thank you for shining light on the Altaic theory. It's been bugging me for decades.

[@yorgunsamuray]

-me is also a suffix in Japanese like English "-ish" etc. For example: "hayame" (on the faster side), takame (a little higher), etc. Maybe they meant a flat fish, like a turbot or flounder. (which, the fish in question actually is), calling it something like "flatty", but writing with ateji, used for its sound: 目 to represent the sound "me" phonetically.

[@yukokashiwagi9786]

As you said Hirame can be translated to "flat(平)" +"eye(目)" when they are written in Kanji, yet if someone says "Hirame" in Japan, it usually means the fish Hirame. If we want to describe "flat eye"(which is not really the description we use but..), it is going to be like "平な目(Taira na me)" or "平べったい目"(Hirabettai me). If you say "I have Hirame" in Japanese, it only means you have the fish, Hirame.

[@katharynemartins8320]

So that means that japanese and korean make part of proto altaic family?

[@felixeverett1252]

Excellent video as usual! As someone only a year into properly studying Linguistics this truly clears up why Altaic is so rejected and what tests it fails to tick off.

[@karacaddy]

Açık eleştiridir!!! Wikideki irani fikir bağnazlarının yazdığı ve 100 yıl başında Avrupa sömürgeciliğini haklı çıkarmak için uydurulan cümlelerle tarihi gerçekleri değiştiremezsiniz. Hele Hint-Avrupa dili üstüncülerinin çabaları da çok komik!!!! -O zaman bir türk, koreli, moğol veya japon nasıl oluyor da Hint-Avrupa dillerini zorlukla öğrenirken Ural-Altay dillerini çok çabuk öğrenebiliyor? -Kazım Mirşan hocaya göre şu anki en saf türkçe, tatar türkçesi; uygur türkçesini bile (kendisi uygurdur) çok bozulmuş bulur. Tatar türkçesi Moğolca ile türkçenin yoğun etkileşimde bulunduğu bir dil. Ama nasıl ouyorsa türk dili olduğu inkar edilemiyor! -Avrupa buzçağında buzlarla kaplı ve hala neoderttallerin egemenliğinde iken ortaasya şu anki Avrupa gibiydi. Ve insanları da etkileşim içindeydiler, doğal olarak kaynaştılar ve sonuçta ilk dillerini ortaya çıkardılar. Unutulan bir konuda türklerde kabile kültürünün çok hakim olduğudur, kabileler bölündükçe doğal olarak kelime telafuzları da değişti. Bu kabileler başka toplumlardan insanları da içine kabul ediyordu, doğal olarak genetik olarakta çeşitlendiler. -Bir dilin hangi gruba ait olduğunu görmek istiyorsanız, dilde cinsiyet var mı ve yeni kelimeler nasıl türetiliyor ona bakın; ural-altay dillerinin özünde cinsiyet yoktur ve nedense günümüz hint-avrupacı sömürge artıklarının iddia ettiği üzere akraba sayılmayan bu diller sondan eklemeli dillerdir! -Son olarak izole diller teorisi tamamen palavradır. Hiç bir dil izole olamaz, İzole olabilmesi için ulaşılması zor bir adada gelişmesi gerekir. Buna rastgelen örnek dil sayısı çok azdır!

[@andrewjgrimm]

I liked how you presented the similarities between Turkish, Mongolian and Tungusic. I wonder if some linguists have a bias in favour of treating something like a language family when it’s really a sprachbund...

[@fabianbosch779]

Ihr habt ja kein englisches Wort für Sprachbund. Interessant. Weil ein Deutschamerikaner 33 Wörter aufgezählt hat, die ins Englische nicht übersetzt wurden. Wie zum Beispiel Kindergarten. Interessant ist auch, wenn man mal in die Vergangenheit zurückreist und sich das Altenglische anschaut und es mit altsächsisch (altniederdeutsch) vergleicht. Ein Wort im Altsächsischen gibt es auch bis heute im Englischen: that. Daraus wurde mit der Zeit dat und dann allmählich durch die Lautverschiebung das. Welche Wörter habt ihr noch, die ihr bisher nicht ins Englische übersetzt habt? 😄

[@benginaldclocker2891]

​@@fabianbosch779 yeah, English has loanwords from German when it comes to the field of linguistics (urheimat, sprachbund, etc) because German linguists were influential back in the day

[@ElacTeubusht]

I think Old Turkic and Old Mongolian people is Real Altaic. They are nomads and Believe KokhTengri(Shamanism). But Tungus,Korean and Japon is Micro Altaic

[@peterfireflylund]

@Sungindra Setiawan You didn't offend me and I agree with you. I'm just not sure it was a good example, because the dominant Jewish group is so European, arose in Italy, spent most of its time in Italy/Spain/Germany/Poland/Russia, and mainly spoke Indo-European languages except for liturgical purposes. Israel is a very new creation and Hebrew as a first language is a very new and a very old phenomenon.

[@daimyo-awaji]

Tungusic are the real Altaic aswell since they turned into their own people fairly recently. Tungusic people are without a doubt an Altaic People.

[@yourcalicocat]

wrong

[@goldeviolets4314]

Winlax Munkhbat Altaic isn’t a language family, it’s a Sprachbund

[@yourcalicocat]

@@goldeviolets4314 If you include kazach and Turkenistan yes, but within Mongolia, Korea, Japan, etc. it's a language family whatever caucasian academics wish to call it

[@dougsinthailand7176]

I think the grammatical similarities are still significant and might have arisen from some shared background. Has anyone modeled the development of these cultural groups? Certainly an origin on the steppes, followed by the development of horse cultures, with attendant mobility, would have shaped the development of a linguistic Sprachbund different from the development of other language families.

[@crystaluwu1012]

My theory is they displaced each other lmao, proto Turks displaced proto Mongolic people then Proto Mongol displaced proto Tunguistic people from the steeps and into Manchuria, then proto Tunguistic people misplaced proto Koreans who were living in Manchuria and moved to northern Korea and then the proto Koreans going further south displaced the proto Japanese 😂 which probably contributed to the sparchbound added by constant interaction in the following years.

[@Figgy5119]

Years ago when I first heard of the Altaic language theory, my professor never mentioned it was largely discredited, and I thought it was pretty neat sounding! I hate to admit I used that family as a fun trivia fact and shared it with a number of people until I finally did my own research on it and realized how it does not hold up at all, at least certainly where Japanese and Korean are concerned. I still find it hard to believe Japonic languages are isolates. The Jomon people certainly were speaking something before they came to Japan and there is no trace left behind on the continent? Yayoi people came from the Korean peninsula, and they left no trace behind?

[@Figgy5119]

@@gabrielzanetti9558 nooo language isolate means no known related languages, not that they died out...if you go by that logic there would be way more language isolates than there are now.

[@tovarischkrasnyjeshi]

Korea had in the western dark ages 3 different kingdoms that evidently spoke unrelated languages. Goguryeo from the north is where the names Korea and Joseon come from, and likely represents proto-Korean. Baekje towards the region of Seoul, Silla towards the southwest, and the region of Gaya, annexed by Silla, may have spoken languages related to the Wa/Yayoi and old Japanese. But history happened, and Baekje and Silla became part of Korea, and Koreanized completely. The Jomon actually probably spoke Ainu's ancestor, for thousands of years until the Wa/Yayoi colonized the mainland from the south.

[@chingizzhylkybayev8575]

@@Figgy5119 how are you supposed to know about a language that never left any traces behind though? We ain't omniscient.

[@Figgy5119]

@@chingizzhylkybayev8575 well, that's the question there, isn't it. Are we positive there are no traces left behind? It seems unlikely that there wouldn't be.

[@chingizzhylkybayev8575]

@@Figgy5119 are we positive about what? I'm talking about languages which do not exist. Are we positive that a language doesn't exist if it doesn't exist?

[@davidamadore]

What about Finno-Ugric languages? I'm surprised they didn't even earn so much as a passing mention here. They also meet most of the grammatical criteria listed at 0′38″ in the video, don't they? So: Is Ural-Altaic even more controversial than Altaic? What do the Altaicists think about it? Are there any precise hypotheses (e.g., timelines of borrowings) about how so many grammatical structures found their way to being shared among widely different languages/families?

[@envinyatar5712]

What is your mother tongue? Is it Finnish or Hungarian?

[@darius684]

I have read some comments from Hungarians saying that Hungarian is close to japanese I had a look and I speak Japanese as a native language I don't see it I see more similarities between hindi and Latin

[@EnginAtik]

How does one borrow grammar without borrowing vocabulary? When groups speaking different languages come into contact how would they infer each other’s grammar without understanding what they are saying?

[@XanthusPictures]

If they were bilingual

[@varana]

Expanding on Schachter Factor's remark, it obviously doesn't happen right when they come into contact. It requires a long-term cultural relationship and mutual understanding. Vowel harmony could enter a language that doesn't have it, they might change word order under the influence of the other language, or specific grammatical forms (imagine your language having various methods of constructing a plural form but under the influence of English, -s plurals becoming more and more frequent). I'm not sure how probable that is, but then, I'm also not sure where you got the idea from. Turkic and Mongolic languages borrowed words extensively from one another, not only grammar.

[@EnginAtik]

For Turkic-Mongolic extensive vocabulary borrowing seems to have happened since 1300. We can then assume that grammar borrowing happened simultaneously. This is the time of Genghis Khan and Middle Mongolian. We have documents written in Middle Mongolian. We can test the theory whether grammar borrowing happened simultaneously with vocabulary borrowing.

[@EnginAtik]

That is as we go back in time if we discover that vocabulary diverges but the grammar stays the same or similar between Turkic and Mongolian should we explain it by chance? We can also estimate the probability of this happening by chance, and the probability of having this happening for multiple languages.

[@varana]

@@EnginAtik To be honest, I would be _very_ surprised if exchange in vocabulary happened only after 1300. The language groups had close regional and cultural contact for millennia before that. The common political entity of Genghis Khan's empire may have contributed to the exchange of more obvious and well-known words but hat is only the surface.

[@peterk.9571]

0:17 *laughs in Native American lingustics*

[@Kevin-zv6ds]

Glad you uploaded this video a day after I read about Altaic ^_^

[@percyparker923]

Amazing video. I’m really glad you’re back.

[@jegkompletson1698]

Love the animation quality! Quality over quantity everytime, I prefer

[@markus3355]

Thank you so much for this video!! I bought a book on Hungarian from the 1970s that claims the Hungarian (and other Finno-Uralic) language(s) are “Altaic”. I tried to do some research but couldn’t find any to back or support it. I accepted it to be true and took the books word for it. Man, I’m glad you made this video cuz I had no idea it was a theory, even so a very flawed one.

[@alexander1055]

But not disprooven.

[@weirdofromhalo]

@@alexander1055 Because it was never proven in the first place. It's not a theory; it's a hypothesis, and one of the weakest, at that.

[@amlans5314]

@@alexander1055 Buddy, you need to prove it first, before being disproven

[@dannymiewdg]

there is wide controversy wether finno ugric and altaic are related. However the basic grammar and phonetic rules are identical though word origin is dubious

[@uzayli4408]

Can you please make a video about Turkic languages? Loves from Turkey 💕💕

[@uuuby]

HALLO TURKICSH 😄

[@uzayli4408]

@@uuuby MERHABA ALMAN :D

[@yumarivik46]

I thought I'd never see this video, but it's finally here, and I couldn't be happier. I would love to see more videos told in this style

[@verhvouvim1518]

hi viktor, the world really is tiny haha

[@yumarivik46]

@@verhvouvim1518 Oh god oh fuck

[@luthon]

By the way, there is a politic side to this (at least mostly in Turkey) where sıme Turkologists keep trying to prove Altaic (and Uralic for that matter) for a creating bigger community of interconnected nations than Turkic nations.

[@bee-yq3wb]

Turks are very nationalistic

[@brettfafata3017]

Koreo-Japonic is also politically sensitive. The Koreans really do not want to be connected to the Japanese. I'm not sure about the Japanese perspective though.

[@deanzaZZR]

@@brettfafata3017 I can't say that I understand the Japanese thinking on this either but language roots and influences are coming from Mainland Asia, not the other way around.

[@brettfafata3017]

@@deanzaZZR The political aspect doesn't really make sense to me. On one hand the Japanese could argue that Japanese is an isolate, which could be used to promote an image of being unique. On the other hand, connecting Japanese to other languages could be used as justification for imperialism or whatever. Politicians could spin it either way to fit an agenda. It's really stupid, and I just want to find out the truth.

[@gregpringle1299]

@@brettfafata3017 Try Mimana: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimana

[@KZoopam]

What about Ural-Altaic? How much drama do that cause?

[@rauðaz]

It practically died in 1960, only nationalistic chauvinists believe that nonsense.

[@marcoadmiralis_1497]

Fuck that shit from hungary, thats some turkish propaganda they used to find friends with because everyone hates them, us included

[@sectorgovernor]

@@thomaswinwood Uralic and Indo-European also aren't related

[@44asdasd44]

@@marcoadmiralis_1497 No one cares about your friendship that's just a bunch of ultra-nationalists claiming that all people from steppes belong to one family and must form a new bigger country. But to hate an entire country for that bullcrap requires some more hostility and looks like you have it. I personally don't hate Hungarians and I find their language fascinating (even though it's hard to pronounce sometimes). I hope this hate between people end in time so that we can share things instead of trying to find new ways of killing each other.

[@marcoadmiralis_1497]

@@44asdasd44 its hard to ignore people like most turks who have to mix and invent history for other peoples especially when they're this loud. i dont know how many turks have this obsession but they make it look like the majority does, im sorry for the people who are more intelligent even if they're the majority, but majority is rarely relevant especially in this cases. calling random people brothers, from countries that have been invaded by the so called brothers is the most annoying thing that can happen to people trying to enjoy their lives. and finally it is not these nationalists' job to tell unrelated individuals like indo europeans that hungarians, finns, or other ethnicities have this and that history becuase they might actually believe that, which honestly ruins our fame, so stop that

[@matthew99_]

I like how the dead fish gets revived at 8:09 when the narrative goes "summoning creatures to life."

[@purpleapple4052]

Awesome detail

[@sunwukong6897]

I read the script you post a while ago for this. I’m glad it made it to KZbin. Diolch!

[@mozchick2]

I missed your posts! There have been times when I'm sick and I just binge watch your videos. They're so interesting yet calming at the same time

[@hennirottstock2841]

I love this video so much, I´ve learned a ton from it! I major in East Asian studies with a focus on korean & my prof once said that "korean is an altaic language" & I got reminded of your video & pointed out that this "altaic language" theory is a big dispute among linguistics ... xD

[@balgaravar5203]

The external kinship of the Turkic, Mongolian and Tungusian languages is explained on the basis of their convergence (rapprochement), and not differences from one root. Linguistic arguments are used and archaeological. So, I. L. Kyzlasov points to significant differences in the archaeological material culture of the early Türks from the Mongol-Manchurian, suggesting that this is due to the different origin of these peoples.

[@cjthibeau4843]

Super cool video!! Def worth the wait and I CANNOT wait to see what's next!!

[@WhyDidntIInventYT]

battles have been fought on Wikipedia over this. personally, I think these languages are unrelated, but have strongly interacted over the centuries, which created enough similarities to serve as a red herring for linguists.

[@ViktorasZZZ]

Magnificent! So niche, but so well written commentary.

[@bigcat5348]

Make a video on Tolkien's languages or on Yiddish!

[@theanonymousmrgrape5911]

I’m skeptical of the idea that languages can truly be isolates in any meaningful way. It’s something that doesn’t follow from what we know about the closeness of human relation and migration patterns. Despite 7 billion people living on Earth nobody has ever observed someone else naturally invent a language. Languages descend from other languages which descend from other languages which descend from other languages. At the beginning of our tree there should most likely be a single language from which all surviving spoken tongues are descended just as there is a y chromosomal Adam since at some point all humans descend from the same source. At the very least there should be a single language or family of languages from which all of the non sub-saharan african language families descend from considering their relatively recent decent from the same ancestral population. Presumably after that stage there should be macro families such as Eurasiatic which explain the obviously hereditary connections between populations that aren’t accounted for yet in the linguistics. It’s understandable that as a discipline making an appeal to science that linguistics wishes to only concern itself with language families whose ancestry can be defined with certainty. However it should almost be accepted as concrete fact that there is more that isn’t currently visible.

[@rayres1074]

No one says that languages are intrinsically isolates. Only that, as far as we can tell so far, there is no concrete evidence said isolates have relationship with other languages.Saying "we don't have evidence it exists" is NOT the same as saying "we have evidence it does not exist".

[@ashram12]

It's not that isolates are a completely separate language, but rather that the languages they were related to are extinct. Given that most languages don't have a written form, it's not that difficult to make a language go extinct. After enough languages go extinct, you'll start having a hard time reconstructing language families, so you'll have isolates.

[@dukeon]

@veryserioz Uh oh 🤦🏻‍♂️

[@겨울-z6v]

I wish Nativlang to make a video about the recent 'Transeurasian Languages' theory, which was uploaded on . The newly proposed Transeurasian scientifically proved that the Turks, Mongols, Tungusics, Koreans and Japanese all originated from somewhere in northern china steppes. Is this new theory mainstream or is it also thought as a 'pseudo linguistic' theory?

[@adikgamerz0948]

Link bro?

[@kimurahundoshi4485]

@@adikgamerz0948 transeurasian theory - nature -

[@henrywong2725]

It’s not. First of all, that’s bot what the article says, it just says that the five families (possibly) share agricultural vocabulary, which is completely not a basis for a family. The paper does link to Robbeets’s other “Transeurasian” stuff which are filled with the same problems and ad-hoc stuff that people like Vovin have already ripped into

[@rin_etoware_2989]

Transeurasian... is an alternative name for Altaic

[@KhansDen]

Considering that many scholars from all over the world worked on that paper, I wonder why it hasn't been picked up by this and other channels. Even Reuters published articles about it. Who knows...

[@davidbouvier8895]

As a non linguist I find this discussion very refreshing. A group of thoughtful intelligent well informed people courteously discussing the validity of a hypothesis. If only others would follow this exemplary behaviour.

[@june_joy]

recently there is Dr.Robbeets theory. it's excellent. 유럽어 배우는 사람들은 워낙 비슷비슷한 경험에 익숙하겠지만 non-ural, agglutinative language 를 쓰는 우리들은 알타이제어들이 매우 유사하게 느껴져서 배우다보면 (영어공부할때와는 사뭇 다른) 흥분까지 느낀다. we need some categorie family name !!

[@Fenrirsulfre]

Whether Korean and Japanese belong to the "Altaic" group or not, they seem awfully similar to each other and to Tungusic, Mongolic and Turkic languages. Sure, they cannot be analysed exactly the same way many Indo-European languages can be. But they are the closest languages to each other. Try comparing Korean to Japanese, then try comparing Korean to Turkish, and then try to compare Japanese to.... say, German. I feel immediate ease when trying to learn even Finnish. Considering how extensively the Chinese language influenced the Korean and Japanese language, you have to say, they never adopted the grammar of Chinese. They borrowed only words. Given this fact, and how similar the grammar is among Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, Japonic and Koreanic (and maybe even Evenki), they seem like the closest thing to each other - than any other languages you can find on this planet.

[@GrzegorzusLudi]

This "Sprachbund theory" looks for me to be more compromise than solution. :

[@derpanarchist1723]

And the alternative to Altaic is nonexistent. You have a bunch of isolates that apparently come from nowhere. Korean did not have extensive contact to Japanese really up from when they started consolidating, at least not to the degree to get nearly identical grammar.

[@Fenrirsulfre]

@@GrzegorzusLudi or maybe we are thinking there is only one way languages can be related - the Indo-European way. But could there be different languages that are related but not exactly the same fashion as IE languages?🤔

[@derpanarchist1723]

@@Fenrirsulfre Yeah, but in thus case a genetic relationship would make more sense than a borrowed one wouldn't it? How much would Korean and Japanese evolve grammatically from another within the timespan of the Yayoi migrations to today? 2100 years? That would have been the last point where extensive borrowing of grammar would have occured, due to active contact. But afterwards there isn't much to it.

[@GrzegorzusLudi]

@@Fenrirsulfre I'm not a linguist, but maybe their divergence was very far from us in time like 10 000 years ago and now mainly grammar survived. :0 Maybe they were creole languages that the first Altaic language gave grammar but many words survived in different languages. :o

[@Elessar00]

What i wonder is, what is the limit for the languages to count as a family? If 2 languages evolved from a parent language 1000 years ago, they would probably be closer than 2 languages that evolved 3000 years ago. Maybe they are related but they were seperated for too long? How do we determine that?

[@valkeakirahvi]

There's no limit, but it gets harder to proove the further we get.

[@percyparker923]

Can you do a video on Pirahã and how it impacts our understanding of language? It’s one of my favourite topics.

[@Esth.1]

"To him something was fishy... on page one thousand seventy six(...)" holy shit 😂

[@lucasnascimentodasilva721]

Great to see you back at pace with your videos man

[@ers4690]

1:13 thats Tengri 𐱅𐰇𐰼𐰚 this is türk

[@akbas58]

Thats wrong too this 𐱅𐰇𐰼𐰜 {ük} should be used not normal {k}

[@Dobjob]

I am a strong Altaicists. Love your videos

[@Narkokhelus]

I love how you gave Vovin a hawaiian shirt because he was working in Mānoa ! Great vid :)

[@beyondrecall9446]

something i didn' realize ! :) thanks

[@alexreid1173]

My ap human geography teacher when I was in high school kept trying to say that Altaic was a language family...I tried to show him all the sources saying that it was at the very least controversial to no avail. Granted, he also insisted that sign languages weren’t real languages and ASL was just signed English. And people wonder why I don’t trust authority. 🤷🏼‍♂️

[@mazsola1037]

:I almost as bad as automatically assuming that one is a hyper-polyglot in studying linguistics

[@GPrinceps]

@@mazsola1037 Speak for yourself! My major in Linguistics granted me fluency in 30 languages! Including old languages not heard for a 100 years. This is the magical power of linguistics, bwahahahaha! /knows 3 languages fluently and they're all related

[@taylor3950]

If ASL were just signed English it would be sooooo much easier to learn.

[@argeliamendoza4047]

Same

[@zanderrose]

This is why I think all english and history teachers should have to take linguistics classes in college

[@부엉이형-r8t]

한국은 고대는 1500년전 까지만 하더라도 3~4개의 왕국이 아닌 수많은 소국들이 있었음 백제왕 과 고구려는 같은계통이고 고구려 백제 백성들은 다른언어를 썼을 수도 있고 한반도는 일본어계통 만주어계통 몽골어계통 미지의 언어 까지 다 쓰였던것 같다 한반도가 신라어로 통일 되었다고 했었는데 요즘은 고려어가 한국어의 직계 언어라고 한다

[@33y852]

저는 엄마에게 한국어를 읽어 줬을 때, 엄마가 그것이 옛 터키어인 줄 알았어요! 아마도 그것은 우연이겠죠. 우리는 서양이 요구하는 대로 고립된 언어와 세계에서 가장 크고 아름다운 인도유럽어에 대해 믿습니다.

[@johnboyd782]

Bravo! NativLang is great!

[@torspedia]

Did you and Paul (Langfocus) co-ordinate today's uploads? ... lol

[@viictor1309]

Idk but it would be awesome a crossover between them

[@torspedia]

@@viictor1309 Indeed, with Nativlang Paul doing a modern language and Nativlang going into its deep history... as an example!

[@magellanicspaceclouds]

Can you please do more videos on proposed language superfamilies? This is a really interesting topic.

[@aducharme01]

Oh, fantastic, I was really really hoping you would cover this topic. Thank you so much!

[@Chrischi3TutorialLPs]

Altaic reminds me of this one group in paleontology called "Birds are not Dinosaurs" or BAND for short. They actually used to have some good points when they first emerged, but eversince then weve found more and more evidence that birds are, infact, dinosaurs, and not a closely related clade of archosaurs that split off first.

[@brucefleming208]

The strongest counterarguments to Altaic are the relative sparsity of Turkic-Tungusic 'cognates' and the uneven distribution of 'cognates' over semantic categories. 11:47: Georg and Schonig (in Janhunen, The Mongolic languages) are the strongest proponents of anti-Altaic.

[@itudis9279]

I have been intrigued by this hypothesis for soooo many years!

[@aidenbagshaw5573]

Here's my answer for whether or not Altaic is a proper language family, and one that is most certainly accurate. Maybe.

[@peterszeug308]

1:00 A lot of this also aplies to Finnish. I guess there has been extensive contact in the past by Uralic and Altaic peoples.

[@Sovairu]

Not necessarily. Coincidences do happen.

[@kawa-imilliye7317]

In Turkey there is actually some people claiming Finnish is Ural-Altaic but I don’t know if it’s true

[@purpleapple4052]

@Kai Houston "Finno-Ugric" is a thing but its just one main branch of the Uralic family, the other one being Samoyedic

[@torix500]

These viseos are really really good. You have not made any in a while... why? Please make more soon!!!

[@1919KuvayiMilliye]

Even though Altaic is not a relevant theory anymore, Turkic languages are still a language family on their own and will be. This makes me proud.

[@siyacer]

Altaic is still relevant and new evidence and papers have been posted since this video came out

[@patriciamcgeorge2575]

The thing about the "similar grammar" is that Australian Arrernte, Indo-European Hindi and American Navajo all have them, and Semitic Hebrew and Arabic, Celtic Welsh and Irish, and Nahuatl all have the exact opposite (same features but on the opposite sides of sentances)

[@suondilut5027]

Arabic and nahuatl with the same grammar?

[@patriciamcgeorge2575]

@@suondilut5027 no no no - just, as similar as two Altaic languages, in terms of directionality. It's nowhere nearly the crazy stuff you get between Semitic and Celtic languages, but it's definitely as convincing as Turkish and Japanese (which is to say, not at all)

[@patriciamcgeorge2575]

@mahmut mahmutoglu Now we're reaching into highly debated territory - you see, we don't *know* that proto-semitic (I'm assuming we're actually referring to Proto-Afro-Asiatic, since Hausa and Egyptian also have these features) had any contact with Proto-indo-european, though it's definitely possible. But it doesn't explain everything else there, ABS imho, it's completely irrelevant - it seems to make more sense that it's psychological - that the human mind likes to order words in predictable patterns so that the directionality of all phrases and structures in a sentence with the directionality of the sentance as a whole, in terms of where the agents are with respect to the predicate. Basically, sentences will tend towards being head-initial, head-central or head-final, this creating seemingly related grammar structures

[@matthewsutton3682]

Great episode. Very informative!

[@killroy.99]

It is worth noting that japanese sentiments that korean is a derivative of japanese was a common thought during the 1900s and justification for imperial japans colonization of korea. Koreans n some japanese n linguists knew that was far from true

[@nyar2352]

Ooooh thank you so much for this!! As a Sumerologist I have occasionally stumbled across odd theories that try to associate Sumerian with Proto-Altaic or Proto-Nostratic, and it always seemed fishy to me. This was a wonderful, fun and informative video. Oh, and maybe - if you are interested in language nerds fighting - you could do a video on the name of the god Nergal, which has caused much controversy in my field :)

[@nyar2352]

BARBATVS 89 I have to admit that I never played Age of Empires, but I'm a fan of them in Civ :) Assyrians do indeed have epic beards, most older dudes in my field sport them as well in what I assume is sympathetic magic ("AHAHAHAAAA! NOW I TOO HAVE A BEARD OF POWER!") ;) In Sumerian, Sumer is called Ki'en(e)gi(r), or simply kalam "the Land". The Akkadians called it šumeru, from which we get the word 'Sumer' :)

[@nyar2352]

BARBATVS 89 I am sure you will eventually be able to get a suitably impressive beard :) And the /š/ is pronounced /sh/

[@formalminds1461]

Thank You for making such a clear video about the subject NativLang. Altaic is truly one of the more controversial topics in linguistics; hopefully this video can change minds in a positive way.

[@monomundo]

Thank you - that was so interesting. I am Turkish and grew with the Ural-Altaic hypothesis. Your video makes a lot of sense as even as I get a sense of familiatrity while listening to K-Pop and J-Pop or when I travel to Mongolia, I do not understand a bit of what is said :)

[@hyhhy]

It does seem that Altaic is more likely a sprachbund than a language family (barring some linguistic breakthrough). Even though this might be disappointing to some, personally I find it a very fascinating aspect of the history of Eurasian peoples nevertheless. As a Finnish speaker, I can find all kinds of interesting similarities between my native Uralic language and the so-called Altaic languages. I find the idea quite plausible that proto-Uralic was in significant contact with the Altaic group in the past, as genetic studies seem to show that proto-Uralic speakers came to the Ural region from around Manchuria. But proto-Uralic speakers seem to have mostly inhabited the forest and swamp areas of northern Eurasia, and not the Eurasian steppe like many of the speakers of the Altaic group of languages.

[@cheerful_crop_circle]

I think Proto-Uralic is a bit similar to Proto-Indo-European

[@siyacer]

Perhaps it's something about the similarities of the languages that make them much more likely to borrow and adapt from each other. After all, one of your relatives, Hungarian, did end up on the same Eurasian steppe as the Altaic peoples, and we all know how they feel about the topic.

[@laerr]

I LOVE YOUR VIDEOS. Everything I love about language and all the questions I had are discussed on your channel. It's like the feeling of hot soup on a cold day, but all over my brain.

[@Maverick19959]

I’m from Iran and My mother tongue is Azerbaijani Turkish, and it is also a branch of Altaic language.

[@OttomanGrandson]

Ak. Hep ananız Türk olur zaten, yavşak sürüsü

[@potatoman8609]

altaic isnt real.

[@Maverick19959]

@@potatoman8609 you ain’t real.

[@potatoman8609]

@@Maverick19959 name 3 consistent sound changes that can't be explained by borrowing.

[@Maverick19959]

@@potatoman8609 Gel Gir Gotume!

[@rhov-anion]

Never get involved in a word war in Asia.

[@joalexsg9741]

Thank you for the most interesting video. I know that complex analyses are bound to be developed in scientific enquiry but sometimes even some scholars get lost in these complexities. Whatever it is, the fact is both Turkic, Finno-Ugric peoples and Hungarians seem to find some common grounds when learning each other's languages and it seems the same happens to Turkic and Mongolian languages as well. In practice, it's inevitable to find some spiritual/cultural connection by these similarities, whatever their reason might be and this is what will affect the lives of their speakers, nurturing bonds and fostering relations, especially in this era of intense communication via the internet and who knows what else the future will bring in that direction.

[@daemiax]

Upvote for using the Gokturk alphabet to represent Turkic !

[@suyuntoktosun]

The Alphabet is from Sogdians. Aramaic Alphabet not Turkic Alphabet.

[@legaciestr]

Suyun Toktosun not true at all.