Altaic: Rise and Fall of a Linguistic Hypothesis
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- čas přidán 27. 09. 2019
- Languages throughout Asia are startlingly similar, but are they all part of one huge family? Thus began the biggest fight in the history of historical linguistics.
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~ Briefly ~
Starting with my little quiz, see how languages from Turkey to Northern China have "embarrassing" parallels. Some linguists explained these similarities by linking the languages together into one large family. They called the family "Altaic", with a core containing Tungusic, Mongolic and Turkic. Capitalizing on connections between Korean and Japanese, Altaic proponents added these two apparent isolates to form an even larger "macro" family. The result was a sweeping hypothesis: all Turkic, Tungusic, Mongolic, Koreanic and Japonic languages are genetically related.
The idea at first seemed to take off, with Moscow at the helm of the research. However, linguists increasingly criticized results and the methods used by Altaicists. They were skeptical that the languages were convergent and shallowly similar rather than divergent and truly related. One notable supporter turned into its most vocal critic. We'll drop in on the spat between him and three foremost Altaicists to uncover the controversy and the controversy over the controversy.
We'll leave with a sense of how Altaic fell from linguistic grace, along with some of the main reasons why. While there are people who do Altaic, linguists tend to give me the impression that consensus is strongly on the side of areal explanations for the features we saw in my quiz (like the Mesoamerican Sprachbund) instead of genetic affiliation (like Indo-European or Austronesian).
Thank you for watching! This isn't about taking sides, but appreciating the story.
~ Credits ~
Art, narration, animation and some of the music by Josh from NativLang
Turkish captions by Ümit Duran
Sources for claims and credits for music, fonts, sfx:
docs.google.com/document/d/1L...
Music:
Please see my doc above for all song titles. So much credit to these talented creators:
- Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
- Jason Shaw (audionautix.com)
Turns out I’m one of the rare people who still knows Manchu.
ᠮᡠᠰᡝᡳ ᠮᠠᠨᠵᡠ ᡤᡳᠰᡠᠨ ᠪᡝ ᠪᠠᡳᠨᡩᡠᡥᡝ ᠠᠮᠪᡠᠯᠠ ᠪᠠᠨᡳᡥᠠ᠉
Really the coolest writing system there is imo.
@@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.
@@mailasun Btw the horizontally written mongolic looks like the Wadiyan script
mini francis sorry, I don’t know what “wadiyan script” is.
@@mailasun Its not a real script its the script used in a fictional nation of Wadiya in the movie Dictator
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 ;)
Could be a sprachbund.
@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. 🤔
@@deejayaech4519 Probably is 🤔.
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.
@Cu6upckuû Finnish was included in the Ural-Altaic (or Uraltaic) mega-family-hypothesis, together with all the other Uralic languages, though.
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
Hey Xidnaf :)
nice to see you Xidnaf! I've liked a lot of your vids.
Greetings to you from Berlin, Germany!
Hello! Love your videos.
Upload
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?
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 :)
I want an overview of all accepted language families
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.
@@Alfonso162008 Thank you!
I would absolutely love a video about Uralic languages (as a speaker myself). It's very hard to find good CZcams videos about them.
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.
To sum up, it is never a tree, but always a net.
@@christosvoskresye Amen to that
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.
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.
> 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.
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
Idk why but I thought I was the only one who watched both!
@@grimhavenz Nope, me too.
@@grimhavenz Watched both as well :-)
Nativlang is like 2 teirs above langfocus in quality. Which is just to say nativlang is SS+ teir, the top.
Except langfocus is shit
I'm happy about NativLang tho
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)
I totally agree with you
So true.
That makes sense considering that Altaic is a sprachbund
We Turks always see Mongols and Manchurians as brothers. Also, wr have some same words. Like kut(holy).
@@goldeviolets4314 with such grammatical similarity
Altaic: is there any more controversial linguistic theory than me?
Nostratic: hold my beer
Amerind: hold my... fermented taiga berry brew?
*Laugh in Adamic*
Borean: Hello, fellows!
Basque: ahem...
Ken Keenan Na-dene-Caucasian
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.
Well, let's build public schools for the deaf in the places where there are none and we can study it.
I think that Dixon's theory is fairly reasonable. "The Rise and Fall of Languages" by RWM Dixon.
Creolisation means that there have to be more than one language already existing.
This is not how a language branch come up.
@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.
@veryserioz, nope. Yeniseian languages have no ancestry to Turkic or Mongolian. They are just part of the Paleosibirian Sprachbund.
So today I learned how to provoke a language nerds
#triggered 🤓😂
Do you want to provoke even more?
Say you agree with the Ural-Altaic hypothesis
there are so many ways to provoke language nerds
@@ajavisk I like to call it Uraltaic.
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!
For anyone wondering, the Turkic runes read "Tengri", which is an old word for God.
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.
@@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.
@@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.
Is that "Tanrı" in modern (Anatolian) Turkish?
@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?
I’ve been told by people from Turkey that the Altaic hypothesis is still taught as fact there, even in university level linguistics courses
Propaganda purposes
It is in Korea too tbh
@@bonbonbons Nobody knows what altaic is in Korea. I'm Korean in Korea
I can confirm this as a 28 years old Turkish. I still stan with this theory btw.
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.
To me Altaic is more of a cultural region rather than a related family. Kind of similar to languages in Mesoamerica.
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.
I prefer to call it a cultural family linguistic tree. I wish it was talked about more often.
Linguistic found family
There is some issue. Anthropologists use language family to classify the ethnic groups
@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...
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
9000 yıl önceki dillerimiz aynı, ister benim anadolu türkçem olsun, ister sizin kazaklara ve ailemin çoğu kazaklara benziyor!!
thats really interesting to hear as a korean
@@33y852 kazağa mı benziyorsunuz? Arada görüyorum tr de hep merak etmişimdir nerelisiniz? Doğudan geliyor bizim aile ve biz daha çok açık tenli araba benziyoruz
@@parsifal40 genelde iç anadoluda olur ben de kayseriliyim gözlerim çekik
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.
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-.
Glad he didn't resort to an imaginary ice age to account for the crossing when ships suffice especially with the Bering strait.
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
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.
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.
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)
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!
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?
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.
@@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.
@@NativLang That sounds fascinating, please do
I'd agree that the mere nature of information renders a simplistic tree of origin a useless ghost-hunt.
I think a key to this "family" is the development of mobility.
Imagine being a sprachbund 😎😎😎
Balkan gang form up
@Hernando Malinche yo what's up Hernando good to see you here
West-Europe gang whattup
@@pedrosampaio7349 well west continental Europe is entirely of the latin group (except the Basque). And no I don't count Germany as Western Europe
@@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?
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
I am Kazakh and I am very glad that my language was mentioned in this video
Did they change the name of the capital because it is an anagram of Satana?
@@barbatvs8959 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.
@@nurmakhanzholshybek3392 Your country has many Muslims, and they are familiar with the character called in Arabic Shaytan as well as many with English in this globalized world, hence your using English. Also, Russians talk of Satan too, being heretics who claim to be Christian, yet who worship Mary.
@@nurmakhanzholshybek3392 PS Long ago I saw a video covering masonic symbolism in Astana before the name changed. The leader is a mason, and secretly worships Satan. Virtually or totally all country leaders do, and I prove it in my series on the satanic which has over 3,000 slides although one installment was taken down by youtube becauase of Muslim protests and youtube's libtarded cowardice.
@@barbatvs8959 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
Ah, yes. The newest episode of Educational Linguistic ASMR.
I was just asking myself why I was so interested yet felt so sleepy
Lol
The man made a nice edit on Orkhon Inscriptions. I suggest you take a look. :)
czcams.com/video/d1TIK5a11E8/video.html
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.
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?
@@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.
@@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?
Muh Japonic-Koreanic theories. Muh lexical similarities. Muh final verbz. :D
@پاسدار فرد Александр Japanese and Korean isolated from one another? That's preposterous.
09:43 You're confusing Sergey Starostin (co-author of the dictionary) with his son Georgy Starostin (co-author of the article) :-)
Sir Gay? What? Star Austin?
@@barbatvs8959 man wtf is wrong with you
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
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.
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.
Depends on your native language. What is it?
@@barbar5822 Cantonese
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.
@@ggoddkkiller1342 So you meant Turkish is not difficult than Korean or Japanese?
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.
Super cool video!! Def worth the wait and I CANNOT wait to see what's next!!
Amazing video. I’m really glad you’re back.
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! :-)
It's always a great day when NativLang releases a video! :D
Even better when it's on the same day as a new Langfocus video!
Oh, fantastic, I was really really hoping you would cover this topic. Thank you so much!
I read the script you post a while ago for this. I’m glad it made it to CZcams. Diolch!
Magnificent! So niche, but so well written commentary.
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
hi viktor, the world really is tiny haha
@@verhvouvim1518 Oh god oh fuck
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!
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.
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.
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!
Glad you uploaded this video a day after I read about Altaic ^_^
Great to see you back at pace with your videos man
New vid to perfectly start my weekend. THANKS!!!!
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).
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
@@boburzod Well that is pointless since if you say it like that, then we are all Africans
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:
czcams.com/video/FRMhkqovbwY/video.html
I think there must be more contacts or migrations etc during unknown time period between 3-4 thousands years ago to cause such similarity.
@@sharpasacueball We don't share anything at all from our African past so your example doesn't make sense even a bit..
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)
Ah I remember when I had the chance to write essays a month in advance lol.
Thank you for your videos! You cover such interesting, yet so obscure language topics
Great episode. Very informative!
Love the animation quality!
Quality over quantity everytime, I prefer
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
I have been intrigued by this hypothesis for soooo many years!
Very informative and fascinating as ever!
My WiFi froze just as I clicked on this and I wanted to cry
I wish you had included more actual examples, words and sentences. I feel like you barely scratched the surface..
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?
@@KingoftheJuice18 By providing some example words and sentences 😄
@@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).
"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."
@@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.
Bravo! NativLang is great!
Excited to watch this!
”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. 🤔
What words are even shared in common that aren't loan words?
@@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”.
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.
@@vernicethompson4825 Similarities in grammar do not make for related languages.
@@haruzanfuucha Actually, yes, they do. In fact, grammar similarities are a key to language family relationships. More so than vocabulary.
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...
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? 😄
@@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
Hirame means "flat 平 eye 目" but thank you for shining light on the Altaic theory. It's been bugging me for decades.
-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.
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.
So that means that japanese and korean make part of proto altaic family?
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.
So in other words... It's an Altaic sprachbund?
That is at least where the debate rests now.
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.
@@irubjaejoong 6000 miles of flat prairie, with horsies. If it's a joke it's not a funny one.
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.
@@irubjaejoong if you think Chinese had little grammatical influence on Korean or Japanese, think again. That is demonstrably false.
Can you do a video on Pirahã and how it impacts our understanding of language? It’s one of my favourite topics.
I was waiting for such a video!!!!!!!!
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.
But not disprooven.
@@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.
@@alexander1055 Buddy, you need to prove it first, before being disproven
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
I love how you gave Vovin a hawaiian shirt because he was working in Mānoa ! Great vid :)
something i didn' realize ! :) thanks
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.
Nice work! Great video.
Great video as always, I love to see the animation and drawings getting better.
0:17
*laughs in Native American lingustics*
Can you please do more videos on proposed language superfamilies? This is a really interesting topic.
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?
@@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.
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.
@@Figgy5119 how are you supposed to know about a language that never left any traces behind though? We ain't omniscient.
@@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.
@@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?
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...
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.
@@hanggaraaryagunarencagutuh7072shut up
Can you please make a video about Turkic languages? Loves from Turkey 💕💕
HALLO TURKICSH 😄
@@uuuby MERHABA ALMAN :D
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?
What is your mother tongue? Is it Finnish or Hungarian?
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
Very interesting, thanks!
great work!!
Fun fact:
"You" in Arabic and Japanese:
Arabic: anta (male) / anti (female)
Japanese: anata
Are they both related languages? No, because it's a coincidence.
@Öksökö Not all Iranians are Indo-Europeans. The Azeris, Arabs, Assyrians, Turkmens and Qashqai ethnicities in Iran are not Indo-European. And Southern Indians are not Indo-European as well.
japanese also has "anta"
Öksökö Except for the fact that most people believe in the Proto-Indoeuropean theory because it holds up, we know that the Aryans that invaded India used a language that was a descendant of Proto-IndoEuropean
Icelandic: mál (language) Korean: mal (language)
German: fest (hard, solid)
Persian: seft (hard, solid)
Göktürk runes. ❤
These viseos are really really good. You have not made any in a while... why? Please make more soon!!!
YESS! I have been waiting for this video for a long time.. Thank you :)
Tarihçi misiniz? :)
@@yavuzsezer5785 Hayır, sadece dilbilime ilgim var :)
I like how the dead fish gets revived at 8:09 when the narrative goes "summoning creatures to life."
Awesome detail
The timing of this video could not have come sooner! I just picked up a free copy of an old book: "Japanese and the Other Altaic Languages". by Roy Andrew Miller. Interesting to get the big picture take! Thanks for uploading. :)
Fascinating. I am a computer programmer by trade and only have an amateur interest in linguistics. The first book I read on the subject was the Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Language, in the 1990s, which reports Altaic as a major language family like Indo-European or Afro-Asiatic. It is remarkable that in the time since the hypothesis has largely been dismantled again.
Totally interesting. Thank you.
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.
"To him something was fishy... on page one thousand seventy six(...)" holy shit 😂
These animations are just gorgeous.
SO SO interesting! Are there more of these debates, feuds, fights and conflicts within the community of linguistic academics?
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 :)
Make a video on Tolkien's languages or on Yiddish!
Very good - little if anything to add. Stefan Georg (former - and possibly again in the future - contributor to this never-ending debate). Keep up the good work.
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 :)
Is the Sumerian civilization your favourite in Age of Empires? I did a realistic map of the Mediterranean and managed to include the south of Mesopotamia in this map, and enjoy the land of the origin of the Jews. Assyria (Ashurestan?) is my favourite though, because of their beards and epic war power. Babylon has the prettiest walls though. What is Sumeria called in the Sumerian language?
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 Yes, the beard does not make the sage but many a sage is known for the beard. It makes a man look bigger akin to the mane of a lion. God himself has a beard. I teach English in SE Asia, where the beard is frowned upon thanks to Islam, so after my boss promised IN THE CONTRACT that I could have a "big beard," he lied and told me to shave. I plan to grow a goatee though.
My name means bearded in Latin, so I am quite a fan of this phenomenon.
The S with that v on top is an S sound or a SH sound? Thanks for the answer.
And Nergal is the name of a bad guy in Fire Emblem, and he is a wizard.
fireemblem.fandom.com/wiki/Nergal
BARBATVS 89 I am sure you will eventually be able to get a suitably impressive beard :) And the /š/ is pronounced /sh/
@@nyar2352 Aw, cool. I got a great beard but then part of my moustache stopped growing, so I look retarded now. I think it was from stress. I usually handle it well but marrying a feminazi and having to deal with evil coworkers is very burdensome. In my video on Spanish glory I show how I look with a beard of several months. I am Honduran but when I went back to visit, a Native American guy told me I looked like i was from Iraq AKA Mesopotamia's modern approximate equivalent. I took it as a compliment. Of course, he meant "terrorist."
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.
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.
Turks are very nationalistic
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.
@@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.
@@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.
@@brettfafata3017 Try Mimana: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimana
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.
Thanks. I'd occasionally come across references to Altaic in the '60s and '70s, as well as the somewhat separate (in my sources) suggestion that Korean and Japanese might be related.
It always seemed a little tenuous, unlike, say, the Semitic languages.
Thanks for clearing it up for me
What about Ural-Altaic? How much drama do that cause?
It practically died in 1960, only nationalistic chauvinists believe that nonsense.
Fuck that shit from hungary, thats some turkish propaganda they used to find friends with because everyone hates them, us included
@@thomaswinwood Uralic and Indo-European also aren't related
@@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.
@@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
1:27 I actually thought of Manchu, it was in Biblaridion’s “top 10”
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.
love the channel. hoping for something weird like enochian one day.
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.
I am Mongolian and learning Korean/Japanese is easier than learning Spanish
@Ere K
I am a Turk and it is easier for a Turk to learn Korean and Japanese than to learn English, Spanish or the languages of our Neighbors Greek and Arabic.
@@hakancentoglu7872 bu hala altayca diye bir dil ailesi olduğunu kanıtlamaz.
@@kingdomofmapping1988 ben kanıtlar diye bir şey demedim zaten? sadece gramerimiz neredeyse aynı işte bunu kanıtlar.
@@hakancentoglu7872 Bu yorumu altay ile alakalı bir videonun altına yaptığın için böyle düşündüm. Ve ben de, Altay olduğunu kanıtlamaz dedim, yani sırf öğrenmek kolay diye, bunu kastediyosan.
BRUHHH YOU NİCK İS TURKİC :d HNHAAHHAHAHAH KHÖK = "KÖK" (TURKİC WORD) AND
Teŋgri = TENGRİ ,,PLS DONT USE OUR LANGUAGE.
finally a new video after a month
Great job, interesting, insightful and well-researched as always.
Do you plan to a piece on the Voynich manuscript, perhaps?
Already been done by others. An expert on languages of India and Pakistan recognized the manuscriot as a holy text in a language of northern India.