Re: CHAT: Genetics: was: CHAT: minimum phonemes, was vrindo

Alypius wrote:
>Sometime last year, Discover magazine had an article about how DNA =
testing
>had shown that the Japanese were definitely descended from Korean
>immigrants.  Of course, both these peoples will likely be displeased by =
this
>discovery.  This seems like very strong supporting evidence that =
Japanese is
>an offshoot of the Korean tongue.  ~alypius
Be careful with such conclusions! One might go as far as to postulate =
that
the American English spoken by African-Americans is a Niger-Congo =
language,=20
which is of course utterly false. Genetic affiliation has nothing to do=20
with linguistic affiliation. The Japanese could easily have been Korean=20
immigrants in ancient times, but adopted an entirely different language=20
when they arrived in the islands, much like African slaves adopting an=20
Indo-European language in the New World.

ObConlang: FWIW, Boreanesian has a substantial Austronesian element, but =

that does not make them Austronesians. And even though some gene-flow =
must=20
have occured between Boreanesians and neighboring Austronesians, that =
does
not make a Boreanesian language an Austronesian language either. The=20
Boreanesian picture is perhaps just as fuzzy as the Japanese picture.

The concesus made among 'Boreanesian specialists' (myself included), is=20
that Boreanesian is an independent linguistic family with Austronesian=20
element arising from Austronesian contact over time.

-kristian- 8)