Re: FYI re: Greenberg's Universals

On Wed, 4 Oct 2000, Lars Henrik Mathiesen wrote:

> > From:         Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...>
> >
> > Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
> > > The "controversial" was what I meant by "next best thing."  Sorry.  :-p
> > > I've heard several theories on Japanese and Korean and where they fit
> > > into the world's languages, but my understanding was that no one really
> > > had a consensus.
> >
> > It's been my impression that the Japanese-Korean connection is pretty
> > well-accepted, it's just theories about where they fit in regards to
> > other languages that's controversial.  Or am I completely wrong here?
>
> The Japanese don't like the idea, as they culturally regard all things
> Korean as inferior. And even apart from that, I don't think everybody
> else is convinced either.
<wry g>  I think Bruce Cumings in _Korea's Place in the Sun_ makes that
point, but does argue for some early historical influence in culture and
language.  I don't remember him going into detail, but then, he's a
historian of Korea, not a linguist per se.

OC, your *average* Korean doesn't have too high an opinion of Japanese.
"Waeran" in "Imjin Waeran" (the Imjin War, 1592-1598) was a term for the
Japanese meaning, according to Prof. Strauss at Cornell, something like
"dwarf."  Ironic considering that we Koreans aren't exactly a tall folk.

> Trask, Historical Linguistics, 1996: "Recently [...] a number of
> linguists have begun to argue that there is clear evidence that Korean
> and Japanese are in fact related to each other, [...]."
>
> He then goes on to say that the proponents of Altaic link "have not
> succeeded in convincing the majority of specialists," but he doesn't
> really say how they vote on the Korean-Japanese link itself.
<wry g>  I guess I'll just wait and see how the votes fall out!

YHL