Altaic: Rise and Fall of a Linguistic Hypothesis

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)

Пікірлер: 3 000

  • @mailasun
    @mailasun4 жыл бұрын

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

  • @wasserruebenvergilbungsvirus

    @wasserruebenvergilbungsvirus

    4 жыл бұрын

    Really the coolest writing system there is imo.

  • @mailasun

    @mailasun

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@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

    @Ida-xe8pg

    4 жыл бұрын

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

  • @mailasun

    @mailasun

    4 жыл бұрын

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

  • @Ida-xe8pg

    @Ida-xe8pg

    4 жыл бұрын

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

  • @yanamed6477
    @yanamed6477 Жыл бұрын

    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

    @deejayaech4519

    Жыл бұрын

    Could be a sprachbund.

  • @PC_Simo

    @PC_Simo

    Жыл бұрын

    @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

    @PC_Simo

    Жыл бұрын

    @@deejayaech4519 Probably is 🤔.

  • @user-il8ne5qb7v

    @user-il8ne5qb7v

    Жыл бұрын

    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

    @PC_Simo

    Жыл бұрын

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

  • @christosvoskresye
    @christosvoskresye4 жыл бұрын

    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

    @christosvoskresye

    4 жыл бұрын

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

  • @Mercure250

    @Mercure250

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@christosvoskresye Amen to that

  • @BygoneT

    @BygoneT

    4 жыл бұрын

    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

    @Lewa263

    4 жыл бұрын

    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

    @hedgehog3180

    4 жыл бұрын

    > 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.

  • @Jerimbo
    @Jerimbo4 жыл бұрын

    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

    @grimhavenz

    4 жыл бұрын

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

  • @davidlericain

    @davidlericain

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@grimhavenz Nope, me too.

  • @torspedia

    @torspedia

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@grimhavenz Watched both as well :-)

  • @LeoStaley

    @LeoStaley

    4 жыл бұрын

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

  • @canko15

    @canko15

    4 жыл бұрын

    Except langfocus is shit I'm happy about NativLang tho

  • @NativLang
    @NativLang4 жыл бұрын

    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

    @Alfonso162008

    4 жыл бұрын

    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

    @falnica

    4 жыл бұрын

    I want an overview of all accepted language families

  • @HenrikP97

    @HenrikP97

    4 жыл бұрын

    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

    @NativLang

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@Alfonso162008 Thank you!

  • @finnsalsa9304

    @finnsalsa9304

    4 жыл бұрын

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

  • @Xidnaf
    @Xidnaf4 жыл бұрын

    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

    @MDzaki-uk2ll

    4 жыл бұрын

    Hey Xidnaf :)

  • @timmyturner327

    @timmyturner327

    4 жыл бұрын

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

  • @MihcaelTube

    @MihcaelTube

    4 жыл бұрын

    Greetings to you from Berlin, Germany!

  • @himssendol6512

    @himssendol6512

    4 жыл бұрын

    Hello! Love your videos.

  • @ekvedrek

    @ekvedrek

    4 жыл бұрын

    Upload

  • @weilongguan6329
    @weilongguan63294 жыл бұрын

    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

    @AD-yq8rl

    3 жыл бұрын

    I totally agree with you

  • @lisamanoban2957

    @lisamanoban2957

    3 жыл бұрын

    So true.

  • @goldeviolets4314

    @goldeviolets4314

    3 жыл бұрын

    That makes sense considering that Altaic is a sprachbund

  • @ek3200

    @ek3200

    3 жыл бұрын

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

  • @LMvdB02

    @LMvdB02

    3 жыл бұрын

    @@goldeviolets4314 with such grammatical similarity

  • @adamatari
    @adamatari4 жыл бұрын

    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

    @MartaRzehorz

    4 жыл бұрын

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

  • @Theo-oh3jk

    @Theo-oh3jk

    4 жыл бұрын

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

  • @SchmulKrieger

    @SchmulKrieger

    4 жыл бұрын

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

  • @SchmulKrieger

    @SchmulKrieger

    4 жыл бұрын

    @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

    @SchmulKrieger

    4 жыл бұрын

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

  • @KenKeenan1973
    @KenKeenan19734 жыл бұрын

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

  • @aaronmarks9366

    @aaronmarks9366

    4 жыл бұрын

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

  • @alambahasa12r

    @alambahasa12r

    4 жыл бұрын

    *Laugh in Adamic*

  • @indo-europeanbrotherhood7183

    @indo-europeanbrotherhood7183

    4 жыл бұрын

    Borean: Hello, fellows!

  • @morganlefay195

    @morganlefay195

    4 жыл бұрын

    Basque: ahem...

  • @t.vonaschide4961

    @t.vonaschide4961

    4 жыл бұрын

    Ken Keenan Na-dene-Caucasian

  • @quaternarytetrad4039
    @quaternarytetrad40394 жыл бұрын

    So today I learned how to provoke a language nerds

  • @Oceanleighside

    @Oceanleighside

    4 жыл бұрын

    #triggered 🤓😂

  • @ajavisk

    @ajavisk

    4 жыл бұрын

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

  • @MartaRzehorz

    @MartaRzehorz

    4 жыл бұрын

    there are so many ways to provoke language nerds

  • @Lexivor

    @Lexivor

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@ajavisk I like to call it Uraltaic.

  • @LuisAldamiz

    @LuisAldamiz

    4 жыл бұрын

    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!

  • @slamalamadingdangdongdiggy5268
    @slamalamadingdangdongdiggy52684 жыл бұрын

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

  • @slamalamadingdangdongdiggy5268

    @slamalamadingdangdongdiggy5268

    4 жыл бұрын

    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

    @sertankay86

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@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

    @redwarrior9100

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@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

    @aaronmarks9366

    4 жыл бұрын

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

  • @aaronmarks9366

    @aaronmarks9366

    4 жыл бұрын

    @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?

  • @eyuin5716
    @eyuin57164 жыл бұрын

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

  • @askovtk4834

    @askovtk4834

    4 жыл бұрын

    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

    @Odinsday

    4 жыл бұрын

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

  • @morganalabeille5004

    @morganalabeille5004

    4 жыл бұрын

    Linguistic found family

  • @heitorb7765

    @heitorb7765

    4 жыл бұрын

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

  • @heitorb7765

    @heitorb7765

    4 жыл бұрын

    @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...

  • @zanderrose
    @zanderrose4 жыл бұрын

    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

    @marcoadmiralis_1497

    4 жыл бұрын

    Propaganda purposes

  • @bonbonbons

    @bonbonbons

    4 жыл бұрын

    It is in Korea too tbh

  • @yuilchoi2799

    @yuilchoi2799

    4 жыл бұрын

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

  • @Kara_Pabuc

    @Kara_Pabuc

    4 жыл бұрын

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

  • @noelgomez7197

    @noelgomez7197

    4 жыл бұрын

    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.

  • @tontonj97
    @tontonj979 ай бұрын

    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

  • @TO-mx1bs

    @TO-mx1bs

    8 ай бұрын

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

  • @snowade

    @snowade

    6 ай бұрын

    thats really interesting to hear as a korean

  • @parsifal40

    @parsifal40

    5 ай бұрын

    @@TO-mx1bs kazağa mı benziyorsunuz? Arada görüyorum tr de hep merak etmişimdir nerelisiniz? Doğudan geliyor bizim aile ve biz daha çok açık tenli araba benziyoruz

  • @gankplankinportakalsular5077

    @gankplankinportakalsular5077

    5 ай бұрын

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

  • @anyarasan8529

    @anyarasan8529

    3 ай бұрын

    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.

  • @nurmakhanzholshybek3392
    @nurmakhanzholshybek33924 жыл бұрын

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

  • @barbatvs8959

    @barbatvs8959

    4 жыл бұрын

    Did they change the name of the capital because it is an anagram of Satana?

  • @nurmakhanzholshybek3392

    @nurmakhanzholshybek3392

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@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.

  • @barbatvs8959

    @barbatvs8959

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@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.

  • @barbatvs8959

    @barbatvs8959

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@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.

  • @aidadavletova768

    @aidadavletova768

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@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

  • @aaronmarks9366
    @aaronmarks93664 жыл бұрын

    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-.

  • @barbatvs8959

    @barbatvs8959

    4 жыл бұрын

    Glad he didn't resort to an imaginary ice age to account for the crossing when ships suffice especially with the Bering strait.

  • @irubjaejoong

    @irubjaejoong

    4 жыл бұрын

    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

    @QuinnTheTailor

    2 жыл бұрын

    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

    @rocknroll909

    2 жыл бұрын

    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

    @eneskurnaz8487

    Жыл бұрын

    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)

  • @hongkongcantonese501
    @hongkongcantonese5013 жыл бұрын

    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!

  • @oliverduolingo867
    @oliverduolingo8674 жыл бұрын

    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

  • @mozchick2
    @mozchick24 жыл бұрын

    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

  • @aducharme01
    @aducharme014 жыл бұрын

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

  • @Sophia-bm7pb
    @Sophia-bm7pb Жыл бұрын

    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

    @PimsleurTurkishLessons

    Жыл бұрын

    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

    @barbar5822

    Жыл бұрын

    Depends on your native language. What is it?

  • @Sophia-bm7pb

    @Sophia-bm7pb

    Жыл бұрын

    @@barbar5822 Cantonese

  • @ggoddkkiller1342

    @ggoddkkiller1342

    11 ай бұрын

    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

    @Sophia-bm7pb

    11 ай бұрын

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

  • @oliverduolingo867
    @oliverduolingo8674 жыл бұрын

    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! :-)

  • @cjthibeau4843
    @cjthibeau48434 жыл бұрын

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

  • @percyparker923
    @percyparker9234 жыл бұрын

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

  • @kx3z
    @kx3z4 жыл бұрын

    Imagine being a sprachbund 😎😎😎

  • @andrewk9267

    @andrewk9267

    4 жыл бұрын

    Balkan gang form up

  • @Stoneworks

    @Stoneworks

    4 жыл бұрын

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

  • @pedrosampaio7349

    @pedrosampaio7349

    4 жыл бұрын

    West-Europe gang whattup

  • @flaviusbelisarius7517

    @flaviusbelisarius7517

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@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

    @pedrosampaio7349

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@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?

  • @bismuth7398
    @bismuth73984 жыл бұрын

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

  • @evalight4317

    @evalight4317

    4 жыл бұрын

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

  • @Cosmic_Love

    @Cosmic_Love

    4 жыл бұрын

    Lol

  • @roufamagga4453

    @roufamagga4453

    3 жыл бұрын

    The man made a nice edit on Orkhon Inscriptions. I suggest you take a look. :) kzread.info/dash/bejne/lmWIq61ukZSXdZs.html

  • @a4grtu
    @a4grtu4 жыл бұрын

    Thank you for your videos! You cover such interesting, yet so obscure language topics

  • @lucasnascimentodasilva721
    @lucasnascimentodasilva7214 жыл бұрын

    Great to see you back at pace with your videos man

  • @ViktorasZZZ
    @ViktorasZZZ4 жыл бұрын

    Magnificent! So niche, but so well written commentary.

  • @sunwukong6897
    @sunwukong68974 жыл бұрын

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

  • @oliverduolingo867
    @oliverduolingo8674 жыл бұрын

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

  • @vincem3748

    @vincem3748

    4 жыл бұрын

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

  • @itacom2199
    @itacom21994 жыл бұрын

    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!

  • @SphereBoxCube
    @SphereBoxCube4 жыл бұрын

    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

    @KyrieFortune

    4 жыл бұрын

    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

    @SphereBoxCube

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@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

    @FOLIPE

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@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

    @GPrinceps

    4 жыл бұрын

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

  • @FOLIPE

    @FOLIPE

    4 жыл бұрын

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

  • @Kevin-zv6ds
    @Kevin-zv6ds4 жыл бұрын

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

  • @laerr
    @laerr4 жыл бұрын

    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.

  • @VTPPGLVR
    @VTPPGLVR4 жыл бұрын

    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.

  • @jegkompletson1698
    @jegkompletson16984 жыл бұрын

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

  • @user-qq4zb1yt5r
    @user-qq4zb1yt5r4 жыл бұрын

    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

    @boburzod

    Жыл бұрын

    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

    @sharpasacueball

    Жыл бұрын

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

  • @ggoddkkiller1342

    @ggoddkkiller1342

    11 ай бұрын

    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: kzread.info/dash/bejne/eIaBys2qn9nIp7w.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.

  • @ggoddkkiller1342

    @ggoddkkiller1342

    11 ай бұрын

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

  • @krim7
    @krim74 жыл бұрын

    Excited to watch this!

  • @ianthompson9201
    @ianthompson92014 жыл бұрын

    Very informative and fascinating as ever!

  • @joshuahillerup4290
    @joshuahillerup42904 жыл бұрын

    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

    @NativLang

    4 жыл бұрын

    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

    @joshuahillerup4290

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@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

    @Glandist

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@NativLang That sounds fascinating, please do

  • @Argacyan

    @Argacyan

    4 жыл бұрын

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

  • @dougsinthailand7176

    @dougsinthailand7176

    4 жыл бұрын

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

  • @yumarivik46
    @yumarivik464 жыл бұрын

    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

    @verhvouvim1518

    4 жыл бұрын

    hi viktor, the world really is tiny haha

  • @yumarivik46

    @yumarivik46

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@verhvouvim1518 Oh god oh fuck

  • @matthewsutton3682
    @matthewsutton36824 жыл бұрын

    Great episode. Very informative!

  • @itudis9279
    @itudis92794 жыл бұрын

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

  • @hennirottstock2841
    @hennirottstock28414 жыл бұрын

    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

  • @elenaobradovic4181
    @elenaobradovic41814 жыл бұрын

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

  • @zippersocks
    @zippersocks4 жыл бұрын

    New vid to perfectly start my weekend. THANKS!!!!

  • @johnboyd782
    @johnboyd7824 жыл бұрын

    Bravo! NativLang is great!

  • @felixeverett1252
    @felixeverett12524 жыл бұрын

    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

    @karacaddy

    2 жыл бұрын

    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!

  • @stijnjanssens1785
    @stijnjanssens17854 жыл бұрын

    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

    @wannabehistorian371

    3 жыл бұрын

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

  • @formalminds1461
    @formalminds14614 жыл бұрын

    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.

  • @sudarshanas
    @sudarshanas4 жыл бұрын

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

  • @barbatvs8959

    @barbatvs8959

    4 жыл бұрын

    Sir Gay? What? Star Austin?

  • @Yanramich

    @Yanramich

    2 жыл бұрын

    @@barbatvs8959 man wtf is wrong with you

  • @magellanicspaceclouds
    @magellanicspaceclouds4 жыл бұрын

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

  • @Jumpoable
    @Jumpoable4 жыл бұрын

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

  • @yorgunsamuray

    @yorgunsamuray

    4 жыл бұрын

    -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

    @yukokashiwagi9786

    3 жыл бұрын

    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

    @katharynemartins8320

    2 жыл бұрын

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

  • @n.i.3514
    @n.i.35144 жыл бұрын

    I was waiting for such a video!!!!!!!!

  • @fish4225
    @fish42254 жыл бұрын

    Great video as always, I love to see the animation and drawings getting better.

  • @percyparker923
    @percyparker9234 жыл бұрын

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

  • @Narkokhelus
    @Narkokhelus4 жыл бұрын

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

  • @beyondrecall9446

    @beyondrecall9446

    3 жыл бұрын

    something i didn' realize ! :) thanks

  • @JustinArmstrongsite
    @JustinArmstrongsite4 жыл бұрын

    Nice work! Great video.

  • @maartijnsuttle6777
    @maartijnsuttle67774 жыл бұрын

    Great job, interesting, insightful and well-researched as always. Do you plan to a piece on the Voynich manuscript, perhaps?

  • @vernicethompson4825

    @vernicethompson4825

    2 жыл бұрын

    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.

  • @markus3355
    @markus33554 жыл бұрын

    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

    @alexander1055

    4 жыл бұрын

    But not disprooven.

  • @weirdofromhalo

    @weirdofromhalo

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@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

    @amlans5314

    3 жыл бұрын

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

  • @dannymiewdg

    @dannymiewdg

    Жыл бұрын

    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

  • @dougsinthailand7176
    @dougsinthailand71764 жыл бұрын

    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.

  • @Zany4God
    @Zany4God4 жыл бұрын

    Totally interesting. Thank you.

  • @silverstreettalks343
    @silverstreettalks3433 жыл бұрын

    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

  • @andrewjgrimm
    @andrewjgrimm4 жыл бұрын

    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

    @fabianbosch779

    9 ай бұрын

    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

    @benginaldclocker2891

    8 ай бұрын

    ​@@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

  • @uzayli4408
    @uzayli44084 жыл бұрын

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

  • @uuuby

    @uuuby

    Жыл бұрын

    HALLO TURKICSH 😄

  • @uzayli4408

    @uzayli4408

    Жыл бұрын

    @@uuuby MERHABA ALMAN :D

  • @zh84
    @zh844 жыл бұрын

    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.

  • @Hlafdige1
    @Hlafdige14 жыл бұрын

    great work!!

  • @smuecke
    @smuecke4 жыл бұрын

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

  • @KingoftheJuice18

    @KingoftheJuice18

    4 жыл бұрын

    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

    @smuecke

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@KingoftheJuice18 By providing some example words and sentences 😄

  • @KingoftheJuice18

    @KingoftheJuice18

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@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

    @wheedler

    4 жыл бұрын

    "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

    @varana

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@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.

  • @Figgy5119
    @Figgy51194 жыл бұрын

    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

    @Figgy5119

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@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

    @tovarischkrasnyjeshi

    4 жыл бұрын

    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

    @chingizzhylkybayev8575

    4 жыл бұрын

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

  • @Figgy5119

    @Figgy5119

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@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

    @chingizzhylkybayev8575

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@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?

  • @thefisherking78
    @thefisherking782 жыл бұрын

    Very interesting, thanks!

  • @lilalampenschirm3203
    @lilalampenschirm32034 жыл бұрын

    These animations are just gorgeous.

  • @uchuuseijin
    @uchuuseijin4 жыл бұрын

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

  • @404Dannyboy

    @404Dannyboy

    4 жыл бұрын

    That is at least where the debate rests now.

  • @irubjaejoong

    @irubjaejoong

    4 жыл бұрын

    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

    @zimriel

    4 жыл бұрын

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

  • @irubjaejoong

    @irubjaejoong

    4 жыл бұрын

    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

    @uchuuseijin

    4 жыл бұрын

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

  • @HBon111
    @HBon1114 жыл бұрын

    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. :)

  • @davidbouvier8895
    @davidbouvier889511 ай бұрын

    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.

  • @torix500
    @torix500 Жыл бұрын

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

  • @PC_Simo
    @PC_Simo3 жыл бұрын

    ”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

    @kekeke8988

    3 жыл бұрын

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

  • @PC_Simo

    @PC_Simo

    3 жыл бұрын

    @@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

    @vernicethompson4825

    2 жыл бұрын

    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

    @haruzanfuucha

    2 жыл бұрын

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

  • @vernicethompson4825

    @vernicethompson4825

    2 жыл бұрын

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

  • @nyar2352
    @nyar23524 жыл бұрын

    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 :)

  • @barbatvs8959

    @barbatvs8959

    4 жыл бұрын

    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?

  • @nyar2352

    @nyar2352

    4 жыл бұрын

    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' :)

  • @barbatvs8959

    @barbatvs8959

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@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

  • @nyar2352

    @nyar2352

    4 жыл бұрын

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

  • @barbatvs8959

    @barbatvs8959

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@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."

  • @stefangeorg9048
    @stefangeorg90484 жыл бұрын

    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.

  • @bjolofthoth1815
    @bjolofthoth18154 жыл бұрын

    love the channel. hoping for something weird like enochian one day.

  • @mtebid5658
    @mtebid56584 жыл бұрын

    Göktürk runes. ❤

  • @Babo49_49

    @Babo49_49

    3 жыл бұрын

    Nice PFP

  • @ringtailedfox
    @ringtailedfox3 жыл бұрын

    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

    @hanggaraaryagunarencagutuh7072

    7 ай бұрын

    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

    @lyd4712

    26 күн бұрын

    ​@@hanggaraaryagunarencagutuh7072shut up

  • @joalexsg9741
    @joalexsg97418 ай бұрын

    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.

  • @zeynepaydogan1010
    @zeynepaydogan10104 жыл бұрын

    YESS! I have been waiting for this video for a long time.. Thank you :)

  • @yavuzsezer5785

    @yavuzsezer5785

    4 жыл бұрын

    Tarihçi misiniz? :)

  • @zeynepaydogan1010

    @zeynepaydogan1010

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@yavuzsezer5785 Hayır, sadece dilbilime ilgim var :)

  • @WhyDidntIInventYT
    @WhyDidntIInventYT4 жыл бұрын

    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.

  • @monomundo
    @monomundo4 жыл бұрын

    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 :)

  • @user-vh8ni3fe1w
    @user-vh8ni3fe1w7 ай бұрын

    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

  • @TO-mx1bs

    @TO-mx1bs

    4 ай бұрын

    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.

  • @balgaravar5203
    @balgaravar52034 жыл бұрын

    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.

  • @e.9785
    @e.97854 жыл бұрын

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

  • @peterk.9571
    @peterk.95714 жыл бұрын

    0:17 *laughs in Native American lingustics*

  • @RickyDog1989
    @RickyDog19894 жыл бұрын

    SO SO interesting! Are there more of these debates, feuds, fights and conflicts within the community of linguistic academics?

  • @lucientanto8762
    @lucientanto87624 жыл бұрын

    finally a new video after a month

  • @matthew99_
    @matthew99_4 жыл бұрын

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

  • @purpleapple4052

    @purpleapple4052

    4 жыл бұрын

    Awesome detail

  • @davidamadore
    @davidamadore4 жыл бұрын

    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

    @envinyatar5712

    2 жыл бұрын

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

  • @darius684

    @darius684

    Жыл бұрын

    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

  • @Dobjob
    @Dobjob Жыл бұрын

    I am a strong Altaicists. Love your videos

  • @thomassvatos6300
    @thomassvatos63004 жыл бұрын

    Much appreciated.

  • @federicovolpe3389
    @federicovolpe33894 жыл бұрын

    1:27 I actually thought of Manchu, it was in Biblaridion’s “top 10”

  • @alexreid1173
    @alexreid11734 жыл бұрын

    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

    @mazsola1037

    4 жыл бұрын

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

  • @GPrinceps

    @GPrinceps

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@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

    @taylor3950

    4 жыл бұрын

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

  • @argeliamendoza4047

    @argeliamendoza4047

    4 жыл бұрын

    Same

  • @zanderrose

    @zanderrose

    4 жыл бұрын

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

  • @phoenixantis6994
    @phoenixantis69944 жыл бұрын

    *back in black plays because nativlang posts a video*

  • @reavl6494
    @reavl64944 жыл бұрын

    Nice, i was just thinking about this theory a couple days ago.