Talk:Comparison of Japanese and Korean

"The Korean Past of the Japanese Language" by E. P. Chung
Have you read The Korean Past of the Japanese Language by E. P. Chung? Not saying I believe it, but I think you have to admit that some of his arguments are very convincing. You can read it online in English at http://www.epchung.com/english.html and it could help you expand this article if you wanted to include more convincing arguments. 馬太阿房 (talk) 05:43, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

Vocab page
This vocabulary page is severely lacking I feel. 1)shouldn't this include many more similar words derived from Chinese characters which Japanese and Korean share? Ex. 約束-약속, 準備-준비 2) Grammatical functions such as が- 가, じゃない/じゃん-지않아/자나 3) I would list うち as a closer cognate to 우리. When used as a collective in Japanese, this often is similar in Korean. うちのお父さん or 우리 나라. Though 'uchi' translates as home, it also holds a connotation of the royal 'we' as 'uri' in Korean. Also, phonetically, た行, like the chi in uchi, in Japanese generally morph into ㄹ sounds in Korean. いっぱん-일반, はち-팔, うち-우리

Any thoughts on this? Caseypaul (talk) 12:34, 17 January 2018 (UTC)


 * I don't think loanwords should be included when determining the genetic relationship of languages. dennis97519 (talk) 08:10, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

Serious NPOV problem
I guess it's acceptable to make an article about every linguistic theory floating around, however the article should be clearer that this is not an accepted theory. It should give the arguments in favor of this theory from a neutral point of view instead of trying to convince the reader that this theory is true.

The content of the article is mostly bad linguistic, making a comparison table for numerals containing only supporting evidence (the numbers 3, 5, 7, 10) is so disingenuous, and it's followed by a random "Also, Sillan language called 3 as "Mil" too." This is absurd.

The introduction ends with "Any relation between the two languages remains controversial." which is good, but it's prefixed by a sentence suggesting this is a political/cultural issue, while it's mainly a scientific one. The remaining of the article is written to convince the reader that there is a genetic connection between the Japanese and Korean languages, so I decided to add the WP:FRNG template.

An IP – 37.171.138.204 (talk) 12:38, 30 March 2021 (UTC)


 * Do not remove the fringe template without explaining why in the talk page see Template:Fringe theories, if you consider I didn't explained the neutrality issue clearly enough, let me know, if you think I'm mistaken about my interpretation of WP:NPOV and WP:FRNG, give your point of view here in the talk page, but do not remove the template without explaining yourself here.
 * I also started a discussion in the WP:FTN
 * I do not question the references for what is written, the problem is that it's not balanced, see WP:STRUCTURE and WP:UNDUE (might be a good idea to read all of WP:NPOV and maybe WP:FRNG too).
 * The same IP, but different – 37.173.70.236 (talk) 16:55, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree that this page has to be completely rewritten. Ideally, it should be divided into a typological part that presents the strucutral similarity between Japanese (or Japonic) and Korean based on quality sources explicitly devoted to this topic (thus no do-it-yourself comparisons), and a genealogical part that briefly mentions the existing classification models without blown-up details of minor proposals. Only the former can justify the existence of this article.
 * The question of a genealogical relationship should be mainly discussed in Classification of the Japonic languages, Korean_language, and foremost in Altaic languages, especially since nowadays hardly anybody believes that Japonic and Korean are related to each other to the exclusion of any other languages. Those who link Japonic and Korean generally do it in a wider context, e.g. Robbeets within "Transeurasian" (= The Phylum Formerly Known as Altaic). –Austronesier (talk) 09:19, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Add: I don't agree to dismiss Francis-Ratte's dissertation entirely as a "student thesis". It's valuable WP:scholarship, and the author has teamed up with Unger to present it in a high-quality source: . The main problem is the monstrous table with primary data from the dissertation. –Austronesier (talk) 09:31, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

Yeah I don't think deleting all mention of the dissertation is the right move since it's the most recent scholarship on the issue I know of. I agree that the giant table isn't much warranted though. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.146.13.210 (talk • contribs) 04:32 17 April 2021 (UTC)
 * When I first added the table I also thought it was too big, but I kept everything because I was not sure about what was more valuable. Maybe we could restore half or a quarter of it, keeping the best examples, or would that be original research? - Munmula (talk), second account of  Alumnum 15:27, 17 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Perhaps you should make it its own section, because selectively picking examples might be classified as original research.Innominatvs (talk) 00:15, 29 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Presenting an illustrative sample from a large dataset is not OR, unless it is cherrypicked to make a point that is not made by the author. And per, we should make clear that this data is from a specific study. Other proponents of the Japonic-Korean relationship might have a different idea about which correspondences are valid (cf. Bomhard's vs. "Moscow school" evidence for Nostratic as an extreme example of how to obtain the same result with very different data). While we're at it, I agree that "there is often a correlation between language and genetics". But when we cite a source, we should not make additional implications that are not explicitly made there. A addition like "which is difficult to reconcile with the hypothesis the two populations had divergent origins" is of course a trivial corollary and not WP:synthesis in the context of population genetics alone, but if the preceding statement (citing Robbeets & Bouckaert) is a about languages and speaker groups, then things are different. I have separated the statements, and removed the corollary (you can re-add it, but ideally with a less implicatory wording). Maybe we can find a source which expliticly discusses the correlation. (Even if synth was allowed on WP, I would hesitate to see Takeuchi et al. as strong support for a special Japonic-Korean relation, since it has no data from Tungusic groups which might turn out to be a game-changer). –Austronesier (talk) 13:08, 29 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Perhaps make it a seperate page, with the data from each author noted from each other. That way we can provide unbiased information while containing no original research.Innominatvs (talk) 23:16, 13 May 2021 (UTC)
 * I deleted the Vocabulary section again, which was re-added while completely missing the point. The vast majority of the Grammar section is unsourced as well, and plan to cut it if nobody objects. Is there any salvageable content in this paragraph? –LaundryPizza03 ( d c̄ ) 06:17, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

Impenetrable
This article has deep problems, but I'd like to pick on this specifically: the use of lots of unromanised text makes most of the article impenetrable for even most experts in Korean and Japanese alike, let alone laypeople. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.61.180.106 (talk) 04:34, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Most of this relates to unsourced material that is persistently re-added in violation of Wikipedia's principal policy of WP:verifiability. I have removed it (again), so this should solve it. –Austronesier (talk) 14:22, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Commented-out fringe content?
I recently removed the maintenance tags becaue all the visible is gone, but what shall we do with the commented-out table in the Vocabulary section? –LaundryPizza03 ( d c̄ ) 09:23, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

However, a 2016 paper proposing a common lineage between Korean and Japanese traces around 500 core words thought to share a common origin. Most resembling lexicon in the study has been observed between Middle Korean (15th century) and earlier Old Japanese (8th century), some of which is shown in the following table:

Although fewer in number, there have been also comparisons between stages other than Old Japanese and Middle Korean:

In addition to the above, there may be a relation between the words for morning (朝, asa; 아침, achim). A historical variant in Korean may have been pronounced "asa" (see: Asadal).

Grammar
Under the Grammar heading it states: Korean and Japanese both have an agglutinative morphology in which verbs may function as prefixes - shouldn't "prefixes" here be "adjectives"? I've not viewed the citation, but my knowledge of Korean makes me somewhat doubt this claim. Leasnam (talk) 04:04, 15 August 2022 (UTC)

Mention of DPRK (North Korea) phasing out of Hanja
according to Hanja it is mentioned that the DPRK uses more Hanja than the ROK, which is strange because its mentioned here that they've been completely phrased out. 2603:7000:D039:B258:DE83:8D1B:6FE2:7922 (talk) 12:29, 16 March 2023 (UTC)


 * The other article makes no such claim. It asserts that Hanja has not been officially used in North Korea since 1949. –LaundryPizza<b style="color:#b00">03</b> ( d c̄ ) 18:45, 16 March 2023 (UTC)