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Altaic language bonus? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6051 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes  2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 1 of 6 06 May 2011 at 6:40am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I am not an expert on this topic, but I have heard about the "Altaic" proposed language family, and read about it. I wish to learn a few languages that are proposed to be in this family, such as Japanese, Korean, and Uyghur.
Does anyone here have experience with various languages in this family to point out what kind of "bonus" one would get or how similar they are? I have seen many topics about Japanese vs Korean and heard that they are quite similar, but what about other Turkic languages, Mongolian? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| daristani Senior Member United States Joined 7145 days ago 752 posts - 1661 votes Studies: Uzbek | Message 2 of 6 06 May 2011 at 9:06am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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As you know, linguists continue to argue over the existence of an "Altaic" family of languages, and if such exists, which languages would be included in it. Setting aside the whole thorny question of genetic relationships, however, I'll offer some tentative comments on what I think are the practical "bonus" aspects in terms of carryover or structural similarities making it easier to learn other languages in the so-called family after already having learned one or more of them.
I come at it from the Turkic angle, knowing fairly fluent Turkish and having dabbled in most of the other Turkic languages to a fair degree. I've looked at Mongolian closely but never learned it, and have only read about Japanese and looked at some of its grammar in transliteration, when I was once being encouraged to take it up. I know nothing of Korean, but understand (primarily from discussions on these forums) that it's sort of a more complicated version of Japanese with more difficult phonology. First, starting from two opposite ends of the family, I know for a fact that Turkish speakers learn Japanese, and vice versa, fairly easily. The S-O-V structure, explicit case system, and agglutinative nature seem to make the transition relatively easy. Lexically, there's next to no carryover, and in the actual details of the grammar, there are huge differences. The Turkic languages all have very highly developed tense-aspect-modality (TAM) systems, the subtleties of which are still being worked out by linguists. Per my understanding, the Japanese and Korean verbal systems don't have these complicated TAM systems, and in fact are rather simple in this aspect, but instead are complicated by various levels of respect/politeness, etc. So while the verbal systems of both "ends" of the "family" are rather intricate, the "spirit" of these intricacies varies greatly, presumably resulting in not too much of a bonus in this regard. (Uyghur, by the way, has an extremely complex TAM system.) Mongolian, from what I've seen, strikes me as being in some ways a bit closer to Japanese than to Turkic in terms of the "logic" of the language. E.g., the verbal system is also fairly simple in terms of the number of tenses, and verbs don't take personal endings the way they always do in Turkic. Comparing Turkic and Mongolian, Turkic roots are shorter, usually only one syllable, while Mongolian roots are often longer. In contrast, Turkic is more agglutinative, in that you can put more suffixes in succession on a given word, while Mongolian usually doesn't pile them up in this way. Again, I think this makes Mongolian a bit closer to Japanese (and possibly Korean) in terms of "the way it works". There is a fair amount of shared vocabulary between Mongolian and the Turkic languages, but I don't think sufficiently so as to offer a real bonus in terms of learning. (I think they're more words that interest philologists and fuel debates over whether they document genetic relationships or merely consist of borrowing, than actual "bridges" from one language to the next.) Given your knowledge of Chinese, you might also take a look at Manchu; it's in some ways the simplest of the Altaic languages, and is very relevant to China in terms of history. There's a short Wikibook "course" online that can give you a feel for the way it works at: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Manchu There's also an interesting blog on Manchu at: http://www.sinoglot.com/manchu/ I think my bottom line take on it all would be that the structural similarities would probably make it somewhat easier to move from one language to the next, somewhat the way (I imagine) knowledge of one tonal language would probably facilitate learning another, even unrelated, tonal language. But I think whatever genetic relationships that may exist probably lie fairly deep, and wouldn't likely help too much in terms of vocabulary et al, especially as the languages lie in different cultural areas and thus have borrowed lots of words from outside. (Uyghur, for instance, has taken in huge amounts of Arabic vocabulary, and I imagine Mongolian still retains a fair bit of Russian vocabulary, at least in some spheres.) Edited by daristani on 06 May 2011 at 3:38pm 21 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6051 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 3 of 6 06 May 2011 at 7:05pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Wow, terrific informative post! Thanks you!
1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| OneEye Diglot Senior Member Japan Joined 6851 days ago 518 posts - 784 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, Taiwanese, German, French | Message 4 of 6 07 May 2011 at 6:53am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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On the subject of Manchu: if you do decide to learn it keep in mind that there are virtually no native speakers left. Fewer than 20 if I remember correctly. It is, however, a very important language in the study of Chinese history (specifically the Qing dynasty). See the work of Mark Elliott, for instance. The (only, as far as I know) textbook in English is called Manchu: A Textbook for Reading Documents by Gertraude Roth Li. You will, of course, want to learn the script, and not some romanized version such as the one presented in the wikibooks link. The course does seem reasonable otherwise though.
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| pfn123 Senior Member Australia Joined 5084 days ago 171 posts - 291 votes Speaks: English* | Message 5 of 6 07 May 2011 at 11:40am | IP Logged | ||||||||
On Manchu's lack of speakers, it seems there is a movement among some Manchus to regain thier language. (Read this, and search google, etc.) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| jarm Newbie Australia Joined 4913 days ago 33 posts - 55 votes Speaks: English* | Message 6 of 6 01 January 2012 at 5:54am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I don't know any Turkic languages, but Mongolian has a lot of different suffixes which can be combined in various different ways. Here's an example from a grammar I have:
So, as shown above, it's definitely possible to stack them on. Whether it's common is another question... The average verb might very well have a couple different suffixes, but there are also set expressions which are comprised of roots and suffixes, but seem to be treated as separate words in their own right (i.e. idiomatic expressions). There are also some suffixes which are used specifically for first, second or third person (or a combination). As for the roots, there are a lot of monosyllabic verb roots in Mongolian. I have no idea what proportion are, but they don't really seem that uncommon to me... One thing which confuses people unfamiliar with Mongolian, is that single vowels at the end of words are generally not pronounced, but can indicate the pronunciation of the previous consonant (or even previous vowel). For those who know IPA, you can compare the following:
Edited by jarm on 01 January 2012 at 5:56am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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