Languages and History: Japanese, Korean and Altaic Book

Summarizing what is known of the history and prehistory of Korean and Japanese, a problem that necessarily involves their possible genetic relationship to the Altaic (Turkic, Mongiol, Tungus) languages, the author examines--and demonstrates that it is necessary to reject--arguments now dominant in most Western scolarship that would attribute all similarities among these languages to borrowing rather than genetic relationship. He argues that the now widely accepted truism that "Korean and Japanese cannot be Altaic laguages" because "there are no Altaic languages" can no longer seriously be maintained. Korean and Japanese both possess important early written records, until now either ignored or largely misrepresented by those who dismiss the Altaic hyphotesis. The author shows that these texts, when approached with proper philological precision, bolster the Altaic hyphotesis in much the same way that the discovery of Tokharian and Hittite materials earlier stimulated and clarified Indo-European historical linguisticsRead More