Turkish languages

[uygurlar]

Yakshi Chush Korung (how are you doing?- in my language).

Hi, my name is Abdallah and I am from China. My ethnic background is Uygur and it is part of the Turkish people. I have heard many Korean and Japanese people insist that Uygur and Turkish are part of their same language family. I have heard Korean and Japanese spoken many times in China, but I still can't find the similarities. Let give some examples of expression in Turkish, so any can be kind enough to tell me any detection of similarities:

Hosh Galdanez-Welcome!
Fark Etmaz-It does not matter
Chok minet tarum-I am grateful
Chok desheh krederim-Thank you very much.
Ali evdemeh?-Is Ali in the house?

bir-1
iki-2
uch-3
dart-4
besh-5
alti-6
yedi-7
sekiz-8
dokuz-9
on-10

Iyi Akshamlar-Good evening
Tunaidun-Good afternoon
Gunaidun-Good morning
Guleh Guleh-Good Bye

Evet-Yes
Hayir-No
Tamam-OK
Lutvan-please?
Bilmiyorum-I don't know?

Uzgunum-I'm sad
Mutluyum-I'm happy
Ahchum-I'm hungry
Susadim-I'm thirsty

Davut Gursoy siz misiniz?-Is this Davut Gursoy?
Yarun havul nasul olajak?-How will the weather be tomorrow?

Salamharba (peace to you).

 

[Maciamo]

Indeed I see virtually no similarities with Japanese in your examples. Maybe is it more grammatical similarities ? What is the word order in Uygur ? (Japanese = subject + object + verb) Is there particles that indicate the grammatical function (subj, obj, mode, position...) like in Japanese (wa, ga, wo, de, ni...) ?

 

[uygurlar]

Uygur is SOV. But, still, I don't think that is good enough to indicate common descent.

 

[beluga]

Hmm... Evet and Tamam does ring a bell coz when I played the Turkish tribe in Age Of Empire, the villager does use these words...

 

[Mrs. Camui]

My Japanese knowledge is still rather poor but at least you don't need to add a word "I" in sentences like "I'm hungry" and so, just like in Japanese.

 

[Elizabeth]

Turkish also came up briefly in this recent thread...

Japanese and Finnish

I've noticed some cute similarities between Japanese and my native language, Finnish, while studying. It's rather strange how two so different languages can have these similarities. But strange in a good way, of course! :) First of all, I'm not saying that the similarities are huge, but there's...

jref.com

 

[Scientist]

Japanese and Turkish have a lot of similarities. I would say the main difference between them is the vocabulary. The word order is the same.I know this will hold out to severe testing.

There are many suprises in word translations, it often takes one word to make up for a Japanese word.Verbs have common uses.

Turkish has suffixes and changes in words that take these suffixes (japanese no, e, ni, de... are replaced suffixes in Turkish ) In Turkish there is no wa, ga.

I wasn't aware that Japanese Ural-Altay connection was a theory as m447 posted in Elizabeth's linked thread above. I, My teacher told me that Japanese and Turkish came from the same language family which is in textbooks here. She also told me that Japanese easily learned Turkish.

To me learning Japanese is more like a conversion rather than learning a new language.All you have to find the true translation of verb, noun, particle... This is the reason I fell in love with Japanese, it was like the real language of mind with the minimal cluttering(suffixes), simple, beuatiful!

 

[uygurlar]

^These can be borrowed features from a distant past. Although Turkish and a language like Korean share some features (ie words ending in "uk", "ul", "un"), I know a couple Koreans having immense trouble learning and speaking in Uzbek language courses (btw, Uzbek and Uygur are practically almost the same). The Americans in that class managed to speak better Uzbek than the Koreans, I don't know why?

The relationship between Turkic languages and Japanese-Korean is not the same between say: English, German, Greek, Hindi or even between Chinese and Tibetan. In all these languages they share basic commonalities in vocabulary.

 

[bossel]

From what I know the relationships regarding the Altaic language family are not really clear yet.

This is from

language families of the world

webspace.ship.edu

a website with maps of the different language families:

"There are about 60 languages in the Altaic family, with about 250 million speakers. Included are Turkish and Mongolian.

There is considerable controversy about this family. First, it is often classified with the Uralic languages (see above), which have a similar grammatic structure.

Second, many linguists doubt that Korean, Japanese (125 million speakers), or Ainu should be included, or that these last three are even related to each other!"

 

[uygurlar]

^I agree. I think the only ones holding on to the Ural-Altai theory are ultra-nationalist (ie Pan-Turanists, Genghis Khan worshippers) in Turkey, Korea and Japan. But, Turkic does share much vocabulary with Mongolian. Korean and Japanese is just too far out in orbit to really have a solid relationship with Turkic-Mongol lingua.

 

[Interested]

The claim that Japanese and Korean are related to Altaic languages is all about political intentions. It's very common (especially promoted by the national linguists) to use linguistic connections in order not to be related to certain ethnos in neighbourhood.

Japanese and Koreans are scared to death to be associated with the chinese (because the latter has "low reputation" something), so they hang to the idea that they're coming from eurasia (logically implying relations with Europians).

The same is about Hungarians, whose language is rather closer to Turkic langauges than Finnish (if any closeness can be talked about the hungarian language and any other linguages on earth). It's because Hungarians prefer to be associated to Finnish than Turkish. (When the hungarans claim that finnish and hungarian have grammatical similarities, they forgot that the turkic languages have the same similarities with the finnish, which was the reason why these two groups were before called Ural-Altaic)

The same is about Tuvanians and Oirats (to whom I belong) in Russia. Altthough their lingusitic similarities are equal to either side (Turkic or Mongolic) of Altaic family, they prefer to be related to Turkish as such (because Mongolia is very "low prestigious" something again), hence claim their language is "clearly" a turkic sub-group. They forget that the amount of similarities they find between the Turkic and Oirat is the same as that they would find between Oirat-Mongolic.

All about whom you wanna prefer.) Very subjective.

So, I'm not surprised that Japanese and koreans have tried to relate their language with anything that is not Chinese language. )

 

[lexico]

Hi, Interested!

Welcome to the FORUM!
I'm also a highly interested person on many topics, so I'm happy to meet you here. Now since we are in a lively debate, let me go to the points you raised. I find them very interesting because they tell me something about how people see Asians' ideas and attitudes outside of Asia. It's like perceptions based on previous perceptions, which is very interesting to observe and analyze. So I welcome your comments. It helps me to learn.

The claim that Japanese and Korean are related to Altaic languages...

I'd like to comment on this from three points.
1. The Altaic theory is not a proven hypothesis. Most Altaicists concur that (going from the general geographical direction of west to east) the Turkic language family, the Mongol language family and the Manchu-Tungusic language family are related more closely to one another than with other language families.

2. Some Uralicists like Ramstedt of Finland suggested that Korean be included in the hypothetical language tree called Altaic (*Ural-Altaic at his time, which is believed now to be more properly divided into two distinct language families of the Uralic group and the Altaic.)
A more recent Altaicst, Andrew Roy Miller, delivered many interesting public speeches during his visit to Tokyo, which includes many interesting examples and theoretical analyses thereof that support the Altaic connection of Japanese. Evidence is increasing, but not by far. The case, therefore, is far from settled.

3. I am sure some politicians would be highly interested in the Altaic hypothesis if supporting it, or denying it, would affect his/her political career. However, I wonder if politicians, whose primary interest is not in linguistic truth, or any truth as a matter of fact ;-), would be qualified to make any relevant comment on the Altaic theory, or on whether Japanese or Korean is to be included in the Altaic family.

4. When so much is undecided regarding the Altaic theory, I do not know how one can make such a sweeping judgement at all.

It's widespread (especially promoted by the national linguists) to use linguistic connections unrelated to certain ethnos in the neighbourhood.

Whatever comes from politicians or the Nazis, my advice to you is, don't believe it!

Japanese and Koreans are scared to death to be associated with the Chinese (because the latter has a "low reputation" something), so they hang to the idea that they're coming from Eurasia (logically implying relations with Europeans).

How do you mean? 3 points require clarification.
1. Who is scared of what?
2. Do the Chinese have a low reputation in Russia?
3. Who came from Eurasia?

By the way, Eurasia is a geographical term comprised of Asia, Asia Minor, and Europe. So basically, you're saying Asians (arguably) came from Asia? I recall that some European missionary proposed that the Ainus of Hokkaido were of Indo-Euro-Hittite descent, but that theory has been disproved for some time.

The Ainus are considered the descendants of the many Paleo-Asian peoples dating back to the Neolithic period. Because of their social integration into the Japanese nation, their identity is at risk. Still, the Ainus' language and culture are precious to Asian history and culture. They preserve some of the Oldest Asian Elements of the Asian Continental Civilization, emphasising the capitals.

The same is about Hungarians, whose language is closer to Turkic languages than Finnish (if any closeness can be discussed, the Hungarian language and any other languages on earth). It's because Hungarians prefer to be associated with Finnish than Turkish. (When the Hungarians claim that Finnish and Hungarian have grammatical similarities, they forgot that the Turkic languages have the same similarities with the Finnish, which was the reason why these two groups were before called Ural-Altaic)

How can you say Hungarian is closer to Turkish than it is to Finnish? What is the basis of your conclusion other than syntactic similarity? If you are talking about word order, I'd like to say there are only 3!=6 combinations of S, V, and O. In other words, word order really doesn't tell much when it comes to linguistic affinity.

As an agglutinative language, Korean has an extremely profuse set of suffixations as an agglutinative language, and word order is not absolute. However, there is a preferred word order such as AV+S+O+V. But if someone uses O+S+V, or O+V+S, or even S+V+O, it is still well understood, and these forms are often used in everyday speech. I do not know what the case is in Japanese. In another thread here, I think Maciamo talked about the preferred French word order being S+O+V, and there should be other examples of one language shifting its word order with the progression of time.

The same is about Tuvanians and Oirats (to whom I belong) in Russia. Although their linguistic similarities are equal to either side (Turkic or Mongolic) of the Altaic family, they prefer to be related to Turkish as such (because Mongolia is very "low prestigious" something again), hence claim their language is "clearly" a Turkic sub-group. They forget that the similarities they find between the Turkic and Oirat are similar to that they would find between Oirat-Mongolic.
All about whom you wanna prefer.) Very subjective.

I appreciate your insider's observation. As an outsider, I would hardly know why certain people would prefer one theory over another. However, it appears now that Russians (byelo) have a rather low view of any people that are not Russian?

If I may ask, do you speak Kalmuck? My book tells me that Oirat used to have its own alphabet since 1648 but turned to Cyrillic in 1944 and that Kalmuk started using Cyrillic in 1917, Roman in 1931, and back to Cyrillic in 1937. Do you still use Cyrillic with an independent Republic, and is there any movement to revert to the Zaya Pandita script?

My textbook also says that Oirat/Kalmuk belongs to the Mongolic family. I wasn't aware that there was so much controversy over Oirat's linguistic affinity to the Mongolic family, especially from the Oirats themselves.

So, I'm not surprised that Japanese and Koreans have tried to relate their language with anything that is not Chinese.

There may have been those nationalistic feelings among certain individuals in Asian countries in the transitional (Westernizing) period. These may have exerted a certain degree of influence until recent times. However, their voices are diminishing and really do not significantly influence modern linguists' linguistic studies.

I do not believe that the Chinese languages are related in a genetic sense to Korean or Japanese. However, there are many loans, and some linguists have suggested that certain "aboriginal" words may have been transmitted between the early peoples inhabiting the Asian Continent during the Neolithic period before discovering copper, bronze, and iron.

And let me suggest that the borrowing or loaning of words was bidirectional, even multidirectional. I am sure that the eventual language map of Asia in the Neolithic period will clear away many of the doubts and misconceptions regarding national identity and eradicate, once and for all, all those politically charged claims that people are getting thru the media. Some scholars have even argued that the very notion of "nation" is a relatively recent invention of the 19th century. If that is true, any discussion of nation or race will become moot when applied to a period before the 19th century.

 

[hkBattousai]

I am very surprized to read all these, because it is very smilar what we use in Turkey today.
There are minor spelling differences :

Hosh Galdanez-Welcome!
Fark Etmaz-It does not matter
Chok minet tarum-I am grateful
Chok desheh krederim-Thank you very much.
Ali evdemeh?-Is Ali in the house?

Hoş Geldiniz-Welcome!
Fark etmez-It does not matter
Çok minnettarım-I am grateful
Çok teşekkür ederim-Thank you very much.
Ali evde mi?-Is Ali in the house?

bir-1
iki-2
uch-3
dart-4
besh-5
alti-6
yedi-7
sekiz-8
dokuz-9
on-10

1-bir
2-iki
3-üç
4-dört
5-beş
6-altı
7-yedi
8-sekiz
9-dokuz
10-on

Iyi Akshamlar-Good evening
Tunaidun-Good afternoon
Gunaidun-Good morning
Guleh Guleh-Good Bye

İyi Akşamlar-Good evening
Tünaydın-Good afternoon
Günaydın (literally : Gün aydınlık / day is bright)-Good morning
Güle güle (literally : (go) with smiling)-Good Bye

Evet-Yes
Hayir-No
Tamam-OK
Lutvan-please?
Bilmiyorum-I don't know?

Evet-Yes
Hayır-No
Tamam-OK
Lütfen-please?
Bilmiyorum-I don't know?

Uzgunum-I'm sad
Mutluyum-I'm happy
Ahchum-I'm hungry
Susadim-I'm thirsty

Üzgünüm-I'm sad
Mutluyum-I'm happy
Acıktım-I'm hungry
Susadım-I'm thirsty

Davut Gursoy siz misiniz?-Is this Davut Gursoy?
Yarun havul nasul olajak?-How will the weather be tomorrow?

Davut Gürsoy siz misiniz?-Is this Davut Gursoy?
Yarın hava nasıl olacak?-How will the weather be tomorrow?

Salamharba (peace to you).

Selamlarla

ş = sh
ç = ch

 

[ygthaydut]

meraba

Merabalar, Türk müsünüz acaba?

 

[hkBattousai]

Merabalar, Türk müsünüz acaba?

Merabalar, Türk müsünüz acaba? = Hello, are you Turkish by any chance?

Yes, I am.

 

[ygthaydut]

do you live in japan are you turk?

 

[hkBattousai]

do you live in japan are you turk?

I'm living in İstanbul/Turkey.
I like Japan culture and am learning Japanese, so joined this forum.

 

[scorpion da black]

salam alaykum.
i am lebanese from turkish heretige

 

[epigene]

I have moved the thread from "Learning Japanese" to "Literature & Arts" since this isn't a thread where posters are addressing directly the topic of learning Japanese.

 

[kireikoori]

Turkish also came up briefly in this recent thread...

omg, this forum is weird. I keep responding to posts that are years old. o_o
Kind of cool though at the same time, that threads last so long here.

That would be so neat if Japanese was related to Finnish.

There seems to be a lot of differences between Japanese and Altaic languages just as there are similarities. But it seems like it's the most likely possibility. Japanese and Korea are probably both Altaic languages, though distantly.

Seems like all those languages are hard to classify, there are all sorts of theories. Finno-Ugric, Uralic, Uralo-Siberian, Ural-Altaic, Uralo-Yukaghir, Indo-Uralic, Eurasiatic, Nostratic, ect. None apparently completely agreed upon.

 

[boing472]

Yakshi Chush Korung (how are you doing?- in my language).
Hi, my name is Abdallah and I am from China. My ethnic background is Uygur and it is part of the Turkish people. I have heard many Korean and Japanese people insist that Uygur and Turkish are part of their same language family. I have heard Korean and Japanese spoken many times in China, but I still can't
find the similarities. Let give some examples of expression in Turkish, so any can be kind enough to tell me any detection of similarities:
Hosh Galdanez-Welcome!
Fark Etmaz-It does not matter
Chok minet tarum-I am grateful
Chok desheh krederim-Thank you very much.
Ali evdemeh?-Is Ali in the house?
bir-1
iki-2
uch-3
dart-4
besh-5
alti-6
yedi-7
sekiz-8
dokuz-9
on-10
Iyi Akshamlar-Good evening
Tunaidun-Good afternoon
Gunaidun-Good morning
Guleh Guleh-Good Bye
Evet-Yes
Hayir-No
Tamam-OK
Lutvan-please?
Bilmiyorum-I don't know?
Uzgunum-I'm sad
Mutluyum-I'm happy
Ahchum-I'm hungry
Susadim-I'm thirsty
Davut Gursoy siz misiniz?-Is this Davut Gursoy?
Yarun havul nasul olajak?-How will the weather be tomorrow?
Salamharba (peace to you).

actually there is one simmilar word in your example.
Iyi Akshamlar-Good evening
ii in japanese means also good.

and i know there is some more, or i guess (i know some words from uzbek that is similar to uyghur)

1 =uzbek word 2 =japanese word

1kiimok = 2kiru ,the root here is kii that means to wear
1kora = 2kura =black
1kattiq = 2katai means hard ,root kat
1ota = 2oto-san means father, root ot

if you say in uzbek "in Kashghar" it will be "Kashgarda"
if you say it in japanese it will be "Kashgarde"

the sufixes sounds the similar and is used in the same way and have the same meaning
1da 2da

peace!

 

[Genki?]

They all are agglutinative language, and have different grammar from Indo-European languages. Other examples are Mongorian, Finnish and Hungarian.

It doesn't really mean they are "that" similar, but it is probably easier for Japanese people to learn your language than English if they start from scratch.

 

[Gackt21]

I would love to get private lessons and have friends that speak Turkish.
How do I ask?

What is your name?
What are your interest?

I am nervous about asking one of my friends on Facebook.

 

[Artigh]

How can you say Hungarian is closer to Turkish than it is to Finnish? What is the basis of you conclusion other than syntactic similarity? If you are talking about word order, I'd like to say there are only 3!=6 combinations of S, V, and O. In other words, word order really doesn't tell much when it comes to linguistic affinity.
Korean, as an agglutinative language, has an extremely profuse set of suffixations, and word order is not absolute; although there is a preferred word order such as AV+S+O+V. But if someone uses O+S+V, or O+V+S, or even S+V+O, it is still well understood, and these forms are often used in everyday speech. I do not know what the case is in Japanese. In another thread here, I think Maciamo talked about the preferred French word order being S+O+V, and there should be other examples of one language shifting its word order with the progression of time.

The syntax of a language doesn't only cover the word order: like S-O-V or whatever.
in Korean, Japanese, Turkish, Hungarian and Finnish;
The word order is S-O-V. We know that.
in Finnish, Turkish and Hungarian, the words receive suffixes all the time.
in English, if you force you can maybe say:
"Every day, Mark the shepherd along with the goats to the pasture goes."
Okay you got a S-O-V syntax. But it's not what it's about. It's more than that.
In Ural-Altaic languages, it is:
The Shepherd Mark the goats-with/of-along the pasture-to goes-he.
Can you do this in English, french ? no you can't, so the fact that French's preferred syntax being S-O-V is off topic.
The syntax doesn't just mean the subject-verb order.
in japanese: My name is Jamey would be:
Watashi-no namae-wo Jamey desu.
[ I - of name-the Jamey is. ]
in Turkish: Ben-im ad-ım Jamey 'dir
[ I - of name-my Jamey 'is]
Do you now see the similarity? The linguists don't include these languages in one family for just the syntax.
There is also another thing:
Hungarian, Turkish and Finnish all have vowel and consonant harmonies. (of Hungarian I'm not sure about the consonant harmony).
And in these 3 languages everything is made by suffixes.
Example:
Yapamayacaklarımızdanmış. In turkish is one complete sentence, which in english means:
"So it seems to be one of those we wouldn't be able to do."
Japanese and Korean are grammatically much simpler than Turkish, Hungarian and Finnish, however the base is the same.
About Hungarian being closer to Turkish more than Finnish.
I'm not too sure but I made a little search and found out that:
Finnish and Hungarian are in the Ural part of Ural-Altaic languages.
However, although being still unclear, it's said that Korean, Japanese and Turkish are Altaic.
So I don't see how Hungarian is closer to Turkish either.
By the way you should give examples when opposing an idea rather than just putting an oppoing argument.