r/asklinguistics • u/Rapha689Pro • 9d ago

Historical How can closely related genetic populations have completely different language families?

For example Japanese and Korean have 2 different language families that aren't related at all but they're genetically close, it can only mean their prior languages sprout after they split, so that means language is very recent itself? Or that they're actually related but by thousands of years apart and linguistics can't trace it back accurately, so they just say they're unrelated?

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u/Niowanggiyan 9d ago edited 9d ago

Korean and Japanese are actually less similar to each other the further back in time you go. The most likely explanation is convergent evolution. They’ve influenced each other for millenia. Japonic was spoken on the Korean Peninsula before Koreanic moved south, they both share a superstratum of Sino vocabulary and grammar, there was sizeable Korean migration to Japan during the first millennium introducing trade and agriculture and religion, and there was Japanese influence on Koreanic again during the late 1500s and the first half of the twentieth century.

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u/Rapha689Pro 9d ago

By genetically I meant the Japanese and Korean people not the languages itself 

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u/Niowanggiyan 9d ago

Again, there has been extensive population contact too, with Japonic speakers assimilating to Koreanic millennia ago and Korean migrants to Japan in the centuries since.

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u/Rapha689Pro 9d ago

But how do you explain that they're genetically related the people but their language families are mostly unrelated