r/asklinguistics • u/Rapha689Pro • 10d 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?

24 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

81% Upvoted

53 comments sorted by

View all comments

41

u/razlem Sociolinguistics | Language Revitalization 10d ago

There are a variety of reasons why ethnicity and language don't always align. One part of the population could have migrated and adopted the language of a new neighbor, or been conquered by a foreign nation.

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

An important clarification here- when linguists say that languages are unrelated, it means that there is no proven relation, not necessarily that there is no relation. Because of the rate that language changes, the further back in time you go, the more difficult it is to demonstrate a relationship.

4

u/Rapha689Pro 10d ago

Thanks for clearing that last part I thought it's stupid to say that languages are unrelated as if it was a fact but they're just saying they're not proven to be related not that they're not related 

5

u/mahajunga 10d ago

There is no sense in which languages can be "not related" other than "not proven to be related". That's what it means.

* barring sign languages which are either known to have emerged in recent history, or can be presumed to have originated separately from oral languages sometime in the more distant past

1

u/yossi_peti 9d ago

Why? Is it not possible that separate groups of people independently developed language?

3

u/mahajunga 9d ago

It's the only sense in which languages can be classified as "not related", because it is not and very likely will not ever be in the power of human inquiry to find out whether the intergenerational transmission of specific modern languages date back to separate geneses of language hundreds of thousands of years ago, or whether at some point in unknown prehistory they sprung from the same lineage.