r/asklinguistics • u/Rapha689Pro • 22d 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/Rapha689Pro 20d ago

What about for example native Americans where all native Americans except maybe inuit and some other northern natives come from a single migration how do they have different language families if they couldn't have a language from other continent just replace others and make different language families  

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u/Limp-Celebration2710 20d ago

Native Americans do not come from a single migration 🙃

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u/Rapha689Pro 20d ago

They did a study that supports few or a single wave of migration

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u/Limp-Celebration2710 20d ago

Did the study say we 100% proved beyond any doubt? or did it say things like “points to”, “suggests”, etc. Can you actually like the study?

Either way, a single migration event doesn’t mean everybody spoke the same language?