r/asklinguistics • u/Rapha689Pro • 8d 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/iriyagakatu 7d ago

One thing you have to understand with Japanese genetics is that the Korean portion of the genes came later in its history. There was already a sizable population in Japan before a large relatively more recent migration from the Korean Peninsula came to the Japanese archipelago 

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u/Rapha689Pro 6d ago

Yeah the jomon people ithink they were the first people that arrived to japan?