Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: maro
The class was destroyed and many individuals were just flat out killed or forced into exile. Still, sometimes you can still run into one of the Yi family. Like the Shogun's people, many Yi cousins ended up in the US.

The Japanese language is simply a creole, as is English, as is Korean. Still, Korean is very clearly in the Uralic-Altaic group. Koreans can learn to communicate with Mongol people in Ulan Bator very quickly, as did the neighbor girl several years back when she founded the first Christian church to ever achieve government official recognition in Mongolia. She's fluent in Mongol and considered a very serious expert in Korean.

Japanese language differences are sufficient that I don't think anybody tries to categorize it as Uralic-Altaic anymore.

The Polynesian substrate is known, but it's reasons for being in Japan are not always obvious - unless, of course, you know lots of folks that look like the ancient Jomon pottery and who develop keloid scars!

Regarding the Shan, when Shan fell so did Mohenjo-Daro, Sumer, Syria, etc. Everything to the East of Egypt "fell" in some sort of natural calamity. Within a century there were Shan settlements on the Korean peninsula. Within another century there were signs that the Shan had made it to Japan. I don't think they planted an enduring civilization in Japan, but FUR SHUR they were there early enough to impress their genes on the original population. (It's probably easier to find the descendants of the Shan that it is to find the descendants of the 5 trade cities that were linked to the Silk Road culture.)

19 posted on 12/19/2002 5:25:17 PM PST by muawiyah
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 18 | View Replies ]


To: muawiyah
Both Korean and Japanese are polysynthetic, agglutinative languages. Both English and Chinese are isolating, analytic languages. English may have started as a creole, but creolization may be a natural part in the life of any languages. The so-called Ural-Altaic languuage group is not necessarily the only way to group languages. Read Greenberg's magisterial works.
20 posted on 12/19/2002 6:38:26 PM PST by maro
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 19 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson