Japonic groups Japanese with the Ryukyuan languages of Okinawa and the surrounding islands. Its wider affiliations are genuinely unresolved: proposals linking Japonic to Korean, to the Altaic languages, or to Austronesian have each been argued by serious scholars and each rejected or left unproven by the mainstream, so Japonic is treated here as an independent family rather than as a branch of a larger one that has not been demonstrated.
Facts
Disputed
Proto-Language StatusProto-Japonic is reconstructed chiefly from Japanese and the Ryukyuan languages. Proposed deeper connections to Korean or to a broader Altaic grouping are considered fringe hypotheses by most comparative linguists; Japonic is treated on this atlas as an independent family. 3 The internal Proto-Japonic reconstruction from Japanese and Ryukyuan is not seriously disputed; the external hypotheses are the fringe element. RegionJapan and the Ryukyu Islands 1 Speaker CountAggregate across Japanese and the Ryukyuan languages; mid-2020s estimate. Connections
Associated With
This source names Korean directly: "proposals linking Japonic to Korean, to the Altaic languages, or to Austronesian have each been argued by serious scholars and each rejected or left unproven by the mainstream, so Japonic is treated..."
Source The Cambridge Encyclopedia of LanguageDavid Crystal (editor)
Includes
Source The Cambridge Encyclopedia of LanguageDavid Crystal (editor)
Sources
1. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language
David Crystal (editor), Cambridge University Press, 2010
2. Ethnologue: Languages of the World
3. Glottolog
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary AnthropologyComments on family membership section, glottolog.org/resource/languoid/id/japo1237Quote, Comments on family membership section, glottolog.org/resource/languoid/id/japo1237
for the latest critique of Altaic.
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