Korean and Japanese

Linguosaurus
Sep 1, 2018 · 2 min read

Of the many similarities between Korean and Japanese, one particularly deep similarity involves the kinds of consonants they had. More specifically, it has to do with their obstruents, consonants formed by obstructing airflow (e.g. to form /p/, airflow is stopped by closing the lips together, then opening them again).

In Old Japanese, words could only begin with “voiceless” obstruents (p, t, k, s) — “voiceless” because they are whispered (vocal chords don’t vibrate). Inside words, though, there were both voiced (b, d, g, z) and voiced obstruents. Only later were there words beginning with voiced obstruents.

In Modern Korean, too, words can only begin with voiceless obstruents. The most common type of obstruents found at the of words are the plain obstruents (p, t, k, s, ch). Inside words, these become voiced.

Korean also has aspirated (p’, t’, k’, ch’) and tense obstruents (pp, tt, kk, ss, chh). These appear both at the beginnings of words and inside them. However, compared to plain obstruents, words beginning with aspirated and tense obstruents are much less common. This suggests that words were only allowed to begin with aspirated and tense obstruents much more recently. In other words, at some point in the past, Korean words used to only begin with plain obstruents.

We can now see the pattern that Korean and Japanese both used to share: plain voiceless obstruents at the beginnings of words, but voiced and voiceless obstruents inside words. We can also see that both languages have diverged from this shared pattern in more recent times. This suggests that contact between these two languages had begun to diminish by the time of Old eJapanese, or about 1300 years ago, but must have been more intensive before that.

Of course, we can’t reach conclusions based on just one similarity. However, the picture it paints is consistent with what we know from archaeology: the ancestors of modern Japanese people used to live on the Korean peninsula, migrating to the Japanese islands around 400 BC. It would make sense, then, that contact between the two languages diminished somewhat after this migration.

After Japanese speakers migrated off the Korean peninsula, Korean came under heavy influence from another neighbouring language: Chinese. We will look at this next time.

Linguosaurus

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Thoughts from a linguistically-oriented dinosaur.

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