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   Nithin Coca నితిన్ (ncoca@social.coop)'s status on Monday, 20-Jan-2025 11:56:36 JST Nithin Coca నితిన్

   I keep hearing from #Mongols #Turks and now #Uyghurs living in #Japan that #Japanese is relatively easy for them to learn, as the grammar and structure is similar to their languages. That can't be a coincidence, seems like there is a likely common linguistic heritage, no?

   Yet, linguists claim they are unrelated languages. Why the contradiction? Is it #Japanese nationalism? Or #western academic elitism?

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     Sean Bala (seanbala@mas.to)'s status on Monday, 20-Jan-2025 11:56:35 JST Sean Bala

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     @ncoca Really fascinating point. I think I remember from Isaac Meyer's "History of Japan" #podcast that there is a running debate about just how deep the connection between the #Japanese and mainland Asia is (which is a point of contention among both Western scholars and Japanese nationalists invested in the idea of Japanese exceptionalism). I think you can find it in the early episodes of his new "Revised Overview of Japanese History" starting at episode 500.

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     Sean Bala (seanbala@mas.to)'s status on Monday, 20-Jan-2025 11:56:53 JST Sean Bala

     in reply to

     On a more direct note, this post reminds me a video from the YouTube channel LangFocus discussing how there are these weird coincidental features shared between #Celtic and #Semitic languages. I think his conclusion is that they are probably coincidences but it is a weird series of similarities.

     He might have some videos that explore what you are thinking about here.

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     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAAmwtdP1bE