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Are there any studies that show Mongols and Koreans are any more related to each other than they are to Northern Han Chinese, Manchus, and Japanese, or the Evenks, yakuts, and chukchis?
The Turkic, Mongol and Tungusic peoples all evolved from the same matrix in Manchuria. That would include the Yakuts. There's some question whether the Koreans and ancestors of the Japanese were close enough to that homeland to be involved. Do some research on Koguryo, the ancient Korean homeland. Some scholars believe the Manchu (who are related to the Tungus/Evenks-Evens) have their roots in Koguryo. The Koreans especially are studying the archaeological record in this regard. There must be genetic analyses that address this question, but I haven't seen them.
Korea and Japan were both heavily influenced by China. Mongolia much less.
Korean and Japanese languages are not linguistically close to Chinese, but they both share over 50% words or cognates with Chinese now. Had Korea not abandoned Chinese characters, the mutual intelligibility between the two written languages would be like German vs Dutch. Mongols, however, never adopted Chinese characters and their language does not share many cognates with Chinese.
Mongolia was not an agriculture society, while China, Japan, and Korea were.
Most importantly, Mongols and Chinese had consistently hated each other. Now Chinese do not care about Mongols that much, but many Mongols still hate Chinese.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Bettafish
Korea and Japan were both heavily influenced by China. Mongolia much less.
Korean and Japanese languages are not linguistically close to Chinese, but they both share over 50% words or cognates with Chinese now. Had Korea not abandoned Chinese characters, the mutual intelligibility between the two written languages would be like German vs Dutch. Mongols, however, never adopted Chinese characters and their language does not share many cognates with Chinese.
Mongolia was not an agriculture society, while China, Japan, and Korea were.
Most importantly, Mongols and Chinese had consistently hated each other. Now Chinese do not care about Mongols that much, but many Mongols still hate Chinese.
Well the Mongols did conquer China and take on a lot of Chinese culture (as did the Manchu) included the language, which included written language for the elite. From the Ming dynasty and onwards though Mongolia remained a part of the Empire, right until the People's Republic of China was proclaimed in 1949. So many Mongols were assimilated. Today most Mongols live in Inner Mongolia and speak Mandarin and learn the Chinese writing system so one could actually argue they've been far more integrated into China than those other two groups.
Well the Mongols did conquer China and take on a lot of Chinese culture (as did the Manchu) included the language, which included written language for the elite. From the Ming dynasty and onwards though Mongolia remained a part of the Empire, right until the People's Republic of China was proclaimed in 1949. So many Mongols were assimilated. Today most Mongols live in Inner Mongolia and speak Mandarin and learn the Chinese writing system so one could actually argue they've been far more integrated into China than those other two groups.
I was only talking about Mongols in (outer) Mongolia, since it seems to be the topic here.
Would you group Mongolia more with East (China, Japan, Korea, de-facto Vietnam, Taiwan), or Central (mostly the stans but also possibly Afghanistan, Western China)?
I thought I'd do a comparison by criteria in order to decide:
Genetically: Both really. I'd say closer to China than Kazakhstan, though, so I'll go with East Asia.
Linguistically: Mongolian is an Altaic language so Central Asia. It also uses Cyrillic alphabet.
Social Structure: Probably similar to North Asia than either, Mongolians are mostly nomads and patriarchal which seems similar to both old Manchuria and Kazakhstan. Not sure how Confucian it is. I'll go Central Asia.
Musically: Mongolian music seems more reminiscent of Chinese and Tibetan music rather than the music of the 'stans' which sounds more Turkish-Arabic.
Gastronomically: The Mongolian diet is heavy on meat (***, sheep), and dairy (mare's milk, cheese, other dairy products) so this one goes to Central Asia.
Spiritually: Mongolia is majority Buddhist and Shamanist, while Central Asia is mostly Muslim so East Asia.
Economically: Mostly a pastoral society, strongly reminiscent of both the Soviet Union and Communist China. Tie.
Locationally: Although it extends pretty far west, Western China is still a lot further west, so I'd say geographically it lies within East Asia.
Korea and Japan were both heavily influenced by China. Mongolia much less.
Korean and Japanese languages are not linguistically close to Chinese, but they both share over 50% words or cognates with Chinese now. Had Korea not abandoned Chinese characters, the mutual intelligibility between the two written languages would be like German vs Dutch. Mongols, however, never adopted Chinese characters and their language does not share many cognates with Chinese.
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Today Korea is returning to the use of Chinese characters. upposedly a Korean high school graduate is now required to know about the same number of Chinese characters as a Japanese high school graduate. How this return to the use of Chinese characters is playing out I have seen no documentation outside of that in the Korean language. However see it as a positive because of the incredible number of Chinese "loan words" in the Korean language. I believe it will facilitate reading in Korean to use the system of mixed Korean phonetics and Chinese ideographs as Japanese does. I have a 60 year old Korean friend who learned a very minimal number of Cinese characters in school but the idea that Chinese characters were completely abandoned by the Koreans seems to be untrue. The Koreans seem to have a prejudice against admitting their Chinese and Japanese influences, similar to many Southern Italians, Greeks and Spaniards in admitting Moorish influence in their respective cultures.
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