Is Japanese related to the Altaic language family?
(Note: This answer is taken from ‘North Kyushu Creole’ A Hypothesis concerning the Multilingual Formation of Japanese written by John C. Maher) “The Ural-Altaic language comprises a wide range. Ural includes present-day Finnish and Hungarian. Altaic indicates Turkish, Mongolian, Samoyed, Tungus and Korean. H. J. Klaproth, the German traveller and scholar is credited with first suggesting the relation between Japanese and the Ural-Altaic languages (Asia Polyglotta 1823). Castren (1857) further elaborated the category of ‘Altaisch’ and ongoing research on language typology led subsequent investigators to place Japanese and Korean in that group: Rosny (1864), Winkler (1884, 1894), Grunzel (1895). The Austrian Anton Boller (1857) emphasised the connection thus: “Nachweiss, dass das Japanische zum ural-altaischen Stamme gehort”. J. Hoffman, Professor of Japanese at Leiden University voiced the same opinion (1867). By the turn of the century, evidence for the Altaic relationship led at least
