bartron2k2{at}hotmail.com (Makoto Taniguchi) wrote in news:botnv9$e3r$1
{at}darwin.ediacara.org:

> I was wondering, why is there so much diversity in languages?
> especially countries that live side by side.
> 
> For example, Japanese, Korean, Inuit and Mongolian has been said to be
> in the Tungusic language family. This makes me wonder why Cantonese
> and Mandrin has little to no similarity to the nearby Tungusic
> speaking peoples.
> 
> The Chinese, Japanese Korean and Mongolians at one time must have
> evolved from a common ancestor lets just call it a "master race" just
> like Hitler claimed... of course this time we don't know who it is and
> no one is claiming that anyone is the master race.
> 
> Anyhow, if we share a common ancestor, why would the linguistics
> change so much?
> 
> This story is sort of similar when we're talking about the difference
> between French and German. The countries are side by side but
> obviously the language family is completely different.
> 

I think that the evidence is for an early split between Chinese and the 
other families mentioned- the current geographic proximity does not reflect 
historic development ofthe languages and peoples. But if you are 
interested, I suggest you check out the work of Cavalli-Sforza, who has 
studied this question extensively. His "Genes, Peoples and
Languages" is an 
excellent introduction.

Yours,

Bill Morse
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