I got an informative email today from someone who had some comments on my post Japanese origins. The email is cut & pasted below.
Email text below this point:
I read your recent comments on the Japanese Korean language relationship with interest. I agree with you that the difference in vocabulary of both languages is too great for a separation of races in the last two thousand years. Yet Korean and Japanese are closer than most people realize. They share a past tense form (-tta), a question marker (ka, kka), a word for “to” (-e) and a “topic marker” (ga), which is a particle unique to Japanese and Korean that functions somewhat like the indefinite article in English. Phonetically they are also alike, both lacking consonant clusters, V and F, turning si into shi, weakening the W and tending to “tense” certain consonants (“lenition”), and the similarity is more evident when Chinese words are stripped out, as these have greatly modified the sound of Korean (less so that of Japanese).
Etymology is difficult to research in both languages because of the use of chinese historically, but there are many candidate cognates (I have not attempted to follow the latest romanization system for Korean, it is a pig of a language to romanize and there are inconsistencies below). Some examples are: mul and mizu (water), mom and mi (body), seom and shima (island), hae and hi (sun), iri and inu (wolf and dog), gom and kuma (bear), geot’ and koto (thing, and also a grammatical particle used in the same way in both languages). Many locational words are also similar—twi-e and ato (behind), ap and mae (in front of), yopp-e and yoko (beside)—and two are almost identical, e and e (to) and wi-e and ue (upon). Evidence exists for at least one sound shift, Korean initial b vs. Japanese h, in pairs such as bul and hi (fire), baem and hebi (snake) byeol and hoshi (star), and bari and hae (the fly). Finally, there are intriguing correspondences such as sul, sol, dal, gul versus Japanese sake, sugi, tsuki, kaki (alcohol, pine, moon and oyster); nal, dol, seoli versus nama, tama, shimo (raw, stone/ball and frost), dari, dari, darri- versus hashi, ashi, hashi- (bridge, foot and run—a strange one, this, perhaps just a remarkable coincidence); ttae, dae versus toki, take (time, bamboo), gureum, ssireum versus kumo, sumo (cloud, wrestling), chupda, jopda, versus samui, semai (narrow, cold)—as well as pairings that need more lateral thinking, such as nop- (high) versus nob- (climb, rise), and gyeoul (winter) versus koori (ice). In fact, at least one book has been written drawing all these cognate candidates together, with systematic correspondences outlined. The problem, as said, is the difficulty of proving genetic links, as there are no other comparable languages and the early history of J and K is totally obscured by the use of chinese characters. The absence of obvious correspondence in numbers, kin and personal pronouns and other Indoeuropean “indicators” has also misled people (personal pronouns in both languages are multiple and show great change over time). It is also a fact that neither the Japanese nor many Koreans are happy with the idea of a genetic relationship, and this has dampened research efforts. Still, it is strange how little attention this question, which ultimately concerns the origins of two of the world’s most important peoples, has received outside academia, or even within it. Very broadly, I would say the Japanese-Korean relationship is stronger than say English-Russian, but not comparable with English-German. I am a Japanese-to-English translator who has studied Korean. Hope you find this interesting.
I deleted the the name of the emailer and added the bold
-Razib
Posted by razib at 10:33 PM | | TrackBack Pharmaceutical Trials Outsourced to India
This article details the rapid rise of clinical trials within the Indian market. It parallels the outsourcing debate that has thus far been centered on programmers.
Leaving aside the pros and cons of outsourcing, I’m curious if there will be unexpected problems arising from testing the drug’s efficacy on an Indian population and then marketing the drug to a First World population, consisting primarily of Caucasians?
Here are some related articles. Should Clinical Trials be allowed? Flocking to India. Fodder for Trials.
Addendum: Let me throw a rhetorical stink-bomb for the sake of discussion. We’ve all heard the argument that Pharma is worried that if something isn’t done to curtail drug re-importation into the US, incentive to research new drugs will diminish. Why not just outsource the whole drug development process to a lower cost region and still yield handsome profits? This will eliminate the need to have drug price-controls in many countries and the US consumer price for drugs will drop. Think of the downstream effects. This will also free up all of the expensive US microbiology research personal so that they can find more productive careers in other industries.
OK. discuss amongst yourselves 🙂
Posted by TangoMan at 08:17 PM | | TrackBack The evidence against evolution
Readers might find this “Guest Opinion” from a Montana publication that states Evidence against evolution overwhelming interesting. A close examination of the piece will reveal that the author knows the buzz-words and is acquainted with Intelligent Design literature and the standard talking points. The scientifically literate will find the piece amusing & peculiar. It displays a scientific “look & feel,” without genuine substance.
In many ways it reminds me of science fiction author Ray Bradbury, whose literary, but scientifically naive, short stories and novels aimed for a style of science, rather than the reality of science. Science fiction critic Damon Knight took Bradbury and his fellow travellers to task for demoting the “science” element of science fiction to a poor step-child, the background for novels of plot, character and imagination. In contrast, the science fiction of authors that clustered around John W. Cambpell took science seriously, and many were trained scientists who made the methods of their disciplines integral parts of their short stories. But in the end, it is the more space opera & literary science fiction authors whose work and style has broken out of the ghetto and into the public imagination[1]. Much of the “sci-fi” that you see in film & television has little relation to the hard science fiction of the scientist authors, but bears more than a passing resemblance to the more explicitly fictional works of Bradbury & co. (Look at how many Philip k. Dick novels have made the media jump).
What relationship does this have to evolution? The public doesn’t really understand the substance and method of science. It is easily swayed by the “look & feel,” the illusion becomes the reality. Most people who think of science fiction outside the ghetto think of space opera and might even think that hacks like L. Ron Hubbard were prominent authors within the field when they are jokes.
Proponents of Intelligent Design are often very good at bl
uffing the public into think they know what they are talking about. A few years ago I was watching Politically Incorrect, and SI swimsuit model & evangelical Christian Kathy Ireland, broke out into an exposition of how the impossibility of abiogenesis proves the validity of the Bible. Two years ago a local radio show host in my home town simply allowed a fundamentalist Christian to ramble at him about how the “Second Law of Thermodynamics proves that evolution can’t happen.”
How do people react to such assertions? Quite often, they are dumb-founded, and try to keep an open mind. On Politically Incorrect the other guests and Bill Maher appeared in shock, and had no response to what Kathy Ireland had stated. I doubt many of them knew what abiogenesis was before she defined it for them. The host of the local radio show was an environmentalist Jewish liberal-I doubt he had Creationist sympathies, but he quite obviously had no idea what the Second Law of Thermodynamics was, and so he allowed the Christian to speak since the latter seemed more knowledgeable than he on that topic.
In a rage, I called in to the aforementioned program and gave a point-by-point refutation of the points that the Creationist had made. The host responded that it was all “very interesting,” and something to “think about.” He ended with a mild lecture to me to be more “open minded” and agree that we all ultimately “share the same values.” I really didn’t know what to say to this since it didn’t have relevance to what I had just told him.
When telling this story to a friend of mine who was a lawyer, he agreed that he would not know how to respond to assertions by Creationists about various “disproofs” of evolution. He hadn’t encountered the Second Law of Thermodynamics since high school. He didn’t know about moon dust, microevolution vs. macroevolution, etc. etc.
If one isn’t scientifically literate, I think the one thing that you can do to get Creationists to back off is demand they elaborate on what they are saying. Quite often they are parroting what they have read in a pamphlet by rote, and couldn’t really tell you the details of thermodynamics, or back-of-the-envelope-calcuations of the accumulation of moon dust. Since I know their general tricks, I know all the responses, and I generally find that most of those who repeat what their preacher has taught them react with embarrassment when demands are made for clarification or refutation of a counter-point. This suggests to me that they go through much of their everyday life triumphant over the ignorant and uninformed, proud of their secret knowledge.
[1] For instance, the Star Wars saga owes a large debt to E. E. Smiths space opera “Lensmen” series.
Posted by razib at 06:09 PM | | TrackBack Determinist, I?
Genetic determinist. Call it GNXP’s Rule, all discussions that relate to the intersection of sociology & biology eventually seem to elicit an accusation or implication that GNXPers are “genetic determinists.”
Genes set constraints and parameters. They load the die. But what they end up determining depends on both the gene in question and the context that the phenotype is expressed.
If you take two identical twins and beat one of them over the head periodically for a year during early infancy to the point where it exhibits brain damage-I freely admit that the intellectual capacities of said individual are not predominantly genetically determined. If you take a population of children from a small town and dose them with high levels of lead to the point where the vast majority become mentally retarded-I find it plausible that heritability of intellectual capacities will be lower in this population than otherwise.
We speak not of individuals, but of populations. We speak not of on-off dominant-recessive traits, but of continuous polygenic traits. We apologize to regular readers who have listened to this litany for the nth time, but our experience is that one can not repeat it enough ….
Posted by razib at 05:33 PM | | TrackBack Quantitating liberalism
In a previous thread Randy M. noted that Islam is more variegated than I might have implied. He notes: “Other variants are merely repressively conservative, following traditional conservative repression models. And others are positively liberal.” Godless responds: “Find me a mosque that preaches tolerance for homosexuals.” So I went back to last year’s survey from Pew and did a control-f for “homosexuality.”
The Muslim country with the highest tolerance of homosexuality seems to be Turkey. 22% of Turks surveyed agreed that society should accept homosexuality. Lebanon is close with 21%, but with a 30% Christian minority, I don’t know if it qualifies as “Muslim.” Interestingly, the lowest cluster of homo-acceptance seems to be a group of west and east African countries, though down under in Angola & South Africa they are mildly pro-homo (South Africa has relatively liberal legislation when it comes to homosexuality from what I gather)….
My major point is that you can find pro-life atheists, but the vast majority of atheists accept the legalization of at least first trimester abortions-there is no point in pretending as if pro-life atheists are major players in the pro-life movement or that they are very prominent in the secular movements around the world. What passes for “liberal” in the Muslim world is a thin gruel indeed (allowing some level of proselytization of other religions such as in Indonesia-the liberal Islamic country where Pew indicates 93% of the population does not think homosexuality should be accepted by society). The more important question: what are the attitudes of Muslims who live in the West?
Posted by razib at 04:41 PM | | TrackBack What would google say?
I decided to look at the top 10 websites on google when I queried for 5 major world religions: Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism & Buddhism. I quickly looked around the sites and characterized their general tone. Here is what I found:
Islam:5 pro-Muslim apologetic sites.2 Muslim oriented news & info sites.2 Muslim oriented educational sites.1 pro-Christian apolgetic site
Christianity:7 educational sites, a mix of Christian and religiously neutral and sectarian.3 Christian oriented news & info sites.
Judaism: 9 educational sites, 1 religiously neutral, the others from a Jewish perspective1 pro-Jewish apologetic site, oriented toward countering conversion to Christianity.
Hinduism:6 educational sites, both Hindu and religiously neutral.3 Hindu oriented news & info sites.1 dead link.
Buddhism:All the Buddhist sites struck me as educational in orientation, whether from a Buddhist or religiously neutral perspective
You can check my evaluations, some of these were judgement calls. Overall, I think that the top 10 websites of the various religions reflected them pretty well in terms of what people would have expected.
Buddhism: Many of the sites
were very academic. They were dry, often not glitzy, and had a 1996 feel as far as the HTML formatting. You definitely got the feeling that this is a detached faith.
Hindusim: Kind of an F.O.B. feel here. One of the links was even dead. Tend toward community oriented sites that emphasize extra-religious aspects of the culture like marriage more than the others. Seemed a bit more unorganized, with less central structure and commonalities.
Judaism: It’s all about the learning! Almost all of these sites were oriented toward Jews to help them practice their own faith, or acted as information dispensaries for gentiles who might have misimpressions of their faith.
Christianity: Generally slick sites. If they were pushy about converting you they tended to be conservative sites. Very worldly in terms of focusing on where the news was, where the mission opportunities are, etc.
Islam: These sites were among the more targeted out there, they sometimes addressed Christians very directly, showing how Islam is the One True Faith. These were the sites where I saw explicit textual appeals to the validity of the Koran or confirmation via scientific discoveries of the Koran’s veracity. This sort of site is common on the “Christian” net as well (and no doubt the other religions)-but was pushed down further on the google results. Interestingly, the one Christian site that mirrored the Muslim ones in tone, using textual gotchas and trying to “prove” their religion to unbelievers, was a Christian site that showed up in the same list as the Muslim sites. Posted by razib at 03:45 PM | | TrackBack By author
I created a very simple interface to the database that stores all our entries. You can now view all the entry titles (sorted by date from the present) filtered by author. You can always find the link to the page below “search.” Hopefully this will make the occasional emails I get asking about such & such post 5 months back by so & so unnecessary.