a question

[P L Patrick]

sorry for using 'cognate' loosely! I was in a hurry, as indicated.

Without finding etymological dictionaries for Korean and Japanese
handy, I would still be willing to bet my lunch money that both of them
borrowed from the Chinese MEI -- note that the compounding strategy is
identical in all 3 languages, though of course in 'native Japanese' it
ought not to be. If so, the point is actually stronger...
	Not only would it be a borrowing, but it is more than "simply
borrow[ing] a writing system and some lexicon". Many languages do this
much without showing the extensive overlap, including structural
features, that written Japanese has with its Chinese source.
	And I thought the point about Altaic languages is that nobody
really KNOWs what if anything they are related to... (that is, under a
definition of "relation" which ignores all considerations of language
contact, like much of traditional historical linguistics).

Prof. Peter L. Patrick
Dept. of Language & Linguistics
University of Essex
Wivenhoe Park
COLCHESTER CO4 3SQ
U.K.

Tel: (from within UK) 01206.87.2088
    (from outside UK) +44.1206.87.2088
Fax: (as above)           1206.87.2198
Email: patrickp at essex.ac.uk
Web: http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~patrickp