18. How is linguistic evidence used to draw conclusions about the spread of peoples in China, Southeast Asia,

Question

18. How is linguistic evidence used to draw conclusions about the spread of peoples in China, Southeast Asia,

Answer 1

You can compare the grammar and common words between different dialects and languages, to try to find common ancestors, while also understanding words which were borrowed across cultural borders in more recent times. It is very like DNA tracing of common ancestry, but the judgments are more subjective.

Answer 2

Well, in addition to comparing the similarities between verbal languages, one can also look at the different scriptures.

For example, Thai, Nepalese, Cambodian and many South Indian languages, all have similarities in the way they are written - this is because they have all been derived from the ancient 'Pali' scriptures.

The same goes for languages that use symbols, such as Japanese, Mandarin and Korean.