chinese and Japanese are really kinda similar huh...??

[Guest Haruko]

Hey, i was wondering, does anyone out there ever wonder how japanese actually came about? It's really similar to chinese in many ways. Like for example, "dianhua" (telephone), and in Japanese it would be "denwa"

"ai" (love) is also pronounced the same way in Japanese.

I think it's really cool~!!

[smithsgj]

There's been a thread on this. Search for 'ala' 'bathrobe' and 'kanji'.

It is very interesting, you're right. I mean why *so much* in common when the languages are unrelated? Chinese loaned its writing system to Japanese en bloc, along with "similar" pronunciations, then various two-character formulations got loaned back and forth. But I still don't get the whole picture.

[ala]

A tradition was loaned en bloc. And hence the similarity. Japanese headlines are essentially Chinese sentences. There would have been more divergence between them if it were just that, but some pecularities of Japanese also managed to enter Chinese and become fully integrated.

But Japanese is still a very different language from Chinese. Like a Windows emulator in a Mac, they just have a Chinese emulator within their language which they often use and rely on. The vice-versa is not true for Chinese though; Chinese loan words from Japan are pretty much stripped of their Japanese identity, and function within the existing Chinese system. I would think the Japanese are getting the better deal in terms of expressive capacity....

[smithsgj]

But losing on the phonological roundabout.

[Guest white_watcher86]

Chinese and Japanese are very different, and even if we push in the suggested Proto-World theory, it would still be distantly related. Chinese/Sinitic is more related to Tibetan and Burmic languages. Japanese, however, though an isolate like Korean, is linked more to Altaic, Austronesian, and an unknown source.

[smithsgj]

> Chinese and Japanese are very different

What, so you disagree that they share an astonishing amount of vocabulary then?

What's the proto-world theory? Something to do with that Nostratic stuff, language superfamilies?

Anyone know anything about areal linguistics (or areal-induced language change, I don't know). Like there are similarities between the languages of north and south India, and between various Balkan languages, even the the pairs of languages concerned are not genetically linked. Could the cross-fertilization of Chinese and Japanese be described in these terms?

[Quest]

Could there be a distant now-extinct nation on the Asian continent that was once home to the Japanese ancestors? There are too few nations in East asia now (ie. mongolia, korea, japan, china), and it is so hard to find linguisitic connections between these nations.

[smithsgj]

Well Q that would be the superfamily theory. The Japanese would be *very* unhappy with that idea, i should think!

But the similarities btn C and J are almost certainly down to relatively recent comings and goings.

Anyone know if any *grammatical* patterns have been loaned btn the 2 languages?

[Guest white_watcher86]

I'm not a linguist per se, but a "mere" student of linguistics (though mostly on genetic relationships between the languages rather than on grammar, syntax etc.). I do however, have online acquaintances that happen to be a lot better than I am in the field of linguistics, archaeology and genetics. Therefore, I believe it's better that I quote from them:

Glen Gordon describes: "SinoDene is a linguistic macro-family as well as a tentatively reconstructed language deemed to have been spoken in Central Asia during the melting of the glaciers around 10,000 BCE. It is the proposed ancestor of Sino-Tibetan, Na-Dene, North-West Caucasian (Abkhaz-Adhyghe) and Hattic. The language appears to have had a rich consonant inventory complete with ejective, labial, palatal and plain stops. In contrast, there were few vowels, perhaps only two central ones, *a and *e (a mid-high vowel)."

Japanese however belongs to the Nostratic macro-family, at least for the greater part of its substance (which can be traced to Proto-Altaic.)

The closest link (common ancestor) we can theorise for the Chinese and Japanese languages is separated by 40,000 years.

Japanese: History and Classification

Historical linguists do not all agree about the origin of the Japanese language; there are several competing theories:

o. Japanese is a relative of the Ural-Altaic language family. Other languages in this group include Korean, Mongolian, and more distantly, Hungarian, Turkish, Estonian, and Finnish. Evidence for this theory lies in the fact that like Finnish, Estonian, Turkish, and Korean, Japanese is an agglutinative language, with two (phonologically distinctive) tones, similar to Serbian/Croatian and Swedish. This tonal system is often referred to as a pitch accent in linguistics.

o. Japanese is a relative of other Asian languages. This theory maintains that Japanese split from - or had large influences from - other East Asian languages such as Korean (but not Chinese). Phonological and lexical similarities to Malayo-Polynesian languages have been noted.

o. Japanese is related to southern Asian languages. Recent phonological research suggests a possible relationship between Japanese and Tamil, a member of the Dravidian language family spoken in southern India.

o. Japanese is a kind of creole, with an Altaic grammatical substructure, and core Austronesian vocabulary.

o. Japanese is a language isolate, unrelated to any other known language except other Japonic languages (notably Okinawan).

-from Wikipedia

All five theories, have their own truths in them, proposing that all five may be true.

If I may add on Korean:

Classification and related languages

Korean is often classified as being a separate language in a family of its own (a language isolate). In addition, most Korean and some Western linguists recognize Korean's kinship to the Altaic languages. On the other hand, traditional Western (since the 18th century) and many Japanese linguists believe that Korea has genetic relationship with Japanese.

In Korea, the possibility of Korean-Japanese linguistic relationship has been ignored mostly. However, the Korean relationship with Altaic and proto-Altaic also have been much argued as of late. It does have some semblances considering the morphology to some languages of the Eastern Turkic group, namely, Yakut and some of its variants, and some linguistics believe that Altaic itself forms part of a larger Ural-Altaic language family.

Korean's seeming similarities to Chinese (of the Sino-Tibetan family), especially vocabulary and certain pronunciations, are superficial and not genetic. They occurred because of close and frequent contacts during the time of recorded history.

-from Wikipedia[/b]

[Quest]

white watcher, I have some questions. Can the "genetic" elements of a language change due to outside influence? or on its own? because even within Chinese, tones and grammatical structures can vary so much. If Chinese were written phonetically or if it did not have a writing script at all, would it have been easier/possible for it to change into completely different and untraceable languages?

[ala]

Quest brings up the interesting question of whether and how the written language might affect the development of the spoken language. Looking at Chinese, the writing system certainly did have a very conservative and assimilating effect. One can reason that any Sinitic group that departed the Chinese mainland prior to the invention of the script, may be dramatically different today. And that without the Chinese writing script, there would probably be many more non-Sinitic languages on the Chinese landmass today.

Many of the grammatical similarities between Korean and Japanese are also superficial and not genetic (the Japanese probably loaned them from the Koreans). Most of China (south of the Yangtze River) during the Qin Dynasty did not speak a Sinitic language. It is also clear that these people were probably not killed nor forced to leave; many simply assimilated and adopted the Chinese written language and subsequently (due to proximity of influence) adopted the complete language (the second part didn't occur for Korea and Japan due to their geographic isolation). The Min dialect, may still have traces of an Austronesian core (although still in heated debate).

The changes in Chinese dialects have shown that it's quite easy for a population to absorb a new dialect or form (often a dramatic change in two generations) in both syntax and vocbulary. In fact, a language's syntax changes much more quickly than even the vocabulary (as demonstrated by Latin and its successors).

Islanders have to come from the mainland. The similarities between the Korean and Japanese languages, however, do not immediately justify the conclusion of a genetic link between them (much of these similarities are probably recent and borrowed). The Japanese could have very well came from the Chinese mainland south of the Yangtze before the Chinese unification, and later became influenced by Korean vocabulary and grammar, and finally influenced by the unified Han Chinese culture much later.

Some non-grammar justification for Korean and Japanese link are say the Japanese word for black (kuroi) and dark (kurai) are similar to the Altaic qara. But this is like saying French and Chinese are related because Rue and Lu (road) are quite similar. There is also the issue that if vocabulary loaning can occur between Chinese and Japanese; why not between Korean and Japanese as well? Basic vocabulary (numbers, colors, pronouns, body parts, nature, etc) can be subject to loaning as well, as seen in Chinese dialects. Some say that there are similarities between the post-position particles in Korean and Japanese. Although there might be an impression of relatedness to someone knowing both languages, they are only just an impression. These particles are:

First Korean; then Japanese (following semicolon)

topic: (n)un; wa (ba)

object: (l)ul; o (wo)

ablative: (ey(key))se; kara

genitive: uy; no (ga)

locative: ey [etc.]; ni

(ey)se; de < ni-te

instrumental: (u)lo; de < ni-te

"also": to; mo

"and": (k)wa, hako; to

"only": man; dake

Tibetan and Burmese (both in Sino-Tibetan family) have a syntax similar to Japanese (verb-final, SOV, humble/honor forms embedded in verbs, determinants, including relative clauses, preceding the determined, etc), but they are not Altaic. Japanese, Korean and Chinese are all tonal languages (Cantonese and Mandarin though are pitch-contour tonal; and Chinese dialects that observe a lot of tone sandhi like in Wu and Min are pitch-accent tonal similar to Japanese and Korean). The argument that Japanese is specifically related to Korean has been going on forever, but is mostly unsubstantiated (based on superficial similarities) and recently used as a source of Korean nationalism.

[Guest 杨兴业]

japanese copy chinese.

[ala]

A Japanese article from Asahi Shimbun. A Chinese speaker will probably get >90% of the article. He would probably feel like he's fluent in Japanese.

http://www.asahi.com/international/update/0315/003.html

中国首相、靖国参拝を強く批判　全人代閉幕後に会見

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

　中国の温家宝（ウェン・チアパオ）首相は１４日、全国人民代表大会（全人代）閉会後に北京の人民大会堂で記者会見した。「中日関係の主要な問題は、日本の一部の指導者がＡ級戦犯がまつられている靖国神社に何度も参拝し、中国とアジアの人民の感情を大きく傷つけていることだ」と、小泉首相の靖国参拝を強く批判し、日中首脳往来が中断している原因だとの認識も示した。台湾問題では「独立には断固反対する」と、中国政府の原則を強調した。

　温首相は対日貿易額や人の往来、友好都市の増加ぶりの数字を挙げて「日中関係の主流はやはり良いと言うべきだ」と述べた。その一方、戦争被害について「中国は２０００万人以上が死亡した」と発言。「日本の指導者は、中日両国指導者の正常な相互訪問と、両国関係の正常な発展に影響を与えてはならない。中日関係の大局を重んじるよう心から希望する」と語った。

　温首相は従来、日中首脳の相互訪問には「ふさわしい雰囲気が必要」という間接的な表現で、小泉首相の靖国参拝の自重を求めていた。だが元日の４度目の参拝で中国国内の対日感情が悪化したのを背景に、今回は参拝を直接批判するなど、より強い姿勢を表した。

　また、２０日の台湾総統選と同時に予定される住民投票について、温首相は「民主を口実にして、台湾の独立を目的としている」と批判。「一つの中国の原則を破壊し、台湾海峡地域の安定を脅かすものだ」と牽制（けんせい）した。「我々は最大限の努力で両岸の対話の早期再開を目指し、平和統一を推進する」と述べたうえで、「いかなる形でも台湾を中国から分割することに反対する」と強調した。 (03/15 06:22)

[Quest]

it's not always 90%, but I've heard that after the decrease of Kanji usage in the previous decades, it's regaining ground right now.

[ala]

it's not always 90%, but I've heard that after the decrease of Kanji usage in the previous decades, it's regaining ground right now.

Apparently Koizumi got sick of not knowing the latest English gairaigo　外来語　when a perfectly good Sino-Japanese equivalent existed (apparently Chinese words are not foreign). Words like バリアフリー　baria-furii (barrier-free) will be discouraged and in its place replaced with: 障壁除去 (shouheki jokyo) or 無障壁　(mushouheki). Other words like デジカメ (dejikame for digital camera) are also confusing as kame is turtle 亀. There are hundreds more.

___

Borrowed foreign words are out, Japan fights word invasion

THE land of the rising sun is being invaded - by the likes of tasuku fosu (taskforce), inobeeshon (innovation) and akauntabiriti (accountability).

Well, not really. But with these borrowed foreign words fast becoming too confusing for most Japanese to understand, the Japanese government is set to exorcise these words from its national language.

Known as gairaigo, which literally means 'words that come from outside', these foreign-sounding words have been a part of the Japanese language for centuries.

But now, a government committee has been set up to weed out these terms, the South China Morning Post reported.

The National Language Research Institute said that only one in four people understand tasuku fosu, even as the term is commonplace in Japanese newspapers.

It has drawn up a list of 52 of the most incomprehensible imported terms that it wants booted out from the native tongue.

The committee said in a report: 'In one sense, the expression of ideas and objects new to Japan through words of foreign origin makes Japanese a richer language.

'On the other, when excessively used, they hinder smooth communication.'

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi himself has been befuddled by these new-fangled terms and has been the main driving force for the government's new linguistic aims.

So confused was he with the term turasabirity (traceability) in a government report on food safety last year that he ordered the Education Ministry to investigate.

Announcing the creation of the committee, Education Minister Atsuko Toyama said: 'Concerns are being raised that the trend might erode the traditional beauty of the Japanese language.'

A list of 'unacceptable' words and terms will be released in October after reviewing feedback from the Japanese.

A Japanese alternative will then be suggested, made up of compounds of words already commonly used.

How's that for inobeeshon?

[Ian_Lee]

The Kanji in the Asahi Shimbun article may make many Chinese readers scratch their heads.

For example:

何度 -- "Many times" in Japanese but means "How many times" in Chinese;

雰囲気 -- "Cordial atmosphere" in Japanese but such term does not exist in Chinese.

[ala]

The Kanji in the Asahi Shimbun article may make many Chinese readers scratch their heads.

Yeah, but I still think a Chinese would have gotten 90% of the article.

何度 -- "Many times" in Japanese but means "How many times" in Chinese;

何度 means "how many times" in Japanese as well. It's 何度も that's "many times" (literally: still how many times). Yeah, so in that case the Chinese speaker might be confused, but the idea is the same as 幾 (many/several AND how many, how much).

雰囲気 -- "Cordial atmosphere" in Japanese but such term does not exist in Chinese.

雰囲気 just means atmosphere. The Chinese person reading it will think "enclosed atmosphere" or also just "atmosphere". The problem is the adjective before 雰囲気 was ふさわしい ("appropriate"), and it wasn't written with characters (if with characters it would be 相応しい). If ふさわしい雰囲気 was written as 相応しい雰囲気, then "cordial atmosphere" would be completely understood. But regardless, one can take by context.

[Guest Haruko]

Well, to me when I learn Japanese I sometimes relate it to chinese and it helps me to understand the language better and faster.

I've been told that japanese and koreans came from China a long time ago.

[thatguyjohnxx]

Alright, for all you non-linguists out there, I'll make this brief.

Japanese and Korean borrow some 60-70% of their vocabulary from Chinese. They are separate languages, and the grammar is COMPLETELY different.

Similarly, 60% or so of English words come from Latin. English is not a romance language. It is a Germanic language. Different grammar and different language group. Vocab is borrowed, that is it.

Japanese and Korean can be said to be part of the Altaic language group including Mongolian, Turkish, Japanese, Korean, Manchu, and some others. This is also usually grouped with Uralic languages because of the grammatical and structural similarities they have (not necessarily vocab), forming the Ural-Altaic group. Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian are part of this group, since our ancestors are from Central Asia (around Mongolia and western China). There are many other languages in the Uralic group, such as Khanti, Mansi, Nenets, Enets, etc... These are the relatives of Hungarians

So, don't be ridiculous trying to say Chinese and Japanese are similar, because they're not at all. It is just for complicated words, or modern words, the Japanese borrow them. Simple things like sun, water, etc. are native Japanese words, but more complicated ones are borrowed. Library "toshokan" (Chinese tushuguan).

Sorry, I'm fluent in Chinese, and getting there in Japanese, and just had to post this reply.

[roddy]

Sorry, I'm fluent in Chinese, and getting there in Japanese, and just had to post this reply.

Three years after the last post? How did you even find it?