I don't get why you mentioned the similar pronunciation of letters at 3:49. Japanese is written in the Japanese writing system. Only for people learning Japanese or transcribing place names, Romanji is used. The only thing Hawaiian and Japanese have in common on this aspect, is that their orthographies in the Roman alphabet are deliberatly made to be understood easily and comparatively new. Japanese writing had been around for thousands of years and Hawaiian didn't have a writing system at all before the Roman transcribation was created.
My guy, if you're going to explain the phonology of Japanese words, you should probably check if you're actually pronouncing them correctly. Half the sounds you made saying the words don't even exist in Japanese.
Bro, just to let you know, mispronouncing things isn't considered an offensive thing in Hawaii for visitors, but using "Hawaiian" as a demonym for people from Hawaii not of ethnic Hawaiian descent would be considered offensive within Hawaii. The term "local" or "kama'aina" would be the proper term used here (for example "local Japanese" or "Kama'aina Japanese). Most people would immediately correct you and just let it be a learning experience, but some would be very insulted depending on context and situation and react in a manner that's unwarranted. Don't mean to harsh your vibe, and I'm not happy with the people pronunciation shaming you here, either. I'm from rural Hawaii so I've been teased about how I say things before when I was abroad in the US mainland, so don't let it get to you. I'm from Hawaii, of ethnic Hawaiian descent and speak Japanese due to living and working there. My Hawaiian is more rudimentary than my Japanese, but if you have questions about anything in either language, or if you want a guide if you ever visit Oahu, I'm down to help. Wish I could be a patreon, but Hawaii is kind of an expensive place to live. Hope this comment helped, though!
Hey man. I rather enjoyed this. I'm a local Japanese from Oahu. I grew up in a semi-Japanese speaking household and I was taught some Hawaiian in school. I've noticed that even transliterating Hawaiian into Japanese is very easy. Aloha becomes アロハ, Waikiki becomes ワイキキ, and even something as difficult as Kalanianaole becomes カラニアナオレ. One thing I'd like to correct is that Japanese does have an "L" in a way. It's kind of an in between of "R" and "L". It's truly it's own sound but it's closest comparison in my opinion is an "L". Also, the most common Japanese word I use is Hanabada (boogers).
During the Meiji Era, Hawaii almost became part of Japan or at least a protectorate. The King of Hawaii at the time made an offer to the Meiji Emperor, but the offer was rejected. Imagine how different history would have been had Hawaii been Japanese instead of American.
I think WWII woudlve happened differently for sure. I fear for the Native Hawaiians, not that the Americans were pleasant, but given how Japan treated ethnic non Japanese people at the time (& even now) I think we’dve seen more of a genocide there.
It definitely would have been better than now Murcans destroyed the culture in Hawaii and that was one of many mistakes Japan made, even to this day they use fax machines….
@@JurassicLion2049 are you kidding? Hawaii would have been like the Northern Marianas, almost certainly. You act like Japanese rule was somehow especially bad compared to British, French, or American colonialism. It was only just the same. Korea was Japan’s Ireland, Formosa was their Ceylon (or maybe also their Ireland, and the Marianas were Japan’s Hawaii. If Japan had Hawaii, they would have done no worse to them than the US.
For someone explaining the phonetics of a language, he sure doesn't know them. Phonetically, Japanese is super simple. There is only one way to pronounce any group of 1 to 3 letters in romanized Japanese, and there aren't even that many groups.
The Austronesian language family originated in Taiwan. It is entirely possible for settlers to have sailed along the chain of islands between Taiwan and Japan. They could have been the Jōmon people. The Yayoi came by way of the Korean peninsula. Korean is the language with a grammar - but not an indigenous vocabulary - most similar to Japanese
@@mitonaarea5856 You are correct, but people do change languages: Wikipedia: "It is not known what language or languages were spoken in Japan during the Jōmon period. Suggested languages are: the Ainu language, Japonic languages, Austronesian languages, or unknown and today extinct languages." All have been given serious thought by linguists. HOWEVER, after checking, I found there is very little traces of any Austronesian DNA among the Japanese "The Yayoi people were an ancient ethnicity that immigrated to the Japanese archipelago during the Yayoi period (300 BCE-300 CE)" Where they immigrated from is not agreed upon, but the Korean peninsula is a viable route. It is interesting that Japanese and Korean are language isolates that, though not obviously related, do have a surprisingly similar grammar The most interesting thing about the similarities between Japan and the Polynesian languages like Hawaii is that they are mora-timed languages
the most common mistake people make when pronouncing japanese words, is that they pronounce it in syllables, which is completely different from how its supposed to be pronounced, in moras.
@@h2knad Moras and vowels seem to be tricky. Most people will add in vowel sounds that don't exist in Japanese. Vowels shift around so much in English that it seems difficult for most people to limit them when speaking Japanese.
@@mrsubramanian-hy9xb And? He doesn't have to be a Japanese master to take like 5 minutes on Google to double check the basic pronunciation. It's the bare minimum he could have done and still didn't bother.
Can you explain the origins of the Asian expression “Ayaaaaaaaa?” It’s like a universal word that elicits so many different meanings, contexts, and emotions especially with different inflections.
Japanese does have syllable final consonants, specifically the moraic nasal (which can manifest as a variety of nasal sounds depending on the context) and the sokuon which can be analyzed as a final glottal stop that assimilates to the following consonant creating geminate consonants. You even gave an example word with syllable final nasal sounds in "gannenmono". There is also vowel whispering which causes the vowels I and U to become virtually mute which can result in more final consonants at an acoustic level
@@DanielJoyce Yes, pretty much. The u is pretty much always silent, while the i can be pronounced in certain situations. Well...There are also double vowels (aa, ai, etc.), in which case both u and i will get pronounced for sure if they're part of that.
I really don't think the phonologies of Japanese and Hawaiian are that similar. Like other Polynesian languages, Hawaiian's consonant inventory is very small, one of the smallest in the world. It'd be better to say that Japanese's inventory is more similar to that of other Austronesian languages like Indonesian and Tagalog; having coronal obstruents, the sibilant fricative /s/, palatal consonants, a voicing distinction in stops, and allowing coda /n/. Also, Japanese lacks the the Hawaiian /u/ and /l/, the closest equivalent being unrounded [ɯ̟] and tapped [ɾ]. Not to mention that Hawaiian lacks pitch accent. At best, these languages have somewhat similar vowel systems and phonotactics.
Hawaiian speaker here. You are mostly right. We don't have pitch accent, we don't have final nasals, we don't have pitch accent, and we don't have whispered vowels (in formal speech). Also, we don't have consonant gemination. One small correction; the Hawaiian L is not exactly like the English L. There is a range in how you can pronounce it. It can be a tapped r to something like the English L (although, never held out as long as in English). It is exactly the same in Japan. The Japanese R can be pronounced as a tapped R, but it can also be pronounced as an English L. The Hawaiian K also has a range, in formal speech from English T to English K (I pronounce it somewhere in the middle), and informal speech where it can also be pronounced as an S or a TS or a CH [ex. Paiki as Paisi, Kā as Tsā, Kīhū as Chīhū). Also, to add to your argument, the Hawaiian W can present itself as similar to an English V sound, which many Nihon-Japanese have trouble pronouncing, and Hawaiian makes a distinction when a syllable starts with a glottal stop or not, where as in Japanese, many vowel initials actually start with a glottal stop to separate words.
Woah cool, I'm actually really curious about the different pronunciations for /k/. Is there a rule that determines when /k/ can or has to be pronounced as [t͡s t͡ʃ s] or does it just vary from speaker to speaker? Do region, age, or sex affect what variation a speaker has?
Ocean people in Pacific = same Well actually some Italian dialects and Finnish ones sound extremely similiar even they are two entirely separate language families
There is a curious similarity between the sound of the dialects spoken in some islands off the western shore of Italy, and Irish. . . . . Some people can't tell their Erse from their Elban. I'll see myself out.
I feel that for most of the Polynesian languages. As a weeb and a speaker of a Polynesian language, I've experimented and it works pretty well, it just looks a bit clunky 😅
As a Japanese, I think it is difficult. The problem with Japanese is that there are no L and V sounds. In English, you only need to memorize 27 letters of the alphabet, but in Japanese, you need to memorize 50 katakana.
I disagree. Alphabets are better, more versatile, than syllabaries, even for phonologies as simple as those of Japanese and Hawaiian. Just look at all the hoops that Japanese has to jump through to write even simple foreign loanwords.
Hawaiian is, as you point out, a member of the Austronesian language family, the most geographically widespread language family, stretching 30,000 km from the island of Madagascar to Rapa Nui. However the Austronesian language family originated on the island of Taiwan. It is only 1,200km from Taiwan to Kyushu, far less than the distance from Tahiti to Hawaii. And there is a chain of islands, including Okinawa, between Taiwan and Kyushu. About 4,000 years ago people expressing the neolithic culture of Taiwan and the adjoining coast of the mainland set sail and settled in south-east Asia including Malaya, the Philippines, and the islands of modern Indonesia. If they set sail in that direction, why would some not have followed the island chain to Kyushu? However in Japan they would have disappeared into the native Jōmon culture. There is no sign of cultural influence on Middle Jōmon, particularly in pottery and housing styles from the contemporary Dapenkeng culture of Taiwan.
There's some research on Japanese people's origins being partly Austronesian. Portuguese, especially the European dialect has this Slavic-like feel, although it's Romance. Phonetics sometime cause this.
In the US mainland you’ll see signs in both Spanish and English because of how much people are descended from Hispanic/Latino people (mainly Mexicans). In Hawaii the signs are in Japanese and English cause of the amount of Japanese tourists as well as Japanese descended Hawaiians. Everywhere you go in Hawaii you see the cultural touches of Japanese people like restaurants, grocery stores, hobby shops, and even a rice paddy or two. Also while WWII definitely had an effect on Japanese-Americans, many were still heroes of the war. Second generation Japanese Americans served for the US in spite of what was going on in the mainland. Theres memorials for them in Hawaii to this day.
I think there is a more broad similarity between japanese and polynesian languages. I realized one time when I was investigating about Rapa Nui, and I noticed the similarities between the phonetics of japanese and rapa nui languages, like the relatively short number of phonemes, and the syllabes being unable to end in cosonants. I also remember i saw that for foreign words they added vowels between the consonats to avoid consonat clusters and the result is almost the same as the adaptations the japanese make for english words, for example there was a king of Rapa Nui called "Atamu", an adaptation of the name Adam, and the name "Kerekorio" adapted from the spanish name "Gregorio", and those names sound just like Japanese.
I came to this video because I searched for this topic specifically! It's so weird how Japanese, Hawaiian, and Maori sound so similar. I thought I was going crazy.
1868 was not just before Hawaii was a state, it was before Hawaii was part of the U.S. at all. It was the Kingdom of Hawaii up to 1893 and the Republic of Hawaii was annexed by the U.S. in 1898.
Swahili also has this vowel - consonant alternating "bebakokaga" sound. Indeed this is just a common feature for many languages families around the world.
They're called open-syllable languages if I'm not mistaken. The words tend to be longer but they're quite easy to pronounce quickly. Among the rest, you have some languages that prefer open syllables but occasionally close them, like Finnish and Italian; others that will throw a bunch of consonants in a row, like Russian, and everything in between.
I'm just shocked you didn't mention the most blatantly obvious part. .. the word Hawaii is constructed exactly like Japanese adjectives. For example, kawaii (cute).
In Hawaiian: Hawai‘i is a contraction of the wider Polynesian Hawaiki, and is pronounced with a little hesitation between the two "i"a, which substitutes for the missing "k". So, no.
@@flamencoprof while Japanese also has a similar phonetic component っ the small tsu. It’s pronounced as a pulse before a (typically voiceless) consonant.
@@EgnachHelton Yes, but that is not what I was responding to. I am not a linguist, just an old Pakeha bloke from NZ familiar with Maori, and its roots. Back to Taiwan, AFAIK. I think the word order difference is telling.
There is an ongoing linguistic study interest that cover the potential link between Japonic & proto-Japonic (in which Japanese is part of) & Austronesian or proto-Austronesian (Hawaiian descended from the Austronesian language family). A few studies theorize that proto-Japonic & Proto-Austronesian may have a close contact (non-genetic relationship) in Ancient China.
I have studied Japanese and learned a bit of Hawaiian and Māori. I noticed similarities on my own since about 3-4 years ago, when I started learning. For example, some phonological coincidences: "whale" is "鯨 (kujira)" in Japanese, "kōhola" in Hawaiian and "tōhora" in Māori. In Polynesian languages, feminine nouns (not in the sense of grammatical gender, but in nouns refering to women) usually end in "-hine", and in Japanese, I remember the name of a goddes or princess which ended in "-hime". "Kai" and "tai" also mean "sea" in Hawaiian and Māori respectively, and the Japanese kanji for "sea"(海) can also be read as "kai", although that's the Chinese reading of the kanji, not the Japanese reading. There are also words that sound similar and mean related things, such as "ika", meaning "fish" in Māori and "squid" in Japanese. "種 (tane)" is "seed" in Japanese and a similar word or root is found in the names of two Māori gods associated with vegetation, Tāne Mahuta, god of the forest, and Rongomatane, god of agriculture. In order to determine if two languages are related, one must look at recurrent patterns, there have already been academics who have tried to link Austronesian and Japonic languages. Maybe the examples I put are too anecdotal and isolated, but I think they're worth taking into account.
I liked your video and I agree with you, English, Japanese and Hawaiian are not sister languages, related or neighbors to each other, but they are married languages. In Hawaii Hawaiian Japanese and English are mixed into a Hawaiian dialect, and in Japan this same dialect exists that mixes Hawaiian Japanese and English. Japan's relationship with Hawaii and the love of an Asian indigenous people who love an Oceanesian indigenous people both love each other is beautiful even if they are not related to each other. Japan and Hawaii are brothers in heart and soul 💓❤️
Greek and Hawaiian are also so close in some ways a guy wrote a book about it. I forget his name. Never looked at the super validity but on the surface makes a compelling argument.
You think that's weird? You obviously haven'theard of "Spirit" name connection across the world; Breath/Spirit in Coptic=Ka Breath/Spirit in Chinese=Qi Breath/Spirit in Japanese=Ki Breath/Spirit in Hindi=ChaKra (These are the examples I know of)
@@mr.knightthedetective7435 No, Vulcan isn’t an actual language. My post is a Star Trek-related tongue-in-cheek comment. However, the film Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan does have some dialogue in a created language Vulcan, created by the same guy who would later develop Klingon in Star Trek III.
In fact, Hawaiian Creole and Japanese Ogawasara Creole share the same influences: English, Chinese, Tagalog and Filipino and Portuguese What changes is the base language in Hawaiian Creole and the Hawaiian language and in Ogawasara Japanese Creole and Japanese. But both creoles contain Japanese and Hawaiian. What changes are the bases of the creoles, which are still interchangeable with each other today. I left this info to deep the content of video throughin by science of Linguistics.
On your comment about making Italian sounds without actually speaking Italian. There's an Italian song Prisencolinensinaincusol which is supposed to sound like English sounds to Italians.
there is a pretty good reason why these languages have similar phonetics. they both have very simple, small phonetic inventories. languages have a natural tendency to spread the consonants and the vowels as far apart in the mouth/in the space of possible sounds. if you are limited to 5 vowels, you'll naturally end up with a e i o u, like in modern Hebrew, or classical Latin. now, you also have the rules of how you combine sounds, and where you put them in a word, aka phonotactics. an English syllable or a Korean cannot start with an ng (/ŋ/) sound, but they can both end a syllable with it. In Hawaiian, every syllable has to end with a vowel. You can't put a consonant at the end (except for very few load words). In Japanese it's pretty close, a syllable can either end with a vowel, or end with n*. these rules are pretty simple, you don't need to break your teeth saying clusters like STReNGTHS, TBilisi (good luck saying this right, English speakers). what I'm saying is, if your language's phonology is simple in some sense, the space of possibilities is small, so two unrelated languages with simple phonologies might end up sounding similar. the chance that two languages with bigger, more complicated phonologies happen to be similar is much smaller. now, take a look at the huge list of the world's languages, and it's suddenly very likely that languages with simple phonologies might sound similar to non speakers. *that n will be rendered as /ŋ/ or /m/ depending on what comes next, but the Japanese consider both cases as valid versions of n, even though at the start of a syllable they tell n and m apart. Also, modern Japanese allows for clusters like ks, sht, sk, sp, and a few more, but if you asked them to spell a word with these clusters, they will tell you something like ku s(vowel), shi t(vowel), su k(vowel), etc, they kinda image it as being two syllables.
Tokyo Prefecture ends a few miles from Hawaii. Japan has been encroaching on the North Shore for a few hundred years. When the United States returned the Ogasuwara Islands and Okinawa it made both countries borders closer than most Americans and Japanese people realize.
Some Japanese words end in -n, such as the honorific -San. Also, while Japanese doesn't have L and Hawaiian has a lot of L's, Japan has R and Hawaiian does not. The Japanese R is an Alveolar Trill much like an L. They're both Sonorants. So, while it technically is a difference, I think it's a similarity with a different haircut and color.
A japanese speaker should be easily read "aloha"? How fast will it becoma "aroha" beacuse of the lack of L in japanese?😅 Mochi, karaoke, and maybe mlre what I did not notice. Please, if you talk about a language, and want to say a handful of words on it, check the pronunciation. With google translate around it is not a big task by any means.
OMG, this video is so validating for me because someone else sees this weird similarity. I learned Japanese as L2 and worked as a translator for many years. I studied hard and trained my brain to instantly make sense of anything remotely reminding Japanese. Several years ago I moved to the States and Hawaiian keep catching me off-guard. My translator muscle strains instinctively when I see similar syllable structure, and I suffer silently. It is so great that I'm not the only one who saw this similarity which nobody around me sees. (No hate towards Hawaiian, only love.)
It is the consonant-vowel-consonant and vowel-consonant-vowel word structure that is striking. Also, the vowels (the sound) are identical. The consonants, are too, almost identical. The phonology.
Japanese syllables can end in consonants. Japanese has one lone consonant, ん, which can be seen in words like はんぶん or じかん. Additionally, syllables ending in U and I will devoice those vowel sounds if the vowel is found between voiceless consonants or following a voiceless consonant at the end of a sound, creating a lone consonant sound. Examples include the devoicing of し, つ, and す in しつれします, or the devoicing of き in いきて.
Is there any possibility of insularity influencing the two languages? That is, they live on islands -> there's a lot of fishing/travel over water -> there's a selection pressure towards phonemes that can be clearly distinguished when yelled between boats. IDK, just a wild guess.
Niche topic, but I have the perfect thing to add. Nada sou sou (涙そうそう) from Okinawan singer Rimi Natsukawa (夏川りみ) in a duet with Hawaiian-born former sumo ōzeki KONISHKI (元大関小錦), both singing in their languages. ua-cam.com/video/vZg8B1n0FKs/v-deo.htmlsi=O7v7RI0DuLpYUG1C
From the sound perspective, A/E/I/O/U are also the same sounds in German. The consonants are basically identical, with a slight variation on S/Z, which are more distinct in Japanese than in German. (Basically a similar problem Japanese have with German or English L/R in the opposite direction. )
Um do you not know that some Japanese words also end in a n sound? Additionally some Japanese words seem to end in a “s” like in gas even though it’s supposed to be a u sound. Regardless I am pretty sure you can adapt pretty much any Hawaiian word in Japanese to fit the rules of the language without changing the word at all.
If you do a video on Italian phonology, or especially people imitating Italian phonology, you'll also need to talk about Prisencolinensinainciusol, so you can show what it's like from the other direction.
Polynesian cultures are notable for their tradition of 'wayfinding' - the oceanic equivalent of being nomadic. Between learning the stars and understanding how birds and fish react to nearby islands, these cultures spread across the Pacific. Similar to how the Phoenicians influenced Mediterranean languages, the Polynesians surely had considerable influence upon the languages of the lands they frequented. Not as strongly, of course, owing to the great expanse of the Pacific Ocean compared to the Mediterranean Sea, but surely enough to account for the similarities which persist to this day.
Anti-Japanese sentiment specifically has been dead in the US since the 1980s. Anything left would have washed out with the generation that fought in the Pacific in WW2 passing away, which almost all have. There’s still general racism, against Asians, too, sadly, but I’d say the Japanese and their culture are quite revered in the US, relatively.
The languages only seem similar because they have smaller sound inventories than most European languages do, but this isn't especially unique given the other languages in the Japonic and Austronesian language families, as the phenomena you mention are typical features of their members' phonological systems. There are features of Japanese that Hawaiian completely lacks, such as VOWEL DEVOICING (vowels occurring between voiceless sounds are often devoiced in Japanese, such that it doesn't sound like they are actually in the words), PITCH ACCENT (depending on dialect, Japanese words are pronounced with specific pitch patterns that rely on where in the word the pitch accent falls), MORAIC WEIGHTING within syllables (all vowels along with the sole nasal coda carry moraic weight, which has a bearing on whether syllables are short or long and whether syllables carry one or two pitch levels), CONTACT WITH CHINESE (Japanese has thousands of loanwords from formal Chinese that have their own phonological phenomena associated with them such as rendaku), aa CONTRAST IN CONSONANT VOICING (Japanese has voiced and voiceless consonants, such as oral stops and fricatives, but Hawaiian only has voiceless oral stops and fricatives), WORD ORDER (Japanese basic word order is SOV - subject + object + verb, whereas Hawaiian is typical of Polynesian languages in that it is clearly VSO - verb + subject + object), et cetera. Hawaiian is well-known among linguists for is a LACK OF DISTINCTION BETWEEN /t/ AND /k/, that is, stops that contrast in the coronal (alveolar or dental) and dorsal (velar) places of articulation: in standard university Hawaiian, this stop sound is /k/, but it Niihau dialect, which is said to sound closer to the original pre-colonial form of Hawaiian, the stop sound is /t/. Hawaiian also makes extensive use of PHONOLOGICAL REDUPLICATION to create new meanings from existing morphemes and lexical items, and additionally SYLLABLES CANNOT END IN CONSONANTS (e.g. nasals) and there is NO CONSONANT GEMINATION (consonants that are "doubled" versions of their singleton counterparts), unlike in Japaanese.
numerous Buddhist temples in Hawaii, mostly connected to the Japanese community. One of the cooler things to do in Hawaii is to attend Bonodori, aka Obon Matsuri, festivals held to honor dead ancestors.
From Hawaii to Taiwan, there are not only similarities, there are actual words used throughout every island in between. Not that it debunks what you said, but your beginning portion would have to account for all of their languages as well. Not mentioning the similarities in culture.
The Japanese who came to work sugar plantations in Hawai'i... A whole lot of them were Okinawan's (arguably not Japanese) who were "encouraged" by the Japanese government to migrate when they were forced to sell their land and become tenant farmers.
Hey if you're still doing completly unrelated but similar sounding languages check out Igbo and compare it Japanese, very oddly similar sounding if you ask me
There are Polynesian languages closer sounding to Japanese than hawaiin, idk y u picked hawaiin, and not samoan or maori which sound closer. Coz in hawaiin the Americans made them change t to k. Coz hawaiin didn’t make the k change like southern polinesian languages did. And polonesian peoples used to inhabit the mainland Asia before setting out to sea, so their pronounciation may of influenced them in ancient times, and boats did move around later on.. ok I’ll give you the fact they have a history together
agree, but would say what happened was that when the English and Americans came to Hawaii, their translations of Hawaiian words were all over the place (check early maps of Hawaii). At some point one of the missionaries standardized the spelling of Hawaiian but didn't get it quite right. The 'K' sound so common in Hawaiian descends from the 'T' sound so common in Tahitian, likewise that missionary used 'W' when the actual sound was closer to 'V' in English. As someone who lived in Hawaii and is interested in history, I note that the American missionaries were almost all New Englanders and the early English teachers of Hawaii. I note that both in Hawaii and Massachusetts they say phrases like 'I park the car in Harvard Yard' almost the same way, I paak the caa in Haavaad Yaad' deemphasizing the 'R' sound, except Hawaiians didn't have 'th' sound so they use 'd' sound for that, da car, da house in Hawaiian pidgin. I'm not sure if that is coincidence or not, might make an interesting linguistic thesis.
Kekaha is NOT pronounced "keh - key - ha". I cannot see how you could say "ka" as "key", particularly when it's followed by the rhyming syllable "ha". I'm also cringing at Makena, ohayo, mochi, karaoke, manga, tako, and musubi. The grating mispronunciations are especially problematic after the chart at 3:48 is shown and spoken, making the correct sounds clear.
There were supposedly some austronesian communities living in japan in the past but not to the extent they had an influence on genetics and language. Māori would sound more similar than Hawaiian to Japanese from a phonetically pov to those not familiar with either language . Poly languages dont have ch, th, sh sounds in their languages.
i find this video painful to watch. the pronunciation of the Japanese words is just terrible, cmon, it would’ve taken like 2 seconds to even just open google translate to get a rough idea of how the words are pronounced IN A VIDEO ABOUT PRONUNCIATION IN THAT LANGUAGE‼️ (also did he just pronounce mochi as ‘mockey’? 😭) oh yeah edit, he also said that no L sound exists in Japanese, which is debated, and should at least be mentioned, even if he doesn’t agree. the L/R sound in Japanese is a sort of in-between that doesn’t exist in English, and could be transcribed as an L or an R, which is crucial about the phonology of Japanese, and should DEFINITELY be mentioned in a video about Japanese phonology! i’m sure theres a billion mistakes in Hawaiian too, but I don’t speak Hawaiian so I can’t comment on those
korean and japanese are similar because those countries have had a lot of contact and history together. both have had a lot of influence from chinese and from each other.
@@Wolfgonbuaf There is evidence that they have a southeast Asian origin, and the northern ones came from the Lake Baikal region of Siberia. Absolutely no proof they are from China. Hu ha huu haaa.
Its annoying how many non native Hawaiians trying to make assumptions all while MISPRONOUNCING our words so bad, you ever seen Japanese TOURISTS try say our cities names???? Its totally different, u guys don't know na10
I think it could have been more extensive. Maybe a few more examples that act as evidence and point towards your thesis. There are some similarities but it wasn’t very conclusive for me. I appreciate your interest in language though I hope you can read these comments as constructive as possible. It’s only up from here
I find it hard to believe there are more Japanese in Hawaii than California, New York, Texas or Georgia. By population percent yes but not raw number. As just in LA and San Francisco has almost 200k Japanese.
approximately 30+% of Hawaii, and Hawaii's population is something like 1.3 million now. Japanese in Hawaii also have the lowest rate of inter-ethnic marriage meaning they are most likely to marry another person of Japanese descent. There are also quite a few Japanese nationals who move to Hawaii, Japanese in general love Hawaii and because they come as tourists there is work in Hawaii for Japanese speakers.
4:13 Not quite correct; Japanese allows -n codas and in some dialects, even -m endings. Hell, you even said a Japanese example in 5:22! All in all, this video feels more like a deformed brainchild which should never have been given space beyond the confines of some personal journal or notebook. In fact, you mention having to "pad out the video" at 7:42. Their only connection, as you yourself have admitted, is the "similar" phonology. In all honesty, this little correlation is nothing but misplaced passion on what is simply a coincidence of two simple systems being similar.
Why did you explain the 5 consonants so weird 😂 It's literally the base consonants in many languages and English is the odd one out. aeiou done really need an explanation or do they?
Let me know if you're watching from Hawaii or Japan! Or even if you are Japanese Hawaiian!
I don't get why you mentioned the similar pronunciation of letters at 3:49. Japanese is written in the Japanese writing system. Only for people learning Japanese or transcribing place names, Romanji is used. The only thing Hawaiian and Japanese have in common on this aspect, is that their orthographies in the Roman alphabet are deliberatly made to be understood easily and comparatively new. Japanese writing had been around for thousands of years and Hawaiian didn't have a writing system at all before the Roman transcribation was created.
My guy, if you're going to explain the phonology of Japanese words, you should probably check if you're actually pronouncing them correctly. Half the sounds you made saying the words don't even exist in Japanese.
@@coolbrotherf127 same with his Hawaiian...
Bro, just to let you know, mispronouncing things isn't considered an offensive thing in Hawaii for visitors, but using "Hawaiian" as a demonym for people from Hawaii not of ethnic Hawaiian descent would be considered offensive within Hawaii. The term "local" or "kama'aina" would be the proper term used here (for example "local Japanese" or "Kama'aina Japanese). Most people would immediately correct you and just let it be a learning experience, but some would be very insulted depending on context and situation and react in a manner that's unwarranted.
Don't mean to harsh your vibe, and I'm not happy with the people pronunciation shaming you here, either. I'm from rural Hawaii so I've been teased about how I say things before when I was abroad in the US mainland, so don't let it get to you. I'm from Hawaii, of ethnic Hawaiian descent and speak Japanese due to living and working there. My Hawaiian is more rudimentary than my Japanese, but if you have questions about anything in either language, or if you want a guide if you ever visit Oahu, I'm down to help.
Wish I could be a patreon, but Hawaii is kind of an expensive place to live. Hope this comment helped, though!
Hey man. I rather enjoyed this. I'm a local Japanese from Oahu. I grew up in a semi-Japanese speaking household and I was taught some Hawaiian in school. I've noticed that even transliterating Hawaiian into Japanese is very easy. Aloha becomes アロハ, Waikiki becomes ワイキキ, and even something as difficult as Kalanianaole becomes カラニアナオレ. One thing I'd like to correct is that Japanese does have an "L" in a way. It's kind of an in between of "R" and "L". It's truly it's own sound but it's closest comparison in my opinion is an "L". Also, the most common Japanese word I use is Hanabada (boogers).
During the Meiji Era, Hawaii almost became part of Japan or at least a protectorate. The King of Hawaii at the time made an offer to the Meiji Emperor, but the offer was rejected. Imagine how different history would have been had Hawaii been Japanese instead of American.
I think WWII woudlve happened differently for sure. I fear for the Native Hawaiians, not that the Americans were pleasant, but given how Japan treated ethnic non Japanese people at the time (& even now) I think we’dve seen more of a genocide there.
I wonder where Pearl Harbor would have happened
It definitely would have been better than now
Murcans destroyed the culture in Hawaii and that was one of many mistakes Japan made, even to this day they use fax machines….
@@JurassicLion2049 are you kidding? Hawaii would have been like the Northern Marianas, almost certainly.
You act like Japanese rule was somehow especially bad compared to British, French, or American colonialism.
It was only just the same. Korea was Japan’s Ireland, Formosa was their Ceylon (or maybe also their Ireland, and the Marianas were Japan’s Hawaii. If Japan had Hawaii, they would have done no worse to them than the US.
@@J7Handleyeah, no.
…did he really pronounce "mochi" as "mockey" ?
HAHA MOCHEE
he also said "tay-ko"
Mo...chi?
I don’t think he’s heard of the IPA alphabet 💀
For someone explaining the phonetics of a language, he sure doesn't know them. Phonetically, Japanese is super simple. There is only one way to pronounce any group of 1 to 3 letters in romanized Japanese, and there aren't even that many groups.
The Austronesian language family originated in Taiwan. It is entirely possible for settlers to have sailed along the chain of islands between Taiwan and Japan. They could have been the Jōmon people. The Yayoi came by way of the Korean peninsula. Korean is the language with a grammar - but not an indigenous vocabulary - most similar to Japanese
When I was reading up on the Jomon there were some tentaive evidence in that direction, that the Jomon came from what is now south China via Taiwan.
The Jomon people existed way before the Austronesians. But anyways the Japonic language Family is of Yayoi origin not Jomon.
@@mitonaarea5856 You are correct, but people do change languages: Wikipedia: "It is not known what language or languages were spoken in Japan during the Jōmon period. Suggested languages are: the Ainu language, Japonic languages, Austronesian languages, or unknown and today extinct languages." All have been given serious thought by linguists. HOWEVER, after checking, I found there is very little traces of any Austronesian DNA among the Japanese
"The Yayoi people were an ancient ethnicity that immigrated to the Japanese archipelago during the Yayoi period (300 BCE-300 CE)" Where they immigrated from is not agreed upon, but the Korean peninsula is a viable route. It is interesting that Japanese and Korean are language isolates that, though not obviously related, do have a surprisingly similar grammar
The most interesting thing about the similarities between Japan and the Polynesian languages like Hawaii is that they are mora-timed languages
I would more prefer to Yayoi, Jomon and Ainu rather than those freaking silly Taiwan Chinese claims scums.
The way he pronounces Japanese words physically hurts me. He says every word slightly wrong every single time.
Right? It's a bit annoying.
the most common mistake people make when pronouncing japanese words, is that they pronounce it in syllables, which is completely different from how its supposed to be pronounced, in moras.
@@h2knad Moras and vowels seem to be tricky. Most people will add in vowel sounds that don't exist in Japanese. Vowels shift around so much in English that it seems difficult for most people to limit them when speaking Japanese.
That's because he's a native English speaker.
@@mrsubramanian-hy9xb And? He doesn't have to be a Japanese master to take like 5 minutes on Google to double check the basic pronunciation. It's the bare minimum he could have done and still didn't bother.
If I learned one thing from this video it is that Japanese and Hawaiian are not related
Japan always kind of had a slight Pacific Islander vibe to it to me at least.
Could be because of the climate, at least in southern parts of Japan. It influences behavior for sure.
Well, it is a bunch of islands in the Pacific... 😅
Okinawa has some serious Hawaii vibes.
Japan is like half Chinese half islander right?
Japan is a Pacific island but with snow
Can you explain the origins of the Asian expression “Ayaaaaaaaa?”
It’s like a universal word that elicits so many different meanings, contexts, and emotions especially with different inflections.
probably it originated from martial arts warriors, 武林
Ayaya!
ayaaaaa
its Chinese origin i guess, this expression exists in Cantonese and Ming and Mandarin.
what like haiyaaaaa?
Japanese does have syllable final consonants, specifically the moraic nasal (which can manifest as a variety of nasal sounds depending on the context) and the sokuon which can be analyzed as a final glottal stop that assimilates to the following consonant creating geminate consonants. You even gave an example word with syllable final nasal sounds in "gannenmono".
There is also vowel whispering which causes the vowels I and U to become virtually mute which can result in more final consonants at an acoustic level
Vowel whispering? Is that why the last vowel in some words is effectively silent in most dialects such as desu, komachi, etc?
@@DanielJoyce Yes, pretty much. The u is pretty much always silent, while the i can be pronounced in certain situations. Well...There are also double vowels (aa, ai, etc.), in which case both u and i will get pronounced for sure if they're part of that.
I really don't think the phonologies of Japanese and Hawaiian are that similar. Like other Polynesian languages, Hawaiian's consonant inventory is very small, one of the smallest in the world. It'd be better to say that Japanese's inventory is more similar to that of other Austronesian languages like Indonesian and Tagalog; having coronal obstruents, the sibilant fricative /s/, palatal consonants, a voicing distinction in stops, and allowing coda /n/. Also, Japanese lacks the the Hawaiian /u/ and /l/, the closest equivalent being unrounded [ɯ̟] and tapped [ɾ]. Not to mention that Hawaiian lacks pitch accent. At best, these languages have somewhat similar vowel systems and phonotactics.
Hawaiian speaker here. You are mostly right. We don't have pitch accent, we don't have final nasals, we don't have pitch accent, and we don't have whispered vowels (in formal speech). Also, we don't have consonant gemination. One small correction; the Hawaiian L is not exactly like the English L. There is a range in how you can pronounce it. It can be a tapped r to something like the English L (although, never held out as long as in English). It is exactly the same in Japan. The Japanese R can be pronounced as a tapped R, but it can also be pronounced as an English L. The Hawaiian K also has a range, in formal speech from English T to English K (I pronounce it somewhere in the middle), and informal speech where it can also be pronounced as an S or a TS or a CH [ex. Paiki as Paisi, Kā as Tsā, Kīhū as Chīhū).
Also, to add to your argument, the Hawaiian W can present itself as similar to an English V sound, which many Nihon-Japanese have trouble pronouncing, and Hawaiian makes a distinction when a syllable starts with a glottal stop or not, where as in Japanese, many vowel initials actually start with a glottal stop to separate words.
Woah cool, I'm actually really curious about the different pronunciations for /k/. Is there a rule that determines when /k/ can or has to be pronounced as [t͡s t͡ʃ s] or does it just vary from speaker to speaker? Do region, age, or sex affect what variation a speaker has?
English speaker seeing any languages that is phonetic : “are they related”
Ocean people in Pacific = same
Well actually some Italian dialects and Finnish ones sound extremely similiar even they are two entirely separate language families
Turkish also sounds a lot like Japanese, although I don't know whether that impression would stand up to close scrutiny.
@@Antaios632 but tukrish has some weird words which by look dont sound japanese like Atatu'urk or gelim or belicligir or baskan
@@埊 oh yeah, the similarity breaks down pretty fast. I think it's more the overall rhythm of the language more than any real similarity.
@@Antaios632 same with Finnish and Italian they sound very similar in rhythm and prounciation even tho they are so afar in words, letters and grammar
There is a curious similarity between the sound of the dialects spoken in some islands off the western shore of Italy, and Irish.
.
.
.
.
Some people can't tell their Erse from their Elban.
I'll see myself out.
Honestly katakana would be a better writing system for Hawaiian than the Latin alphabet.
I feel that for most of the Polynesian languages. As a weeb and a speaker of a Polynesian language, I've experimented and it works pretty well, it just looks a bit clunky 😅
As a Japanese, I think it is difficult. The problem with Japanese is that there are no L and V sounds. In English, you only need to memorize 27 letters of the alphabet, but in Japanese, you need to memorize 50 katakana.
I disagree. Alphabets are better, more versatile, than syllabaries, even for phonologies as simple as those of Japanese and Hawaiian. Just look at all the hoops that Japanese has to jump through to write even simple foreign loanwords.
No it wouldn't you weeb
After some time of watching anime I watched "Lilo & Stitch". And I keept hearing that older sister is called "what", or "flower means family" XD
"hana" can also mean "nose".
Hawaiian is, as you point out, a member of the Austronesian language family, the most geographically widespread language family, stretching 30,000 km from the island of Madagascar to Rapa Nui. However the Austronesian language family originated on the island of Taiwan. It is only 1,200km from Taiwan to Kyushu, far less than the distance from Tahiti to Hawaii. And there is a chain of islands, including Okinawa, between Taiwan and Kyushu. About 4,000 years ago people expressing the neolithic culture of Taiwan and the adjoining coast of the mainland set sail and settled in south-east Asia including Malaya, the Philippines, and the islands of modern Indonesia. If they set sail in that direction, why would some not have followed the island chain to Kyushu? However in Japan they would have disappeared into the native Jōmon culture. There is no sign of cultural influence on Middle Jōmon, particularly in pottery and housing styles from the contemporary Dapenkeng culture of Taiwan.
There's some research on Japanese people's origins being partly Austronesian.
Portuguese, especially the European dialect has this Slavic-like feel, although it's Romance. Phonetics sometime cause this.
I do know they have been forever connected, figuratively and quite literally, on December 7, 1941.
In the US mainland you’ll see signs in both Spanish and English because of how much people are descended from Hispanic/Latino people (mainly Mexicans). In Hawaii the signs are in Japanese and English cause of the amount of Japanese tourists as well as Japanese descended Hawaiians. Everywhere you go in Hawaii you see the cultural touches of Japanese people like restaurants, grocery stores, hobby shops, and even a rice paddy or two.
Also while WWII definitely had an effect on Japanese-Americans, many were still heroes of the war. Second generation Japanese Americans served for the US in spite of what was going on in the mainland. Theres memorials for them in Hawaii to this day.
I think there is a more broad similarity between japanese and polynesian languages. I realized one time when I was investigating about Rapa Nui, and I noticed the similarities between the phonetics of japanese and rapa nui languages, like the relatively short number of phonemes, and the syllabes being unable to end in cosonants. I also remember i saw that for foreign words they added vowels between the consonats to avoid consonat clusters and the result is almost the same as the adaptations the japanese make for english words, for example there was a king of Rapa Nui called "Atamu", an adaptation of the name Adam, and the name "Kerekorio" adapted from the spanish name "Gregorio", and those names sound just like Japanese.
I came to this video because I searched for this topic specifically! It's so weird how Japanese, Hawaiian, and Maori sound so similar. I thought I was going crazy.
1868 was not just before Hawaii was a state, it was before Hawaii was part of the U.S. at all. It was the Kingdom of Hawaii up to 1893 and the Republic of Hawaii was annexed by the U.S. in 1898.
That was a cool little exploration of two cultures and languages! Very nice!
2:25 So by your classification, they have very similar greetings as "Hallo" as well
Swahili also has this vowel - consonant alternating "bebakokaga" sound. Indeed this is just a common feature for many languages families around the world.
They're called open-syllable languages if I'm not mistaken. The words tend to be longer but they're quite easy to pronounce quickly. Among the rest, you have some languages that prefer open syllables but occasionally close them, like Finnish and Italian; others that will throw a bunch of consonants in a row, like Russian, and everything in between.
I'm just shocked you didn't mention the most blatantly obvious part.
.. the word Hawaii is constructed exactly like Japanese adjectives. For example, kawaii (cute).
In Hawaiian: Hawai‘i is a contraction of the wider Polynesian Hawaiki, and is pronounced with a little hesitation between the two "i"a, which substitutes for the missing "k". So, no.
@@flamencoprof while Japanese also has a similar phonetic component っ the small tsu. It’s pronounced as a pulse before a (typically voiceless) consonant.
@@EgnachHelton Yes, but that is not what I was responding to. I am not a linguist, just an old Pakeha bloke from NZ familiar with Maori, and its roots. Back to Taiwan, AFAIK.
I think the word order difference is telling.
They have no relation
Growing up Japanese in Hawaii, I always liked this. Also how did you get Ke-ki-ha from Kekaha at 1:43? Break down your pronunciations man!
im not japanese or hawaiian but he keeps messing up the pronunciations and its driving me crazy
id expect better for a linguistics channel tbh.
@@knucklepilledhe’s Australian bruh
They are weirdly similar in such cultures and language
There is an ongoing linguistic study interest that cover the potential link between Japonic & proto-Japonic (in which Japanese is part of) & Austronesian or proto-Austronesian (Hawaiian descended from the Austronesian language family).
A few studies theorize that proto-Japonic & Proto-Austronesian may have a close contact (non-genetic relationship) in Ancient China.
I have studied Japanese and learned a bit of Hawaiian and Māori.
I noticed similarities on my own since about 3-4 years ago, when I started learning.
For example, some phonological coincidences: "whale" is "鯨 (kujira)" in Japanese, "kōhola" in Hawaiian and "tōhora" in Māori.
In Polynesian languages, feminine nouns (not in the sense of grammatical gender, but in nouns refering to women) usually end in "-hine", and in Japanese, I remember the name of a goddes or princess which ended in "-hime".
"Kai" and "tai" also mean "sea" in Hawaiian and Māori respectively, and the Japanese kanji for "sea"(海) can also be read as "kai", although that's the Chinese reading of the kanji, not the Japanese reading.
There are also words that sound similar and mean related things, such as "ika", meaning "fish" in Māori and "squid" in Japanese. "種 (tane)" is "seed" in Japanese and a similar word or root is found in the names of two Māori gods associated with vegetation, Tāne Mahuta, god of the forest, and Rongomatane, god of agriculture.
In order to determine if two languages are related, one must look at recurrent patterns, there have already been academics who have tried to link Austronesian and Japonic languages. Maybe the examples I put are too anecdotal and isolated, but I think they're worth taking into account.
Thanks!
I liked your video and I agree with you, English, Japanese and Hawaiian are not sister languages, related or neighbors to each other, but they are married languages.
In Hawaii Hawaiian Japanese and English are mixed into a Hawaiian dialect, and in Japan this same dialect exists that mixes Hawaiian Japanese and English.
Japan's relationship with Hawaii and the love of an Asian indigenous people who love an Oceanesian indigenous people both love each other is beautiful even if they are not related to each other.
Japan and Hawaii are brothers in heart and soul 💓❤️
Greek and Hawaiian are also so close in some ways a guy wrote a book about it. I forget his name. Never looked at the super validity but on the surface makes a compelling argument.
🤨 As a linguist, I can hardly think of any similarities between Greek and Hawaiian.
@@thomicrisler9855 as someone studying greek right now, i agree
Are you an alien 😂
Many Japanese Americans live in Hawaii and speak a mixed language called Pigeon which is a mix of Hawaiian, English and Japanese.
You think that's weird? You obviously haven'theard of "Spirit" name connection across the world;
Breath/Spirit in Coptic=Ka
Breath/Spirit in Chinese=Qi
Breath/Spirit in Japanese=Ki
Breath/Spirit in Hindi=ChaKra
(These are the examples I know of)
Spirit/Soul in Vulcan = Katra
@@douglasball4515
...Vulcan is a language???
@@mr.knightthedetective7435a conlang, but yes. It's designed by the same guy as Klingon
@@mr.knightthedetective7435 No, Vulcan isn’t an actual language. My post is a Star Trek-related tongue-in-cheek comment.
However, the film Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan does have some dialogue in a created language Vulcan, created by the same guy who would later develop Klingon in Star Trek III.
ki is from chinese probably, and 气 just mean breath for most part
In fact, Hawaiian Creole and Japanese Ogawasara Creole share the same influences: English, Chinese, Tagalog and Filipino and Portuguese
What changes is the base language in Hawaiian Creole and the Hawaiian language and in Ogawasara Japanese Creole and Japanese.
But both creoles contain Japanese and Hawaiian. What changes are the bases of the creoles, which are still interchangeable with each other today.
I left this info to deep the content of video throughin by science of Linguistics.
On your comment about making Italian sounds without actually speaking Italian. There's an Italian song Prisencolinensinaincusol which is supposed to sound like English sounds to Italians.
there is a pretty good reason why these languages have similar phonetics.
they both have very simple, small phonetic inventories. languages have a natural tendency to spread the consonants and the vowels as far apart in the mouth/in the space of possible sounds.
if you are limited to 5 vowels, you'll naturally end up with a e i o u, like in modern Hebrew, or classical Latin.
now, you also have the rules of how you combine sounds, and where you put them in a word, aka phonotactics.
an English syllable or a Korean cannot start with an ng (/ŋ/) sound, but they can both end a syllable with it.
In Hawaiian, every syllable has to end with a vowel. You can't put a consonant at the end (except for very few load words).
In Japanese it's pretty close, a syllable can either end with a vowel, or end with n*.
these rules are pretty simple, you don't need to break your teeth saying clusters like STReNGTHS, TBilisi (good luck saying this right, English speakers).
what I'm saying is, if your language's phonology is simple in some sense, the space of possibilities is small, so two unrelated languages with simple phonologies might end up sounding similar.
the chance that two languages with bigger, more complicated phonologies happen to be similar is much smaller.
now, take a look at the huge list of the world's languages, and it's suddenly very likely that languages with simple phonologies might sound similar to non speakers.
*that n will be rendered as /ŋ/ or /m/ depending on what comes next, but the Japanese consider both cases as valid versions of n, even though at the start of a syllable they tell n and m apart.
Also, modern Japanese allows for clusters like ks, sht, sk, sp, and a few more, but if you asked them to spell a word with these clusters, they will tell you something like ku s(vowel), shi t(vowel), su k(vowel), etc, they kinda image it as being two syllables.
Glottal stops (っ and ʻ), lack of consonant clusters (Merii Kurisumasu and Mele Kalikimaka instead of Merry Christmas) , and sharp sounds.
Tokyo Prefecture ends a few miles from Hawaii. Japan has been encroaching on the North Shore for a few hundred years. When the United States returned the Ogasuwara Islands and Okinawa it made both countries borders closer than most Americans and Japanese people realize.
Some Japanese words end in -n, such as the honorific -San.
Also, while Japanese doesn't have L and Hawaiian has a lot of L's, Japan has R and Hawaiian does not.
The Japanese R is an Alveolar Trill much like an L. They're both Sonorants.
So, while it technically is a difference, I think it's a similarity with a different haircut and color.
A japanese speaker should be easily read "aloha"? How fast will it becoma "aroha" beacuse of the lack of L in japanese?😅
Mochi, karaoke, and maybe mlre what I did not notice. Please, if you talk about a language, and want to say a handful of words on it, check the pronunciation. With google translate around it is not a big task by any means.
mochi❌
mokee✅
OMG, this video is so validating for me because someone else sees this weird similarity.
I learned Japanese as L2 and worked as a translator for many years. I studied hard and trained my brain to instantly make sense of anything remotely reminding Japanese. Several years ago I moved to the States and Hawaiian keep catching me off-guard. My translator muscle strains instinctively when I see similar syllable structure, and I suffer silently. It is so great that I'm not the only one who saw this similarity which nobody around me sees.
(No hate towards Hawaiian, only love.)
It is the consonant-vowel-consonant and vowel-consonant-vowel word structure that is striking.
Also, the vowels (the sound) are identical.
The consonants, are too, almost identical.
The phonology.
Japanese syllables can end in consonants. Japanese has one lone consonant, ん, which can be seen in words like はんぶん or じかん. Additionally, syllables ending in U and I will devoice those vowel sounds if the vowel is found between voiceless consonants or following a voiceless consonant at the end of a sound, creating a lone consonant sound. Examples include the devoicing of し, つ, and す in しつれします, or the devoicing of き in いきて.
Is there any possibility of insularity influencing the two languages? That is, they live on islands -> there's a lot of fishing/travel over water -> there's a selection pressure towards phonemes that can be clearly distinguished when yelled between boats. IDK, just a wild guess.
Niche topic, but I have the perfect thing to add. Nada sou sou (涙そうそう) from Okinawan singer Rimi Natsukawa (夏川りみ) in a duet with Hawaiian-born former sumo ōzeki KONISHKI (元大関小錦), both singing in their languages. ua-cam.com/video/vZg8B1n0FKs/v-deo.htmlsi=O7v7RI0DuLpYUG1C
From the sound perspective, A/E/I/O/U are also the same sounds in German. The consonants are basically identical, with a slight variation on S/Z, which are more distinct in Japanese than in German. (Basically a similar problem Japanese have with German or English L/R in the opposite direction. )
I think I left this video less intelligent than when I arrived.
Um do you not know that some Japanese words also end in a n sound? Additionally some Japanese words seem to end in a “s” like in gas even though it’s supposed to be a u sound. Regardless I am pretty sure you can adapt pretty much any Hawaiian word in Japanese to fit the rules of the language without changing the word at all.
Incidentally, the specific *mixing* of combinations of consonants and vowels in Japanese are frequently distinctly different, likewise, from Hawaiian.
If you do a video on Italian phonology, or especially people imitating Italian phonology, you'll also need to talk about Prisencolinensinainciusol, so you can show what it's like from the other direction.
Another strange connection I've noticed due to similar phonology is how despite not being related, Korean & Tibetan sound very similar.
Japan said hi to Hawaii in 1941 but USA said nuh uh
Polynesian cultures are notable for their tradition of 'wayfinding' - the oceanic equivalent of being nomadic. Between learning the stars and understanding how birds and fish react to nearby islands, these cultures spread across the Pacific. Similar to how the Phoenicians influenced Mediterranean languages, the Polynesians surely had considerable influence upon the languages of the lands they frequented. Not as strongly, of course, owing to the great expanse of the Pacific Ocean compared to the Mediterranean Sea, but surely enough to account for the similarities which persist to this day.
Love your vidddss!!
My mum is Japanese and my grandfather is Italian and they claimed that they sound alike
Anti-Japanese sentiment specifically has been dead in the US since the 1980s.
Anything left would have washed out with the generation that fought in the Pacific in WW2 passing away, which almost all have.
There’s still general racism, against Asians, too, sadly, but I’d say the Japanese and their culture are quite revered in the US, relatively.
1:45 ki-kee-hah?
6:35 “Mokki” 💀
Bro said French and German are in the same family 💀 (context: French is a Romance language, and German is a Germanic language)
They're both Indo-European, that's what he meant probably
They are apart of the same larger family, yes.
This person is the type of person who Says that Persian and Portuguese are not related at all
The languages only seem similar because they have smaller sound inventories than most European languages do, but this isn't especially unique given the other languages in the Japonic and Austronesian language families, as the phenomena you mention are typical features of their members' phonological systems.
There are features of Japanese that Hawaiian completely lacks, such as VOWEL DEVOICING (vowels occurring between voiceless sounds are often devoiced in Japanese, such that it doesn't sound like they are actually in the words), PITCH ACCENT (depending on dialect, Japanese words are pronounced with specific pitch patterns that rely on where in the word the pitch accent falls), MORAIC WEIGHTING within syllables (all vowels along with the sole nasal coda carry moraic weight, which has a bearing on whether syllables are short or long and whether syllables carry one or two pitch levels), CONTACT WITH CHINESE (Japanese has thousands of loanwords from formal Chinese that have their own phonological phenomena associated with them such as rendaku), aa CONTRAST IN CONSONANT VOICING (Japanese has voiced and voiceless consonants, such as oral stops and fricatives, but Hawaiian only has voiceless oral stops and fricatives), WORD ORDER (Japanese basic word order is SOV - subject + object + verb, whereas Hawaiian is typical of Polynesian languages in that it is clearly VSO - verb + subject + object), et cetera.
Hawaiian is well-known among linguists for is a LACK OF DISTINCTION BETWEEN /t/ AND /k/, that is, stops that contrast in the coronal (alveolar or dental) and dorsal (velar) places of articulation: in standard university Hawaiian, this stop sound is /k/, but it Niihau dialect, which is said to sound closer to the original pre-colonial form of Hawaiian, the stop sound is /t/. Hawaiian also makes extensive use of PHONOLOGICAL REDUPLICATION to create new meanings from existing morphemes and lexical items, and additionally SYLLABLES CANNOT END IN CONSONANTS (e.g. nasals) and there is NO CONSONANT GEMINATION (consonants that are "doubled" versions of their singleton counterparts), unlike in Japaanese.
I didn’t know Buddhism was popular in Hawaii.
numerous Buddhist temples in Hawaii, mostly connected to the Japanese community.
One of the cooler things to do in Hawaii is to attend Bonodori, aka Obon Matsuri, festivals held to honor dead ancestors.
From Hawaii to Taiwan, there are not only similarities, there are actual words used throughout every island in between. Not that it debunks what you said, but your beginning portion would have to account for all of their languages as well. Not mentioning the similarities in culture.
The Japanese who came to work sugar plantations in Hawai'i... A whole lot of them were Okinawan's (arguably not Japanese) who were "encouraged" by the Japanese government to migrate when they were forced to sell their land and become tenant farmers.
and most of the Japanese who came to Hawaii and weren't Okinawan were from a relatively small area of southern Japan.
So, one of the reason they sound alike is because both languages read vowels as they should be read?
thats why native english speakers shouldn't be allowed to make videos about linguistics
Look up Ed Bassmaster's Mumbles and see how much of that phonology you can understand.
Hey if you're still doing completly unrelated but similar sounding languages check out Igbo and compare it Japanese, very oddly similar sounding if you ask me
How did a linguist pronounce mochi wrong?
You should check hokkien and see how crazily unique and interconnected to different languages
There are Polynesian languages closer sounding to Japanese than hawaiin, idk y u picked hawaiin, and not samoan or maori which sound closer. Coz in hawaiin the Americans made them change t to k. Coz hawaiin didn’t make the k change like southern polinesian languages did. And polonesian peoples used to inhabit the mainland Asia before setting out to sea, so their pronounciation may of influenced them in ancient times, and boats did move around later on.. ok I’ll give you the fact they have a history together
agree, but would say what happened was that when the English and Americans came to Hawaii, their translations of Hawaiian words were all over the place (check early maps of Hawaii). At some point one of the missionaries standardized the spelling of Hawaiian but didn't get it quite right. The 'K' sound so common in Hawaiian descends from the 'T' sound so common in Tahitian, likewise that missionary used 'W' when the actual sound was closer to 'V' in English.
As someone who lived in Hawaii and is interested in history, I note that the American missionaries were almost all New Englanders and the early English teachers of Hawaii. I note that both in Hawaii and Massachusetts they say phrases like 'I park the car in Harvard Yard' almost the same way, I paak the caa in Haavaad Yaad' deemphasizing the 'R' sound, except Hawaiians didn't have 'th' sound so they use 'd' sound for that, da car, da house in Hawaiian pidgin. I'm not sure if that is coincidence or not, might make an interesting linguistic thesis.
Kekaha is NOT pronounced "keh - key - ha". I cannot see how you could say "ka" as "key", particularly when it's followed by the rhyming syllable "ha". I'm also cringing at Makena, ohayo, mochi, karaoke, manga, tako, and musubi. The grating mispronunciations are especially problematic after the chart at 3:48 is shown and spoken, making the correct sounds clear.
>Japanese integrated well
Nobody tell him about the Niihau Incident.
There were supposedly some austronesian communities living in japan in the past but not to the extent they had an influence on genetics and language. Māori would sound more similar than Hawaiian to Japanese from a phonetically pov to those not familiar with either language . Poly languages dont have ch, th, sh sounds in their languages.
i find this video painful to watch.
the pronunciation of the Japanese words is just terrible, cmon, it would’ve taken like 2 seconds to even just open google translate to get a rough idea of how the words are pronounced IN A VIDEO ABOUT PRONUNCIATION IN THAT LANGUAGE‼️
(also did he just pronounce mochi as ‘mockey’? 😭)
oh yeah edit, he also said that no L sound exists in Japanese, which is debated, and should at least be mentioned, even if he doesn’t agree. the L/R sound in Japanese is a sort of in-between that doesn’t exist in English, and could be transcribed as an L or an R, which is crucial about the phonology of Japanese, and should DEFINITELY be mentioned in a video about Japanese phonology!
i’m sure theres a billion mistakes in Hawaiian too, but I don’t speak Hawaiian so I can’t comment on those
I always thought that the Japanese word Kawaii sounded like Hawaii.
There’s a Hawaiian name ‘Kawai’ although it’s not pronounced anything like the Japanese Kawaii
Not as weird as the uncanny similarities between korean vs japanese grammer and sentence structure. 🤷♂️
korean and japanese are similar because those countries have had a lot of contact and history together. both have had a lot of influence from chinese and from each other.
@@kumoricJapan is if China and Korea had children
Yayoi people = from Korea
Jōmon people = from China
@@Wolfgonbuaf The Jomon are not from China.
@@matthewl6700 hu ha huu haaa
@@Wolfgonbuaf There is evidence that they have a southeast Asian origin, and the northern ones came from the Lake Baikal region of Siberia. Absolutely no proof they are from China. Hu ha huu haaa.
There's a theory floating around that climate influences phonology, so that's my guess
This is finding something onforce, so it is kinda naciongane, aloha does sound similiar to ohayo but its very little similarity.
poke =raw fish rice bowl sounds japanese but came from hawaii from what i understand
2:12 bro using the cube roll music
I have not been subscribed for TOO long but I just changed that!
Polyglot Brian Loo Soon Hua believes they are related to each other as Austronesian Languages.
Its annoying how many non native Hawaiians trying to make assumptions all while MISPRONOUNCING our words so bad, you ever seen Japanese TOURISTS try say our cities names???? Its totally different, u guys don't know na10
Maori and Japanese sound incredibly similar if you're not familiar with any of the two
I think it could have been more extensive. Maybe a few more examples that act as evidence and point towards your thesis.
There are some similarities but it wasn’t very conclusive for me. I appreciate your interest in language though I hope you can read these comments as constructive as possible. It’s only up from here
Obama is the surname of an American president whose father is from Africa. Obama is also a city in Japan. There are Africans living in Japan.
"Looked down on" is a hell of a way to describe concentration camps
Well, linguistically; they are not related.
But by blood,we are ALL related (All humans and animals generally) 😊
WHO TRIES TO CONFIRM THAT JAPANESE IS A POLYNESIAN LANGUAGE ?
I find it hard to believe there are more Japanese in Hawaii than California, New York, Texas or Georgia. By population percent yes but not raw number.
As just in LA and San Francisco has almost 200k Japanese.
approximately 30+% of Hawaii, and Hawaii's population is something like 1.3 million now. Japanese in Hawaii also have the lowest rate of inter-ethnic marriage meaning they are most likely to marry another person of Japanese descent. There are also quite a few Japanese nationals who move to Hawaii, Japanese in general love Hawaii and because they come as tourists there is work in Hawaii for Japanese speakers.
@@skipperson4077 so you reinforce my point.
@@bowez9 Wiki says you're right, more in California than Hawaii, and several other states have notable Japanese-American populations too.
There are much more similarities between Japan and Japanese and New Zealand and Māori.
Hawaiian has like the smallest consonant inventar there is so i doubt they can produce all the Japanese vowels without problems
4:13 Not quite correct; Japanese allows -n codas and in some dialects, even -m endings. Hell, you even said a Japanese example in 5:22!
All in all, this video feels more like a deformed brainchild which should never have been given space beyond the confines of some personal journal or notebook. In fact, you mention having to "pad out the video" at 7:42. Their only connection, as you yourself have admitted, is the "similar" phonology.
In all honesty, this little correlation is nothing but misplaced passion on what is simply a coincidence of two simple systems being similar.
9:47 don't worry, Japanese is coming down as we speak.
No it's not
It's pronounced tah-ko, not tayko. It's the same tako in takoyaki
My Druid friend said the same thing about Irish and Maori!
The Hawaiian word "ohana" (family) sounds like Japanese to me.
Fun fact The title for the Hawaiian king is "Kamekameha" i stili laugh 😂
Why did you explain the 5 consonants so weird 😂
It's literally the base consonants in many languages and English is the odd one out. aeiou done really need an explanation or do they?
YES! FINALLY! I'M NOT CRAZY!! I'M NOT THE ONLY ONE TO THINK THIS!!