How Similar Are Chinese and Japanese?
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- Опубліковано 3 чер 2024
- This video looks at the similarities (and differences!) between Chinese (Mandarin) and Japanese, two unrelated languages that have mutually influenced each other. Learn Chinese with ChineseClass101: ► bit.ly/Class101Chinese ◄, or learn Japanese with JapanesePod101: ► bit.ly/japanese-pod-101 ◄
(Full disclosure: if you sign up for a premium account, Langfocus receives a small referral fee. But the free account is great too!)
Thanks to Eric Yang and Hao Yi for their Mandarin audio voice samples!
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Special thanks to: Nicholas Shelokov, Sebastian Langshaw, Brandon Gonzalez, 谷雨 穆, Adrian Zhang, Vadim Sobolev, Yixin Alfred Wong, Kaan Ergen, Sky Vied, Romain Paulus, Panot, Erik Edelmann, Bennet, James Zavaleta, Ulrike Baumann, Ian Martyn, Justin Faist, Jeff Miller, Stephen Lawson, Howard Stratton, George Greene, and Panthea Madjidi for their generous Patreon support.
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Music: Intro: "Sax Attack" by Dougie Wood.
Body: "Which Part Me Born Free" by The Passion Hi-Fi. This track is unequivocally free for commercial use, scammers don't try to copyright claim it. Source: www.soundclick.com/bands/page...
Outro: "Circular" by Gunnar Olsen.
00:00 Quiz time!
00:25 The short answer: Japanese and Chinese are unrelated
01:07 The phonology of Chinese and Japanese
01:57 Structure of Chinese and Japanese
04:21 Chinese characters and vocabulary
09:16 Wasei kango: Japanese-created Chinese words
10:09 Japanese "returned loan" words in Chinese
11:37 Final comments
Hi everyone! If you're currently learning Chinese, check out ChineseClass101 ►( bit.ly/Class101Chinese )◄ - one of the best ways to learn Chinese. Or for Japanese, check out JapanesePod101 ►( bit.ly/japanese-pod-101 )◄. I'm an active member on several Pod101 and Class101 sites, and I hope you'll enjoy them as much as I do!
For 32 other languages, check out my review! ► langfocus.com/innovative-language-podcasts/ ◄
(Full disclosure: if you sign up for a premium account, Langfocus receives a small referral fee. But if I didn't like it, I wouldn't recommend it!)
I LOVE THIS VIDEO! can you do more like this? Like: how similiar are Dutch and German? Or: how similiar are hindi & Hebrew??? I LOVE IT
I was wondering if you mean Mandarin when you use the word "chinese" as a language.
The official dialect of China is Mandarin, also call "Putonghua". More than 70% of the Chinese population speaks Mandarin, but there are also several other major dialects in use in China: Yue (Cantonese), Xiang (Hunanese), Min dialect, Gan dialect, Wu dialect, and Kejia or Hakka dialect.
While the languages spoken in China are numerous, about seven groups are considered as the most important.
Mandarin. Mandarin is the top language among the groups. ...
Wu. On the coastal area in Shanghai, Wu is the Chinese dialect spoken. ...
Yue. ...
Xiang. ...
Min. ...
Gan. ...
Hakka.
Langfocus Why does Japanese language somehow sound more like the Malay or Indonesia language rather than Chinese?
It's great that there are videos like this talking about the differences between Japanese and Chinese but they are much more similar than they are different. The fact of the matter is that Japanese as a written and academic language much like Korean was the result of heavy Chinese influence. I know this is going to come as a shock to most people on this video and probably the video creator as well but Japan's history stems to its Chinese related origins. Sorry to all Meiji Restoration enthusiasts but Japan didn't start because Izanagi and Izanami had tons of god children and then created the Yamato people. It started when Qin court advisor Xu Fu fled China and settled in Japan during the late term of the first Chinese Emperor's reign - the part where he went crazy and wanted all his ministers to help him find the elixir of immortality. This is why you'll find so much of Japanese culture relatable not to modern day China of course but to war-like China back in the era of Qin. As for the rest of its culture much of that is more well known to people on this side of the world. Influence from Buddhist Tang China. That's where most of the yokai and Japan's famous katana and motif of cherry blossoms come from among other things.
So taking that to the language aspect you'll also find that Chinese isn't always SVO and in fact this is a much more modern form of the language. Meanwhile the same or similar Japanese SOV form is present in older forms of Chinese - and Cantonese which many people on this side of the world will point to when talking about older forms of Chinese. For example saying "I am telling you" (SVO in English where I = S, am telling = V, you = O) would be 我对你说 (SOV where 我 = S, 对你 = O, 说 = V) and similarly 私はあなたに話します (私は = S, あなたに = O, 話します = V) You can't say 我说对你. That doesn't make sense. On a side note 对 here holds the same place value as に in this sentence. Like the video suggests in Japan there's inflection where words are changed to add meaning while in Chinese you'd just add a word. BUT this is related in that the particles like に take the place of words. In this case both things mean "directed at" the object. Other particles also have this direct one to one correlation. Meanwhile verb conjugation like the different inflections of verbs in the video's examples are related to the Ainu local grammer structure of which Xu Fu and early Japanese settlers adopted to differentiate themselves from Qin China. Even the term Yamato which is the Japanese word for their people is derived from Chinese and then changed to fit with the more confident Japan of the Meiji Restoration. The bottom line here is the Meiji Restoration changed or hid a ton of what Japan was in order to promote the Dainippon state they were trying to build.
In fact you can get so much more understanding of China from looking at Japanese culture. One of the best places on youtube for this is Gaijin Goomba's channel. He's done a great job of explaining the histories and origins of much of Japan's history so be sure to check him out if you haven't!
actually ，If you want to speak "I went school" in chinese you maybe should say "我去了学校" or "我去学校了"
I’m a native Chinese speaker and “Cat blah Fish blah Food blah blah” is a pretty accurate way of describing how I read Japanese texts
You said what I want to say 😀
Yes
我学日语之前也是这样的。遇到全都是片假名、平假名的日语句子不知所措🤣
True…
well it's actually more seemed to have a possible meaning to guess, for example: plane blah blah blah _a character that looks like "take out" but it's actually not_ blah blah blah
Fun fact: The word 手紙 (tegami) in Japanese means ''letter", but in Chinese it means "toilet paper"
Wow is Chinese" tegami" meen hand paper?
it means finger 手指 in cantonese
@@lloydclegg7656 yeah, just the literal meaning
This could cause problems at the post office when mailing a "letter"
@@DeactivatedCharcoal Yes, Japanese and Chinese have some differences in vocabulary. But there are other words for letter Chinese can use, for example 信 (xìn) or 书信 (shūxìn)
When I was working in Japan my boss told me about when his wife and daughter were travelling in China. One day they had to ask a passerby for directions when someone came up with the bright idea of pulling out a notepad and communicating via kanji. A basic level of mutual understanding was reached, directions were given and received, and everything ended happily.
That sounds like 筆談(conversation in writing) in the history of east Asia. People from China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam had different spoken languages, but they shared the same written characters(kanji/Hanzi), so they could communicate with each other with written words. I've heard that European people did similar things in the history, but in Latin.
@@alextsau that's probably true, vietnam was heavily influenced by china for a thousand years, there are native vietnamese characters based on chinese characters so that chinese people couldn't read.
@@alextsauits like in laos cambodia and thailand that has a border between themselves and in its writing the sketch is very similar as in Korea, Japan and China and historically it is linked even when the Khmer empire existed, these were annexed and culturally similar
I had this experience, my friend a Cantonese speaker , did exactly this, first time in Japan and communication via Han script.
And then they went to Nanjing.....💀
My friend and I are Vietnamese, I've been self-studying Japanese for a few years and he just started learning Chinese at university. Sometimes when we are just chilling in Discord (maybe waiting for other friends, or we're about to go to bed) he would type some Chinese sentences he remember from his lessons and I would try to guess the meaning of those, and translate a few words into Sino-Vietnamese if I can. It's very interesting how similar (and different) the three languages are.
Me: * Finally learns new language *
The native speaker I'm trying to communicate with: "Who are you and why do you want to eat my children"
Say thanks to Duolingo.
I swear that bird is gonna kill me because it's been 4 months since I haven't opened the app. Remember me when i get kidna-
_he didnt took his lessons so i took his life_
Transient Rain I will do my lessons! I swear!
*nani*
But that’s fine some Hong Kong people know English
@Shuriken Master r/woooosh
I am dumb.
*Chinese: I am SVO language*
*Japanese: I am SOV language*
*Russian: Hold my vodka. "He went to school" can be:*
*SVO: Он пошёл в школу (lit.: He went to school)*
*SOV: Он в школу пошёл (lit.: He to school went)*
*VSO: Пошёл он в школу (lit.: Went he to school)*
*VOS: Пошёл в школу он (lit. Went to school he)*
*OSV: В школу он пошёл (lit. To school he went)*
*OVS: В школу пошёл он (lit. To school went he)*
*All of these forms are grammatically correct in Russian*
P.S. Even though all of these forms are grammatically correct, some of them are still more preferable and sound more natural in different circumstances and thus may contain slightly different meaning (but English translation would still be the same). SVO and SOV are the most commonly used word orders but in some cases other word orders would seem more natural. Word order can also change the emphasize in your sentence
After some experience of speaking and reading Russian you will automatically chose the most natural word order in any particular case
I wouldn't call Russian word order 100% free, you still need need to learn some rules, but it's definitely much more flexible and much less strict than in English and most of other languages
Noun cases are the best.
Free word order best word order.
@@novvain495 Yeah, true. They are hard to learn for non-native speakers, but if you master them - you can write beautiful sentences. It's also easy to write poems in such languages due to free word order
@@thedamntrain My native language, Romanian has noun cases, but the accusative and Nominative share the same endings, but still you can change the order to SVO (default), VSO and SOV, but since the Dative has different endings, you can put the indirect object where you want.
EG: I gave the boy a book
SVIO= Am dat băiatului o carte
VSIO= (the same as above)
SIOV= Eu băiatului o carte am dat
ISVO= Băiatului am dat o carte
And so on. This does not happen in other romance languages.
Although Russian's case system surpassed romanian's by a lot.
@@novvain495 Yeah, we have six cases in Russian for EVERY situation that can happen in your speach, so there are almost no situations when you can't take one word from the end of a sentence and put it straight to the beginning. You almost always can do it and it will always be grammaticaly correct. Of course, we have most common word orders - SVO and SOV, we usually use them in our speach. So if you say OVS- "В школу пошёл он" - people may be surprised with your unusual and uncommon style of speach, but no one will tell you that this is grammaticaly wrong. People will still understand you, because the meaning of your sentence didn't change. Except for some rare situations, word order doesn't affect meaning. That's why we have a huge amount of poets - Russian is literally created for them. It's pretty useful - if you can't find a rhyme - you can take it from anywhere in the sentence, add to the end and enjoy your rhyme!
actually，in Chinese，we can say:
你吃饭了吗?svo
饭你吃了吗?osv
你饭吃了吗?sov
吃饭了吗你?vos
吃你饭了吗?vso
饭吃了吗你?ovs
LOL
they have a little different but they both mean:have you had your meal?
the visuals are consistent and adds up to the overall appeal. the appeal of being concise yet detailed. its very thought provoking and interesting. love the videos. nothing comes close to Langfocus. its my personal benchmark for linguistic studies and how projects should come out not as close to Paul san but it's definitely a goal.
Thanks. I just try to make good videos about things I’m interested in.
@@Langfocus thank you for the all the content you put out for all of us. the audiovisual narrative and information layout is totally astounding.
Good job,you have explained clearly on the difference and similarity of Chinese and Japanese language,thanks!
"Cat bla fish bla food bla bla".
Such articulation and poetry. Brought a tear to my eye.
Indeed
Tears of laughter, no doubt
could be a good haiku poem
I recognise that this is indeed sarcasm. You're welcome, y'all.
When portuguese native speakers hear Italians speaking + the talking hands.
actually，most of the chinese from mainland have no trouble reading traditional Chinese characters.😂 I have no idea why we understand it without systemically learning it but that is the fact.
看得懂繁體的大陸小夥伴們舉手🙋🏻
因为小时候会看很多港台翻译的日本动漫，像数码宝贝、神奇宝贝之类的，也会看很多香港电影和台湾的综艺，再加上港台有很多歌手大陆人也很喜欢，因此潜移默化的就学会了大部分会常常用到的繁体字。
繁体完全看的懂，但是不会写
Probably just because the main base structure haven't changed so if someone from China(uses simplified) goes to Taiwan(uses traditional) would have no problem understanding I myself is one of them as well
不过还是看不惯台湾左到右上到下的中国传统写法
Annie L 哈哈哈哈哈哈哈是的 就莫名其妙的能看懂
大陆人都能看懂繁体字，只是不会写
Very detailed video. Loved it!
Great video!
As a Japanese, I can't think of a life without Kanjis.
A sentence made only by Hiragana and Katakana is a literal hell😭
日本人跟慰安妇道歉
im a Japanese learner and I agree kanjis are very important to text
Could I ask if, like, a sentence made only using Kanji could exist?
@@theorixlol2018Not in modern japanese.
钓鱼岛是中国的！
im a Chinese speaker and this "Cat bla fish bla food bla bla" really made my day. LOL
Yeah. I loved this example choice. Lol
I speak Japanese but I like trying to read Chinese websites.... Mission nearly impossible but it's fun!
Matthew Fairbairn As a Chinese speaker trying to read a Japanese website and determine is meaning is hard but fun! Kinda like a puzzle!
me dumb :p ww
Same here 🤣🤣🤣 literally burst out laughing
@@XiaoMof I do this a lot too, but I made sure to get a rudimentary understanding of Japanese grammar and some Japanese-only kanji so I don't run into 大丈夫 and get confused XD
8:05
It’s same when Japanese people try to read Chinese. For example...
我愛你 (It means “I love you” in Chinese.)
Japanese people can read 我 and 愛, but can’t read 你, so it’s like...
I love bla
I wonder if Japanese people will read “我爱你” as "My love bla".
wa ta shi (to) ai?
sou de su ga?
i learn japanese recently
actually, japanese don't use the character "你"
so it's like " me love ...what??"
but,since 我愛你 is famous Chinese sentence, almost every japanese understand the meaning and pronounciation.
It's like so many chinese knows the meaning of 愛してる.
@@user-gy2ii2or5h Oh, I didn't know 你 is not used in Japanese. Suprised as a one who learns both Japanese and Chinese. I just easily thought all chinese characters would shared of course eventhough I really haven't seen 你 in any Japanese senteces.
This is a great video and it is very educational, thank you for making this! :)
However, for more educational purposes:
1:29 老实 means "Honest", not "Naive". Maybe you can interpretate it as the person is too honest that they become naive, but 老实 means Honest literally.
3:32 Actually, you can add a “了 ( Le )” or “过 ( Guò )” inside to show you have already done that action!
Examples are:
我去了学校 = I went to school
我去学校了 = I have went to school
我去过学校了 = I have already went to school
I went to school. Past tense went
I have gone to school. Past participle tense gone etc.
Amazing content! Thank you.
the thai text in the beginning literally translates to “I am in prison” lmao
LOL
WHAT
hidden message lmao
😂😂😂
He abducted by the CCP
"You thought all Asian languages are the same? Racist!"
Haha, love the comedy in the beginning! LOL!
Феликсов Аарон Денисович that was awesome! 😂
Что???However,I think it's difficult for both Asian and West European to learn Russian.😂😂😂
Yah there's no comedy there. Let's not pretend that language is synonymous with ethnicity
Штоп, сто?
Russia is an Asia country right？So Russian is the Asian language too
I'm a native speaker of both, and wow this summary is amazingly accurate! Thanks Paul, you made my day!
Maybe just one comment about the tone: I think the Japanese language is somehow tonic, not in a linguistic sense (they still get the meaning) but there is certainly a natural tone for each word/sentence (... and yes some are pretty picky about it). There are also a few cases where you can only differentiate the words by tone (e.g. kaki: 柿/persimmon (accent on "ki") vs 牡蠣/oyster (accent on "ka") e.g. hashi: 橋/bridge (accent on "shi") vs 箸/chop sticks (accent on "ha")) but they are indeed super rare.
Yeah, there is something in Japanese called pitch accent (高低アクセント), which is technically part of the word, and a different accent can indicate that it’s a different word with a different meaning. But in context they almost never cause confusion. Like, if I say I’m going to eat an あめ and I use the pitch accent for “rain”, you’ll still know that I mean “candy”.
And of course, the pitch accents differ depending on the region. I often discuss certain words with my Japanese wife and her parents, and there’s often a debate over which accent is correct, or whether a certain accent is standard or dialectal, etc.
Thanks! It was exactly the kind of explanation I looked for
Love the progression of the example sentences at the beginning:
私はタバコを吸わない：I don't smoke cigarettes
在室内不能描烟: Basically means "No smoking indoors"
警察: means police
The thai sentence means I'm in jail
Guess he didn't stick to not smoking huh lol.
Ha, funny easter egg for the few that could read them all. I can only read the Japanese one so I totally missed it.
It's 抽烟, not 描烟
Franklin Zhang 不知道那个是啥输入法
It is 抽 not 描
描烟 sounds like depicting a picture of cigarettes lol
As a Chinese who has traveled to Japan, I will answer the last question of the video. I can basically understand road signs, signboards, place names, signs, etc. I can understand 50% of menus and product names. For news, I can guess the topic it discusses.
Why are there not more Chinese people who are bilingual in Japanese, or Japanese people who are bilingual in Chinese? I feel like I never hear about these people. Meanwhile in Europe it's very common to be bilingual or trilingual
@@FffffffffffffffffffffffffffffL In many European countries students learn English + another European language while in (I believe) most countries in Asia students only learn English as one foreign language
@@FffffffffffffffffffffffffffffL There's a similar situation in Brazil but even stranger because all of our neighbours are Spanish speakers, Spanish and Portuguese are quite intelligible, but bilingual Brazilians in Spanish are quite rare. Usually we learn only English as a foreign language, and those ones who want something else go to French.
so you can say bilingual or trilingual ? If we have not choose about langurage.Just like you probably can't understand me now, because I don't even know English
@@FffffffffffffffffffffffffffffL In China，Japanese is most popular second language for study，Japanese is very easy study to Chinese student.
I speak beginner-intermediate Japanese and referring to your 8:20 part, I also had the same experience when I went to Taiwan. I speak pretty much zero Mandarin/Chinese but I survived due to my Kanji knowledge, at least I can order food and use the MRT. 😂 The fact that Japanese Kanji is based from Traditional Chinese which is used in Taiwan (and also HK) is super helpful too!
中国大陆在1956年之前一直以来都是使用繁体字，后面为了减少文盲，才开始推行简体字，但是香港、澳门、台湾还是保留的繁体字的使用
thank you very much for your analysis😊
chinese here. when someone hands me a japanese product, i can pretty much read the directions and get an idea what that product is for, and how to use it.
C Park you made my day
C Park u got the point bro
JAVs tend to have Chinese Subtitles. Good for us ^^.
你们这些人讨论了半天，我就想知道你们有没有看过行书，草书还有我的“鬼画符”。大体结构和笔画相似，意思就不会差太远。。。另外，想知道你们看的懂甲骨文的吧。
Minjut Ge 看不懂
THE CAT WAS EATEN BY A FISH
这只猫被一条鱼吃了。
猫はめっちゃ吃驚した！
The cat was very surprised!
Sharks are fish, so it could happen😂
@@JCLIAO007
這只貓被一條魚吃了。
一條魚把這只貓吃了。
一條魚吃了這隻貓。
魚吃貓
The cat bla eaten bla bla fish
Thank you for this video on comparisons. LOL I like your Thai joke at the beginning quiz.
I am a beginner in learning Japanese and some videos say that the Kanji vocabulary came from the Chinese, so I was wondering how much different the two languages are. Now I know from this video.
Thank you very much for the grammar part of Japanese where you talk about the SOV order of grammar. Yes, I am noticing in allot of the Japanese sentences have the Verbs are at the end of the sentences.
Japanese has 3 vocabularies with Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji lettering structures.
Does the Chinese vocabularies also have multiple letter types to learn? I know you talk about different tones of Chinese.
Anyway, learn something new everyday. Thank you and take care.
The video is far more informative (and interesting) then I was expecting
I’m glad to hear that!
Library in
Japanese : 図書館(Toshokan)
Chinese: 图书馆（Túshūguǎn）
Korean:도서관 (Doseogwan)
Everything in
Japanese: 全部(Zenbu)
Chinese:全部(quánbù）
Korean:전부(jeonbu)
Interesting.
This only proves the point on pronunciation similarities because the modern word for library in Chinese is a borrowed word from Japanese. 图书馆 is a Japanese-invented noun reverse adopted in China in 1896.
@@wanxinmike Not true. ‘图书馆’ these three characters are actually Chinese. Do your own research.
@@xxxppp4741 Of course the characters are Chinese. What I'm saying is that the terminology is Japanese. Why don't you do more research instead?
kabigon the pronounciation is determined by the characters in the borrowing country, hence the similarity proved the common roots of the characters. You should check. This UA-camr also said how the pronunciation was determined when it is borrowed
kabigon check 10:41.
As a native Cantonese Chinese who grew up in Australia, and also speak fluent Japanese, I have to say, this video is BY FAR the most accurate representation of the differences I have ever watched on UA-cam.
Thank you Paul, well done and please keep up the awesome work!
You ROCK dude!
To answer your question, I don't have much difficulty understanding Japanese anymore, but back when I was studying Japanese I just took a guess of the core meaning of the text by looking at the kanji first and then fill up the missing context with hiragana. It's quite convenient I must admit
However, the biggest hurdle is still the kunyomi...Chinese is often represented as onyomi, then there's keigo (OMG)
but hey! speaking English has a huuuuuge advantage! since I could translate most katagana directly =)
I totally agree
James Yan Not a native English speaker？ Only a native Cantonese speaker？
@@DD-oz9tj You can learn english later on =.=
@@ccpmustfall6445 名字很不错
The phrase "我去学校" mentioned in video 3:37 in general Chinese means the present tense, which is "I go to school", while "我去了学校" correctly means "I went to school",The character "了" is important.
No
近代的旹候才出现这种鬼东西，白话文没有任何语法变化
尤其是葉聖陶搞的好事😅😅😅
@@loser_CaO 请问我提到的和葉聖陶有什么联系？我不知道这背后的故事，能否大致说一下
@@loser_CaO 但为什么中国大陆几乎所有官话地区都会习惯性在口语里加上“了”，这个推广过程也太快了吧😮，在古籍里一般不会加“了”，我感觉在古籍里会在行为动词前加上“已”比如：“昔人已乘黄鹤去”
@@Earnestboy-bw1jj 你不知道？
I’ve been learning Japanese for the past few months and let me tell you, it was a huge confidence boost when I could immediately recognize which was Chinese or Japanese, I also relatively understood a handful of examples from memory!
I'm Chinese, I have no problem reading the text on the cover of Japanese porn.
tiansun li xiao si wo le
Sit down! Chen duxiu
厉害了
陈独秀你坐下
lmfao, (internet slang in English)
7:40 "The cat plans to eat fish.
The cat was eaten by a fish."
Poor cat 😂 something went wrong with his planning.
It was a big fish.
Pedro Schmitz fish like a shark or something
Yeah unfortunately sometimes even this situation might happen😄
Still a better story than Twilight.
For a moment I thought i must have misheard😂
Good work. Thanks!
This video is so useful. Other videos are just people from the two countries saying random words to show the differences and similarities, what I really wanted to know was about grammar and characters. Thank you!
As an Advanced Japanese student I can understand chinese signboards, but the way mandarin has simplified characters just blows my mind. Also the fact that Chinese is SVO, my heart feels the pain when I remember how confusing was the SOV first time learning Japanese.
I'm currently studying for JLPT N1, only when I pass I'll decide if I try studying Mandarin. Both beautiful languages :)
Jp: 手袋 (glove)
Ch: 手袋 (hand bag)
Jp: 家庭 (household)
Ch: 家庭 (family)
Jp: 迷路 (maze)
Ch: 迷路 (lost (in a place))
Jp: 我慢 (patience)
Ch: 我慢 (I'm slow)
Jp: 大家 (landlord)
Ch: 大家 (everyone)
Jp: 床 (floor)
Ch: 床 (bed)
🆕
Jp: 私 (I)
Ch: 私 (Private)
Jp: 顔 (Face)
Ch: 颜 (Color) *There is a different word*
But, in Japanese
手さげ袋(te sage bukuro)=hand bag!
@@sidu9326 In Chinese, 手提袋 also means hand bag.
Sounds interesting!
Gloves in Chinese : 手套 shǒu tào（shou3 tao4）
Ch: 大丈夫 (a real men)
Jp: 大丈夫 (i'm fine)
Ch: you er girl
These days, Ariana Grande's tatoo "七輪" is bringing a lot of fuss on the 'net. The Japanese are laughing a lot because it means "barbecue" (precisely, a small barbecue to be placed on the table), but in Mandarin it means "Seven Rings".
「七」means “seven” in both Mandarin and Japanese, the misunderstanding lies on the second character 「輪」, in modern China it means “cycle”, “wheel”, etc. and in Japanese it means “ring”. Japanese people find the tattoo funny because 「七輪」is a brand of barbecue oven in Japanese(imagine someone have a “Seven Eleven” tattoo, seven is ok and so is eleven, but “Seven Eleven” just reminds you of a convenient store). I’m a native Chinese and the first time I saw her tattoo I thought it represented “seven cycles(of life)”, because “seven wheels” sounded too ridiculous.😂😂😂
Wouldn't it need a measure word?
and this is why you don't wanna be edgy and put random "cool meaning" kanji tattoos on your body. unless you're a native of course.
@@sophiajune546 Not in Chinese. It functions as it's own measure word. Really depends on intended meaning though
She could have made it in Chinese, not Japanese
I'm studying Japanese. I'm still at a fairly beginner level but I do know a lot of N5 & N4 kanji. When I went to the local Chinese market, I picked up a newspaper in Chinese and was able to get the basics of an article. I even asked the lady behind the counter if I was correct. Turns out for most of it, I was.
Killing two birds with one stone eh
The meaning of “I went to school “, usually expressed in Chinese is “我去过学校了” or “我去了学校”. “I have gone to school “ usually express in Chinese is “我已经去过学校了”.
“我去过学校了”和“我已经去过学校了”是相同意思的，都是“l have gone to shool ”。“我去学校了”更符合“l went to shool"
@@peoplestreamoffish3258 我去过学校了更好，native Chinese speaker here
There's actually this funny phrase called "大丈夫" which in Chinese meant "Manly man". However in Japanese, it meant "are you okay?". It was extremely confusing when I saw it in japanese text the first time.
also 天地無用 :D
I guess if a man isn't ok, he won't seem so manly anymore.
jonah wu 帝王切开
Khong Kok Wai 大丈夫大丈夫，不大丈夫大丈夫😂
Davin Cher hahaha! That made laugh :D
I am Chinese, and I am shocked a foreigner can understand both Chinese and Japanese so well. What you said it's all true, especially the part of Chinese people read Japanese: "cat bla bla fish bla bla food", totally agree! Your video just fantastic.
You are also speaking the language of Britain bro, love from India
It's kind of like when an English person tries to read Spanish. Like for the sentence "I call the police" in Spanish would be "
Llamó a la policía". To an english speaker this just looks like blah blah the police.
Also you were surprised how much a foreigner knew Chinese, but I live in the US, you speak better English than some of the native people here. 😂😂😂😂😂
@@user-jn3zs8yz9z 制杖别在这秀好吗？读不懂英文吧
@@user-jn3zs8yz9z 他给up主说的，up是加拿大人，用英文没问题啊
japan jackas 你是外国人吧，你这段话语法有问题，根本没法被读懂
This is a great video.
I would like to correct one word you mentioned in the video. When you talked about the "Examples of Wasei Kango", the first word "忍者" was not created by Japanese. The word and pronunciation of "忍者" (ninja) was used in ancient China back to "宋“ dynasty or earlier. However, unlike Mandarin, the exact pronunciation and meaning now only exists in the rural county "Xiuning休宁" (Anhui province, China). Xiuning dialect sounds much like Japanese. Some research papers on Xiuning dialect are written by Japanese linguists .
Excelente vídeo!!!
Take the word 勉強 as an example
Japanese: study
Chinese: forcing oneself / reluctant
I mean those are basically the same words
大丈夫
Japanese：(it’s) fine / okay
Chinese: big husband or big grown-up man
别勉强自己了
Or "barely" in Chinese
@@yz293 ye I was pretty shocked when I was in my weeb phase trying to type japanese with romaji and the word is completely different meaning in Chinese
Chinese people like me who was educated all the things in simplify Chinese have no trouble to recognize traditional Chinese charaters. it's basically same to us to read, and type, just a little bit hard to hand writting
sylviasummerful Because Chinese is not my native language, I can recognize what traditional characters' simplified counterparts are quite often, but probably not as much as you. How long have you been learning English by the way?
Caleb McCall almost all the Chinese students in my age was force to learn English from middle school. but what we acturally learned from classes are nothing to use. For me, I start to speak English seriously since I met my boyfriend 1 year ago, who is a native American, Chinese blood and learned Japaness before :) He had trouble with learning Chinese between recognize charators and words, he can read some if charator comes individually, but when they are combine together, he always make me laughing :D
It took me 2 weeks to figure out simplified chinese characters, when I was in millitary.
I don't believe you know how to write in bopomofo
繁体字我放在句子里认识百分之99没有问题，拿出来就只能认识七成了。写的话感觉很少
I remember I was hanging out with my Asian friends, and we did this experiment. I would whisper something to my Chinese Malaysian friend adn she would write it, and then my Japanese friend would read it and say it loud back in English. Most of the time the meaning was intact.
Actually I have a pretty fun situation, my best buddy started to learn Japanese in roughly the same time I started to learn Chinese, we don't know pretty much anything about the other language, but there were multiple talks and reading of the same text in 2 different languages we are learning together. Must say it's fun.
because Japanese was developed on the basis of Chinese
I feel so proud of myself for getting all four of the questions right at the beginning.
same lol
myowncomputerstuff I failed the last one, thought it was sanskrit not Thai.
Dibe_007 A good trick to distinguish a South Asian language like Sanskrit is to look for a continuous horizontal line, with most of the character features being below the lines (not above, like Arabic).
For example
Hindi: क्या हाल है?
Nepali: तिमीलाई कस्तो छ?
Punjabi: ਤੁਸੀ ਕਿਵੇਂ ਹੋ?
To quickly point out Thai, notice the many tiny circles on the characters (often referred to as "heads"), not all fonts include the heads on the characters, but if they do, you can be sure it is Thai. Without the heads, it may be easier to mix up with other Southeast Asian abugidas like Lao and Khmer.
myowncomputerstuff oh thanks
i did lose confidence when it was the two kanji tho. i need to study more.
To say "I went to school" in Chinese, you would say:
我去了學校。
(wǒ qùle xuéxiào)
With the character "了 (le)", indicating the complete past of the action.
Ohh I thought it dis characters
学校
for school I guess thats is traditional then and the other is simplifed. Even in Japanese we use the 学校
@@foxtail7363 actually some of the Japanese words are borrowed to create simplified Chinese
@@foxtail7363 you're right its 学校 but he right it in complicated character
我去過學校 aslo works well
Finally there is an answer to that part, I don’t think he understand how Chinese work completely but he has some good points.
Thanks for the knowledge imparted
The "watashi wagakkou e ikitai" sentence "I want to go to school" might not be frequently used
As a Chinese who speaks Mandarin, Shanghainese, Cantonese and Japanese (and many other languages), I want to say that Japanese pronunciation is closer to Shanghainese than Cantonese.
That's reasonable! They face Shanghai, not Canton!
I’m a bit curious if Japanese is closer to Hokkien (福建話，閩南語）
I ’ｍ a Japanese. I think, it's not an accidental matter. According to an old Chinese history book(三国志魏書第三十巻東夷伝烏丸鮮卑東夷伝倭人条) 、ancient Japanese had very similar culture and customs to that of old southern Chinese kingdoms(呉or越). A Japanese ethnologist Prof. Kenzaburo Torigoe analyzed that such ancient Japanese people (or what are called “Yayoi-jin”弥生人) were originally emigrants from Lower Yangtze area and Japanese nation’s name in character”倭”was supposedly came from the kingdom’s name”越”.
I agree. I would say when a Chinese tries to learn/speak Japanese. Shanghai dialect speakers tend to have the closest pronunciation right off the bat. Cantonese is a lot more nasally and isn't as close to Japanese in comparison.
@@ganjer63 Of course. The closer geographically the closer the language and customs.
Thank you ancient chinese people for inventing Kanji(Chinese character).
As a japanese, it's a little bit difficult to learn, but once we acquire it, it's very useful. I'm really appreciating it.
我是日本人。我愛中国。偉大國家。
☮️ peace
a ri ga to gu sei i ma su!!! We love you too...
Anncient japanese language EVOLVED and absorbed many other japanic around. (Japan is NOT always populated by japanese, several aren't japanese, but they are absorbed to the ponit only few dozens live today)
l am Chinese,but l love Japanese.Now l am learning it
Sinian Fang
I love you too, I learned putonghua so I am learning cantonese now. Wish you a good luck.
You are brilliant!!!! Thank you teacher
日本人です。
私の母から聞いた話です。昔母がイギリスに留学した時、そこで中華系マレーシア人の友だちができたそうです。基本的にはお互い英語でコミュニケーションを取っていました。でも、母はその頃まだ英語が得意ではなかったため、コミュニケーションが難しかった時もあったそうです。そんな時は、漢字を書いて、筆談で話していたと聞きました。
実際私も子供の頃(もちろん英語は全く理解できなかった頃)、旅行の一環でロンドンのチャイナタウンに行った時、漢字を見てすごく安心したのを覚えています。それまでずっと読めない文字に囲まれていたので、少し読める文字を見た時にほっとしました。
钓鱼岛是中国的！
@@carlliu2552 这里没人说不是，友好交流应当是相互的。
😂@@carlliu2552
@@carlliu2552琉球乃中国之物
傻逼
Your understanding of the difference between Japanese and Chinese are quite right and I appreciate the way you explain it based on your vast knowledge about language. One addition is that japanese way of pronouncing Chinese characters are quite different as you explained but Japanese, especially high ranked people before Meiji reformation could read Chinese perfectly by some technique called Kanbun, even though phonetic way is Japanese but could understand the meaning of Chinese sentences. Kanbun is still taught in high school, especially studying Chinese Poems. Thank you.
Hi Mr, just wondering if I may ask, why would Japanese school teach Chinese Poems?
Chinese shcool also teach western poems, and japanese article
Because it's classical literature .We also learn about western civilization. Knowledge belongs to the human race.
why not ? In Korea, higher education still remains studying of Chinese literature and writting system. This language had influenced Korean and Japanese for centuries. It's just so resourceful to learn, and it's a treasure of the entire mankind.
In Western schools, many Eastern topics are briefly touched upon or adapted. China acts much like Rome does in the West, so in school it kind of seems like learning one's roots.
How similar are Japanese and Chinese...
Me: *HARD*
Actually, he should have mentioned some Chinese dialects rather than only Mandarin. Shanghainese is the dialect that most similar to Japanese. Cantonese, Fujianese, and Hokkien are also more similar to Japanese than Mandarin.
Remember, Chinese is not just a single language.
@@RC-sc5li Late but Hokkien and Fujianese are basically the same I am from Fujian and I just call it Hokkien more specifically I am from Fuzhou there isn't really a closest language(still debated) but I personally believe Hokkien is the closest
@@RC-sc5li "Cantonese and Hokkien are more similar to Japanese than Mandarin"
That's just not true... If anything Cantonese is more similar to Vietnamese than Japanese
@@johndoe5346 粵語 閩南語和國語具有親屬關係
In my opinion I think Chinese is harderr
The phenomenon of "returned loan words" is so interesting to me. Especially as a native English speaker learning Japanese, and seeing words like "waifu" and "karaoke" that have made their way back to English as a Japanified version of the original English word.
Karaoke is english word? :/
@@lpi3 karaoke comes from the Japanese word 'karappo', which means empty, and 'okesutura', which is a loan word from the English "orchestra".
@@augustawind69 Thank you, I didn't know that. The greek origin of 'orchestra' makes this phenomenon even more impressive. I don't have any doubts that there is karaoke in Greece :) This means that word made interesting journey :)
oh man, I love that "cat bla fish bla eat blabla", it is so good to understand how does a chinese feel by reading japanese. And also it makes me laugh.
I know, it's extremely funny, but it's true!
+Harmony Lucis as a chinese, i wNNA say its true!haha
cuteguy498 Well I'm a chinese too ^_^
so for example and for fun this:
鳥インフルエンザにかかった鳥の羽や粉末状になったフンを吸い込んだり
for us Chinese it would be like: Bird blah blah blah bird feather blah dust-like blah blah inhale blah blah blah
This is somehow getting more and more amusing...
He Yiqun I lol'ed there too.
That sounds like some cool bird drug you taking
I was watching this being very informed and not expecting to laugh, then the bla bla part happened and I died.
he did that right) that's exactly how we Chinese feel when we read Japanese..
Haobin Song yep 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
When I was young(er) I thought that Cyrillic system is difficult, but then I noticed Chinese and Japanese (Korean, etc) characters and I was... speechless... Maybe I will ask stupid question now, but do you see Chinese as difficult language to learn for.. Chinese?
It could be easily and naturally learned by 99% students in the school. But we are mostly struggling at English. When I started learning Japanese I have to say that I felt quite comfortable. Just like some English speaker learning German or even like Portuguese learning Spanish.
Do you mean archeology?
pitch accent does determine the meaning in japanese tho! just look at the words for bridge and chopsticks, both are pronounced はし (hashi) but depending on which syllable is higher the meaning changes. the words for rain and candy are also like this, both are あめ (ame) but have different pitches. pitch is extremely vital to meaning, especially when it comes to homophones.
of course its not as extensive as chinese since its not fully tonal, but in many ways pitch accent is much closer to tone then it is to the english equivalent, stress; so its more accurate to view pitch as a subdued form of tonal language rather than as a type of stress.
@@FriendlyandKind ive only barely dipped my pinky toe into korean, but from what i understand, yes. korean, unlike japanese and chinese, isnt tonal. apparently it used to be a long time ago and some dialects still have hints of it, but its not considred one anymore. i think i read somewhere that linguists suspect that it might be redeveloping back into a tonal language, but not sure if thats been confirmed or even a widely held belief. i remember being surprised when i learned that korean wasnt a tonal language because it kind of sounds like one to my untrained ears, but then again i had been studying japanese for many many years before i learned about pitch accent so maybe im just bad at recognizing language tones 😅
I hope langfocus makes more new videos
as a Chinese, like you said, I can read the sentence in your example just like cat bla fish bla eat bla bla
Hongjin Yang hahaha
Me correct at thai
him: "What you think all asian letters are the same?"
me: 👁👄👁
👁👄👁
👁👄👁
ᜑᜑᜑᜑᜑᜑ ᜈᜃᜃᜆᜏ᜵ ᜇᜒ ᜈᜋᜈ᜔ ᜃᜐᜒ ᜎᜑᜆ᜔ ᜃᜋᜒᜅ᜔ ᜋᜅ ᜀᜐ᜔ᜌᜈᜓ ᜀᜌ᜔ ᜄᜈᜓᜈ᜔ ᜋᜄ᜔ᜐᜓᜎᜆ᜔ ᜁᜑ᜔ 🙄
Me whos Thai :👁👄👁
I mean, I didn’t know it was Thai, but I knew for sure that it wasn’t Chinese or Japanese
You are very knowledgeable person 😊
8:50 This is my favourite part about the Chinese language. As a bookworm it's pretty extreme. There are plenty of words I'd not know how to pronounce but can get by understanding them in a text well enough. It's probably mind boggling to people who've never learnt such a language. Maybe it's controversial, but to me Chinese is a written language first, and a spoken language second.
I go to school 我去学校
I went to school 我去 了 学校
Mark Luo lol quite true tho
It should be 我上过学校 but those work too
right
I can see that the difference between those two sentences is the use of “le” which is the particle of Completion which you simply inserted into the middle of the sentence.
Eh... If you use"I went to school" to express "I got education (those years)", it's much better to say 我上过学.
As a native speaker of Chinese, personally I suggest that 我去学校 lay more emphasis on the action of going from home to school.
I remember that when I was a child, there wasn't a Chinese version of most Nintendo games that existed, so the games my family had were mostly in Japanese (I couldn't read English back to that time). Since my family and I could neither speak Japanese, we guessed the meaning of dialogues by Kanji entirely. That feeling was strange that I didn't understand the meaning of 90% but from those fragmental pieces of Kanji, I can roughly know what I ought to do the next step.
What was the videogame system you were playing?
I heard early videogames couldn't handle kanji, so they used kana (with spaces).
@@VieiraFi 8 bits couldn't, but 16 bits could (not every kanji but at least a sufficent amount)
pokemon
So you could see like :step 1 blah blah blah jump blah blah blah
@@BabySonicGT I believe communist China made everyone believe Chinese isn’t related to Japanese. Even the internet follows this propaganda. Even China got rid of characters recently that is now exclusive to Koreans and Japanese. The guy is good here but he was brainwashed.
as a french native speaker, when I started to learn english, I could recognize a lot of words which seemed to share a comon origin. And like a japanese or a chinese person who tries to learn the language of the other, even though you can guess a certain amount of a text, you also miss the subtleties and can be confused with some words which seems the same but which actually have a different meaning or some words which are not still used in the modern french.
C'était le meme chose avec moi, quand j'ai appris le français au lycée et au fac (Je suis australien). Alors, il faut qu'on fasse l'attention avec les faux amis, je sens que cette idée s'applique envers l'ecriture Chinois et les kanjis du Japon. Maintenant, j'apprends le Japonais je souhaite voyager au Japon cette année pendant le fin de l'été. (Excusez-moi, ma grammaire est mal selon moi.)
Very different though. Chinese and Japanese are completely different. French was spoken by English aristocrats for centuries. They have false cognates but many and many more differences, no one expects to understand the other language by learning the first.
yes, it's true that except some common vocabulary, japanese and chinese are further from each other than it does between french and english when it comes to compare the grammar. Another difference is that in japanese, most of chinese loanwords are used with a very specific way, most of the time in compound words, while that's not the case in english.
words mean one meaning in English,but when you see a word in Chinese,you can just read it and meanings of it could be three or more, even means different in different sentences.your brain should be active to receive this character and search in your mind at the same time.otherwise,you gotta misunderstand many words people said
im someone who learn chinese and will also try to learn japanese next im really happy that learning chinese is going to make my learning of the next language easier
これ日本人が見ても面白いな
两个日本人看见脸上开心？纯自行理解的，是这个意思嘛？
外国人視点で自分の国を見るのって面白いよな(笑)
@@user-cy8mv4ck3b ¿Por qué respondes en Chino a una pregunta en Japonés?
@@user-cy8mv4ck3b 不是即使是日本人看这个也很有意思的
雅咩爹 You know?🤣
The thai word in this video 0.27 mean "I'm in jail" lol
MrPob Pob do you make that bubbles in the latters when you write it??
魏振雄 你要 A cup还是B cup有没有C cup?
Ahmad Al_shanqeety Formally, Yes. You could ignore them when you write fast or for some artistic intention like font designing and we still recognize the letter fine. But it's informal. They said Thai letters are invented for carving in stone first. The bubble which we call the letter's "head" is always where you start to write the letter. Because it's where you punch a dot first before starting to punch stroke away from that point. But the writing in late 600-800 years are mostly by heat iron write on dried palm leaves book, The fonts are evovle from dot to circular starting point.
ใช่ อยู่ดีๆขึ้นมาว่า ผมอยู่ในคุก โคตรตกใจ 55555
我在监狱 ，太可笑了，ตลกมากครับ ผมนี่ยืนขึ้นเลย
During the Jomon Era (BC8,000-BC300), the Japanese had already the Japanese Language. But it was a speaking language and had no writing systems. During the succeeding Yayoi Era (BC300-AD500), Chinese characters (Kanji) were imported to express the Japanese language in Kanji letter writings. Therefore, one Kanji letter has multiple pronunciations (one akin to the Chinese and the other akin to the Japanese). During the succeeding Asuka and Heian Periods (6th-12th century), Hiragana and Katakana were invented to better express the Japanese language of the time. Many poems, novels, war histories were written during the latter half of the Heian Era and succeeding Kamakura period (12th - 15th century).During the succeeding Edo Period (16th - 19th century) as the literacy rate reached beyond 90%, the pre-modern day Japanese language was formed.
Jomom Language is not Japonic Language. Yayoi is ancestor of Japonic Language Family
日本人でも勉強になりますね、
いい動画ありがとうございます。
どういたしまして．😊
In Japanese, accent DOES matter. For instance, "hashi" in different accent can mean chopsticks or bridge, while "ame" in different accent can mean rain or candy.
The other parts of the video are quite correct.
Reference: I'm native Chinese speaker and I can also speak Japanese.
same here. the tones of his japanese are not accurate. if he can get the tones right he would sound much more native.
Bo Gao damn, I always thought that depended on the context and not the accent. Learned a new thing today :D
It doesn't matter that much if you get the accent wrong as long as you form your sentence so it can be understood by context.
Indeed - but as he says, the tones don't USUALLY give meaning to a word. There are occasions where the pitch helps distinguish two similar sounding words. Also, if you say a word in Japanese with the wrong pitch, you may sound strange and non-native, but you'll usually still be understood.
My girlfriend is Japanese, and she tries to teach me a few words, but doesn't have much success because I'm pretty dense tbh. I can't tell the difference between 2 o'clock and rainbow, or the mushroom and the famous Japanese professional wrestler.
cat bla fish bla food bla bla
it was brilliant! ))
I laughed so hard when I heard that
cat blyat fish blyat food blyat blyat
+Don Carlo I hear exactly such convos on the street every day.
LOOOOOL
From a Mandarin learner who got to intermediate-ish fluency while living in Beijing for 4+ years:
Only thing I would add is that everyone I knew had no problem whatsoever with traditional characters, eg watching HK movies, in karaoke, reading old stuff, etc, etc
I do wonder what it's like for Japanese or Taiwanese to see the Simplified characters though..
My very good friend who is Japanese I know was really interested to learn little by little about the simplified characters.
Anyway, one again, your stuff is ON POINT. Well done as usual. Thank you.
From what I know, Japanese or Taiwanese usually have difficulty reading simplified characters. Traditional characters still show up here and there in some unexpected ways in mainland China, but not the other way round. For Taiwanese and especially Japanese, simplified characters are almost non-existent in their daily life. But it seems the ability of reading traditional characters of mainland teenagers is declining because of less and less exposure.
@@hiuminglo3040 Somewhere like 40-50% of simplified characters are unchanged; a lot more than "here and there".
My Japanese friend would be really interested sometimes to see how a certain character was simplified.
There is a bit of a pattern to it, similar to the way other things are put together within the characters to begin with.
@@hiuminglo3040 Contrary to what you said, Chinese people’s understanding of traditional characters will not decrease, because there are things written in traditional characters on buildings in many parts of China, such as Spring Festival couplets, which have to be rewritten and replaced every year. In addition, people in Taiwan and Hong Kong will not understand simplified characters, just like some people misunderstand that people in mainland China cannot understand traditional characters. In fact, if you are familiar with the writing of Chinese characters, you can judge whether simplified characters or traditional characters through the context, or It is similar through fonts, because simplified characters are not fabricated out of thin air, and based on traditional characters, try to write with fewer strokes. Finally, people in mainland China and people in Taiwan often quarrel over political issues. Do you think they can't understand simplified/traditional characters?
Japanese tones is different by where one is from, like dialect. For example, generally, it is different whether "hashi" means "bridge(s)" or "chopstick(s)" , but those who live in Osaka, Kyoto, and the cities around these pronunce both samely.
it's not tones, but rather pitch accent
@@user-zl3se4qj8m sorry i mistook
Sounds like the role of Chinese words in Japanese is very much like French words in English. In a way also the writing, since so many French words are recognizable to an English speaker in print, but are pronounced very differently, e.g. point, centre
other examples: différence, correction, alphabet, and many other nouns that end with 'tion'
I like your idea. But I would say, by writing e.g. vocabularies there are more similar/identical words between the Chinese/Japanese languages. While in English and French, the similarities are less recognizable by the pronunciation, but only by writing.
Sorta. Except English is really close to French both being Hindo-European. With English being helpful for learning French and vice-versa, it is not just that the 60% of the complicated words in English are romance/French-derived. It is also that French often uses similar grammar to English to express things.
I am going to do something
Je vais faire quelque chose
Where is my cat?
Où est ma chatte? (Yep, in Alice the cat was female).
The French are tolerant of lovers
Les Français sont tolérants des amoureux
There is no such luxury in the Sino-Japanese pair.
:)
Common ancestry may still mean fairly different grammar. Russian vs English (both "derived" from PIE over the ages) makes a good example. Languages do share a lot of Swadesh in simple words -- but use different basic constructs. Like, Russian is notorious for lack of use of modal verbs. There is totally no "to be" and "to have" in modern Russian, up to the point "I have something" in Russian being expressed with something like "At mine, there is" (у меня есть).
Actually I would say french words in english still sound very similar cause mostly the word origin both from latin. Chinese and Japanese loanwords as well as the pronounciation differ more from each other.
as a japanese I could say that I can understand almost 60〜70% of chinese text.
In many cases, simplified chinese character confuses me but I strangely like to guess what that mystery kanji initially was lol
This is because Chinese characters used to be written in many ways, for example, the country, it can be written into 国、圀、國、囻、囯 in the past. Smplified Chinese 国 is just one of its forms, is not created by the CCP.
For the same, the Dragon 龙， can be also written in 龙龒龍竜 in the ancient Chinese... maybe the 竜 is most popular than 龙龒龍 in Tang Dynasty...
At the same time the cross in 渋 is very ugly and confusing for native Chinese speakers, no matter mainland China, Taiwan or Hong Kong
Cause it's a strange simplification out of nowhere,
Similar examples like the three dots upon 桜
@@user-oq7dx9bn4x some of them picked form exists before, but many of simplified words are just made up and nonsense. the worst thing is to simplified some completely different words into a single character just because they pronounce the same. Like 發髮are totally not related, but they are all simplified to 发
简体字大部分来自草书体
I am trying to move now into studying Chinese, and I have found that my foundation in Japanese has helped me. I acknowledge the huge differences, but at least in reading is helping me to grasp some basics on the characters. I always try to help myself to connect a similar language to learn a new one. If you have any other tip to help me improve my multilanguage practice, please feel free to comment. At this point, Chinese will be my sixth language. And many thanks for this video, it comes in handy now that I'm trying to learn Chinese!
You can speak six languages! Amazing
@@lifeisstrange336 I am a very basic speaker in the rest of languages. My best ones, so far are Spanish, English and Japanese. But I'm trying to level up in German.
Cool explanation
The cat fish food blabla is roughly how I understand Dutch (even though we have the same alphabet). I kinda get it, but if the text is long or complicated I sort of loose the meaning eventually because of the "missing" words.
The way you explained and elaborated is so detailed and professional.
"the cat was eaten by a fish" - paul 2016
con mèo ăn cá
Well it is possible if it was a pirranha
CloudQuake ! Why not, when a shark can eat a man (Shark is a fish too).
Large catfish can swallow a cat.
Gaming Corrupt Tiếng Việt!
I think it is worth to note that in Edo/Ming era it is perfectly reasonable for the literate class of two countries to communicate using writing. Ming and Joseon merchants often traded in Edo Japan with this type of communication.
Totally wrong.
Sino-Japan culture communicate since Wei.
Japanese Emperor was called 亲魏倭王 by Wei Emperor
@@seltainc1715 The two are not mutually exclusive? I didn't say that contact only started in the 1600's.
@@Kavino Ming dynasty Sino-Japan two countries have some war because Ming cut off the commercial and culture communication.
@@Kavino Kanji, Chinese character was imported to Japan almost AD400-500
i'm french and i try to practice my english and learn japanese !! so this video is perfect for me ;) thanks!
Hi! I'm Japanese. I love Chinese cuz I love Chinese charactors!
I love Japan because of your food and culture. Everything is decent
Qian Liu me too.
Hi! I am chinese and I love japan because of the delicate food culture and imaginative animes.
你的名字很好听，in Chinese is called"gong xia you xi"，很美
hi，我是中国人，希望中日韩友好发展，不要被政治搞得互相敌视
I'm Japanese. When I look at Chinese text, I feel I can understand almost all of the meaning. But it would be often totally wrong after getting it. This is because there're so many words that have the same kanji but completely different meaning between Chinese and Japanese. For instance, "大丈夫" means "It's OK" in Japanese, but "full-fledged man" in Chinese. Sorry for my poor English.
Lorosa'e Very interesting,when I look at Japanese text,I often only get a general idea.The more kanji ,the more details I get.
@Jacky Chew
Dude, do you have a problem with Japanese using Kanji? You've written who knows how many comments that basically say the same thing: that Japanese might as well abandon the use of Kanji. It comes off as ridiculous and insecure.
Lorosa'e your English is no poor!
You're right. But when I was in Tokyo I would not be lost since I can understand the meaning of the road signs. I'm a Chinese.
Quadronnn, do you think koreans are ridiculous and insecure? They did exactly that.
You saying it comes off as ridiculous and insecure comes off as ridiculous and insecure, by the way.
Love youre Videos ✌️👍👍👍
Thanks!
I don't speak Japanese but I know Cantonese and mandarin. some times, when I watch videos in Japanese on UA-cam, I can understand like 30 to 40 % of what is being said as there are always some Kanji or Chinese characters on the screen to aid me along the way on my understanding. it helps a lot.
Being Chinese a language very different from English in vocabulary and everything else. Has it been difficult for you to learn English?
@@mariacastaneda77 not very
@@mariacastaneda77 personally , it's still easy to learn English, i think a junior high schools student can communicate fluently if sufficiently exposure are take in our english lessons
This is a very under appreciated channel.
yup
Interesting video.
Its not just the written form, but how you speak certain words are kinda similar too, especially those words that were 'borrowed' from china. I speak Chinese and i can kinda make out some words from the other language , although they might not look similar when written down in pinyi/romaji, i would say some words in Japanese are just a more englishy(thats the only thing i can think of) sounding Chinese word
I speak Chinese and I just unterstand the basic meaning of Japanese words.
I'm also interestet in languages, I speak Chinese and German fluently and English, French and Italian I learned in school. I'm going to an exchange year next summer. I'm so exited to learn Japanese or Cantonese😄
Your parents must be proud!
For me it is a little bit the other way around. I can read some Chinese because I see characters that I see in Japanese and well, and because I am studying Japanese. Therefore I would understand what 食物 means. In Japanese I see the same characters.
That's interesting👍
Cantonese and Japanese were the most fun languages I learnt. Good luck with them, both can be difficult, but that only makes them all the more rewarding to learn. :)
Alexander Matthews In the meantime I was watching UA-cam videos about Cantonese. 6 tones! And how go I get them into my brains?
Actually, I am sure that most of the Chinese people in mainland can understand traditional Chinese
Why you so sure?
yes, it is true, first the elder mainland chinese had learned traditional chinese ， second majority of traditional words have not much different with simplified word， even really do not know the single traditional word， they still can guess it by reading the front word or behind word
A large amount of pop music in China comes from Taiwan and Hong Kong. So when Chinese go to KTV (karaoke place) they spend a lot of time singing songs that use traditional characters, and even sing in cantonese (also uses traditional characters). So yeah, I am pretty sure most can read traditional chinese just from karaoke alone haha.
The traditional characters are still in use in China, as even the Bank of China logo are in traditional form. If you are into classic novel, chance are you will find some in traditional form, and there is also calligraphy.
The thing is that most of the traditional characters are not simplified, and for simplified Chinese speakers read traditional Chinese materials, it would be like reading a mixture of simplified and traditional Chinese. Even if they dont know any traditional Chinese, they may immediately recognize the corresponding simplified character based on the context (because of the similarities, shared part of the character, interpreted meaning of the whole word, etc.), and very quickly they can read traditional Chinese without any difficulties.
As someone that's been learning Japanese for 4 years and has a Chinese girlfriend, this video is accurate. I don't think anything was missed. In my experience, I can look at some Chinese characters my girlfriend will text (what little Kanji I actually remember god that is so hard to keep in my head) and kind of get the meaning but I'll never know how to pronounce it. The languages sound completely different to the ear the vast majority of the time, but in writing are more similar.
great video
I am a native Cantonese / Mandarin speaker. You forgot to mention that in Japanese, most kanji have a on yomi and a kun yomi. Since on yomi is the pronunciation borrowed from Chinese, it's usually mono-syllabic and the kun yomi being multi-syllabic. Only the on yomi kanji vocabularies sound a little bit like Chinese.