Oh my god. I studied Japanese for 15 years and have my N1, and this completely blew my mind. We need like 8 more videos diving into each of these topics please! 😅
I’m learning Japanese and hearing people say “I’ve been learning/learned Japanese more than a decade” reinforces my patience in learning because it basically tells me that it doesn’t matter how long it takes to learn a language so long as you’re learning
@@purpleplays69420 It depends on what your native language is, it should be easy if yours is one of the Ural-Altaic languages for example. I’m Turkish, that’s where I know from :)
@@Osz6ural-altaic isn’t backed up by much evidence. It’s far more likely to be a sprachbund, which means the languages don’t share a common root, yet influenced eachother due to proximity.
That was very interesting! I've been learning Japanese for some years now, but I've never really questioned how the sounds of the language as they are today came to be. I would also love to hear more about the evolution of Japanese grammar, which I am very fond of.
Anyone who enjoyed this great video should also read Bjarke Frellesvig's "The Japanese Language", which covers all these changes in great detail with lots of sample texts. I had the pleasure of taking his class and it was one of the most enjoyable I have ever taken.
After reading G.B. Sansom's Japan: A short Cultural History I've gotten a taste for a good non-fiction now and then and so I looked it up on amazon, I can't lie I was startled by the £111.40 hardcover price tag haha. Guess I'll be sticking to paperback😅
This was super interesting and also I would've watched a video twice as long with you speaking at a normal speed and keeping the slides there for more than a blink of an eye :D Should probably watch this at half speed :D
Thanks for putting this info together! It seems all too often people talk about the language as some static monolith, without taking into consideration the history and diversity associated with it. This is a great reference guide for looking at some of that history!
No frickin' way! I basically asked for this exact video (implicitly) a while ago on one of your videos and you did not disappoint one bit. Super dense and super interesting, thank you so much!
Something quite similar to the aspiration and latter lost of the Japanese /f/ took place in Spanish as well almost by the same period of time (around 1500) at the beggining of words, for example /farina/ or /ferida/ became /harina/ and /herida/, but the combination of /fu/ remained, like in /fuerte/. Japanese and Spanish vowel system is also quite similar, with the same 5 vowles...perhaps with a slightly different /u/
The /u/ is definitely different. I understand how to make the Japanese u, but I can't actually do it correctly. Whenever I try it in front of native Japanese speakers, they always burst out in laughter.
Really interesting video! I enjoyed learning a lot here. I just have one mild criticism, in your attempt to show how a non-affricated /ti/ and /tu/ were pronounced at 1:16 you still affricated these sounds because you do this in your regular English too! Not many people realise that their aspirated /t(ʰ)/ is actually affricated, and it's not widely taught, but once you start noticing it you can't stop hearing it!
I feel like there's such a gap between the written and actual phonetic english, especially considering the different varieties that are spoken and how much variation they bring, that it can actually be hard to grasp how different so many phonemes are pronounced compared to the corresponding IPA symbol.
This is actually something I've noticed seems common in the Asian-American sociolect. /t/ tends to be affricated when aspirated, as well as often utterance-finally or even word-finally, sort of as a counterpart to the common ejective realization of word-final voiceless stops. Is this a common realization in any other dialects?
@@aloysiusdevadanderabercrombie8 It's virtually ubiquotous, but most noticeable in modern RP English as well as Irish English which contrasts aspirated alveolar and non-aspirated dental T, the former being affricated, and the latter being their pronunciation of the voiceless TH as in _think._ The most well-known accent where it isn't affricated is Italian-American English along with the older New York (Manhattan) accents; as well as Indian English.
@@Unbrutal_Rawr Interesting. I don't think it's affricated in General American though, no? At least, mine isn't affricated (though I speak Californian English) and it's not noticeably affricated in most speakers I interact with outside those with a stronger Asian-American accent.
@@aloysiusdevadanderabercrombie8 It's not noticeably affricated to most English speakers because some degree of affrication is a baseline for it in English, necessiated by the place and manner of its articulation. To speakers of languages where /t/ is dental, it sounds halfway like /tʃ/. The farther back you go the more affricated it becomes because it's laminal (articulated with the blade, not the tip). Listen to the way Indians approximate it - using the tip, and likely even further back than in RP, being retroflex. That's the articulation you need to avoid affrication completely. That or it being dental-apical as in Italian(-American). Another language where /t/ is heavily affricated is Danish - which is part of what makes it sound like very drunken English with the German R.
oo i’ve been waiting for a video like this on japanese. i’m not too confused on why, but am confused on how to use the sound changes 😂 it’s interesting to see why and how though! i really love the history of languages, especially around asia. your videos are great.
I've always had a mild fascination with the history of Japanese, but I rarely find time to dig for good resources on the phonetic details, despite having interest. (KInd of unrelated, but I also briefly had an interest in Old Japanese / 文語). So this was really helpful.
Sound changes are so fascinating. I watch a lot of Simon Roper's videos also on Proto-Germanic into English, and it's wild so see all the unexpected ways words can change. Really hits home that words and meaning can be so fluid. Amazing job! 🌸
This was fascinating, also I'm really happy with myself for being able to read/understand almost every instance of (modern) Japanese used in the video. Thanks!
I find the massive spelling reform in 1946 quite notworthy... it introduced small kana (きよ vs きょ) and changed every ゐ (wi), ゑ (we), を (wo) to い (i), え (e), お (o). before 1946, おお was spelled おを(owo)
@@cubing7276 Like MeChupa says, they made an exception for particles. You can look it up if you want, my comment obviously doesn't give the whole picture.
I'm just starting to learn the language, but the history of the language is very interesting. I just got to これ/それ/あれ part and I thought: It looks like this part of language didn't change much since earliest times, how it can be that such frequently used words obey such consistent rules. And then I see ko2 and so2 at 2:05 and I like, yeah that was a good guess. IE languages would keep such consistency at best in spelling (like in wh-(qu-) questions, and Russian doesn't even have that). At the other side it's interesting to look at things that are similar to my mother tong (Russian), like u-unrounding, palatalization, short /i/ and /u/ drop and as I see from this video merger of dj and j. Language history is fascinating. P.S. And, yes, on /tu/ not being /tsu/ and pronounced /tʰˢu/ it was pretty funny. Also /ti/ sounded like palatalized Russian ти as well, wile the point was that it's not.
Cảm ơn bài nghiên cứu thú vị của bạn về tiếng Nhật trong lúc mà mình đang lười biến học nó. Bài nghiên cứu rất hay, tạo thêm cho mình sự hứng khởi để học tiếng Nhật tiếp 😁 日本語は難しいですが、面白いです。
That's some really interesting and rare content about historical evolution of Japanese.I think it would be awesome if you do a similar video about the historical evolution of Chinese next.
Oh boy, now that's gonna be a project and a half. There is no good Proto-Trans-Himalayan reconstruction that exists, and Proto-Sinitic is still being hammered out. You might be able to do one from Middle Chinese to the various non-Min Sinitic languages, but there is honestly not enough data to do it well, imo. Add the possibility of Middle Chinese as traditionally defined may not even exist, and this would be a project worthy of several PhD theses.
@@vampyricon7026 The main difficulty would be that Chinese is rather a language group than a single language, so the author of the video would either have to choose to track the evolution of one specific Sinitic language or dialect, or making an overview on the evolution of the whole Sinitic language group would still be good.
I liked the amount of detail you put in this video. Although it seems to move quite quickly. Just my observation, but i will need to re watch and pause many times to fully digest the amount of information you put into this.
Loved the video! I was wondering, could you share the sources, please? Not trying to be skeptical, I'd just like to read more about it! Or, if anyone in the comments has any recommendation, that would be appreciated too!
Such a good video, as someone both learning japanese and a world history fan this one is a gem. Will have to rewatch it a couple of times at lower speed tho, too much to process!
Extremely well done. It may take a couple of replays to catch all the wealth of information presented. One thing, though, is that there is no word "pronounciation" in English. It's "pronunciation," with a change in vowel between noun and verb forms.
One interesting thing: For the relatively new found electricity the same one-syllable word is used in three Far Eastern countries: In Vietnam "điện", in China "diàn" and in Japan "den". And in Europe this is a five-syllable monster!! In Germany that word is sometimes circumvented by saying "Strom" (stream), but that word does not nail down the exact meaning.
@@moorooster223 there is a t sound before those two, which is not present in the regular kana. they are distinct, but sound similar enough that there's no real need for them
@@siyacer from what I understand there's a bit of a t sound to ず as well. are you japanese or where did you learn this thing I've never come across? it was always explicitly explained to me as being the same.
I think this video is too difficult to understand if you're not already studying linguistics, which isn't really that bad, but I have watched it from the first seconds to the last and I think I didn't get anything.
One thing you forgot to mention is that along with the adjectival suffix ~ki becoming ~i, adverbial suffix ~ku became ~u for a short period of time; and then if it follows ~a~ then it becomes contracted to ~ou, e.g. arigataku - arigatau - arigatou. (omedetou and ohayou also originated from these contractions.) But later on the adverbial ~u reverted back to ~ku as we know today.
10:33 Ironically, Japanese 「系統」 no longer means "system" but "bus route" instead whereas Chinese 「系統」still means "system" which was loaned by old Japanese. Nowadays Japanese only use loanword 「システム」for "system".
@@山川川山 But the meaning of 「系統」only remains "bus route" from Japanese texts that I've read and always「システム」for "system" (I'm not Japanese so welcome Japanese to judge me). Do you mean that 「系統」 still has the meaning of "system", right?
Voiceover is like X10 speed and some slides (full of info) changes to the next in one second. Need to pause to watch numerous times. Choke-full useful information certainly!
The modern division of labor between hiragana and katakana only became standard after WWII. Male authors in the old Empire age only used kanji and katakana, as did official texts; hiragana was considered only appropriate for women, who weren't literate with kanji.
Ok, correct me if I'm wrong, but... for what I've heard, in some places of Japan zu and dzu (and ji and dzi) are still distinguished. Is this right? Also, o and wo are occasionally distinguished, specially in songs and stuff. This isn't reliable, but it's definitely a tendency. Also, words ending in -ou are sometimes pronounces as "-owo/-owʌ" when singers need to fit two syllables there, which I find kinda fun. This was a very informative video! Although the way it ends seems to imply that only 2000 to 3000 kanji exist, which isn't true at all, as those are just the basic ones; it also seems to imply that hentaigana are dead which... fair enough, mostly yeah, and that man'yogana is dead entirely, which thousands of sushi restaurants around the world would disagree with (in the context of words like sushi, these spellings are called ateji; ateji are pretty absurd).
0:31 づ is neither weird nor rarely used anymore. In fact it is quite common in modern Japanese language, and appears in many words and phrases like 付き 尽くし 漬け 詰め 連れ etc
I think what he meant is di du became standardised when they shifted to ji dzu. What you’re talking about is rendaku where the spelling is changed to reflect voicing.
I am searching about the order of letters of Hiragana and Katakana. It seems to me that their order has been influenced by Sanskrit. I haven't found anything solid to prove it, so any clue would be helpful.
'Pão' was spelled and pronounced 'pan' in Old Portugese. Otherwise it would be kind of strange that パン is supposed to derive from Portugese, the only Romance language that doesn't spell the word with an 'n'. Spanish - pan Italian - pane French - pain Romanian - pâine
The word doesn't have an /n/ sound in Japanese and it didn't have it in Old Portuguese; what's written/transliterated as 'n' was pronounced identically in both languages, as a nasal consonant without a definite place of articulation, varying between the ng-sound and plain nasalisation of the preceding vowel. You're right that the Portuguese pronunciation changed, although there might be a few dialects left that preserve it.
@@Unbrutal_Rawr My statement was more about general spelling and pronunciation and not about specific phonetics of the letters 'n' and 'ン/ん'. My point is that if the Japanese word for bread derived from Portuguese pão, we would expect the Japanese word to be パオ and not パン.
@@wZem I understand your point, but I think you're only half correct. It's not the spelling that determined how the word was borrowed, but the pronunciation. It's a mistake to conflate the two and imply that Japanese パン contains a sound found in most Romance languages. I would expect MoPt _pão_ /pãw/ to be reflected as パンお or パンう. Both your hypothetical form and the actual form would not match up with _pão_ if that was the form at the time of borrowing.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard those words before (at 7:57). I don’t know what they are or how to spell them. Edit: the first one is affricate. Idk about the second one.
Amazing video, super interesting! One thing: I'd really appreciate if there were breaks between ideas, just the span of a breath between sentences, because right now the video is hard to follow because all ideas are crammed together. Maybe you could also speak a bit slower. I would appreciate if the video was longer, but therefore easier to understand. As it is, if I want to follow along with what is said I have to pause every 3 seconds 😅 But I don't know how the algorithm works so if this speed is required, so be it^^
I'd like to make a note on your pronunciation of the word "pronunciation": in middle English, there was a phonetic process called tri-syllabic shortening. Generally, long vowels were shortened if located in the antepenult, or 3rd syllable to the end of the word, leading to such pairs as private with a long vowel and privacy with a short vowel (although American English has since restored that vowel by analogy). A similar change affected "pronunciation" (probably through some sort of intermediate, like "pronunciate" which would make the ou fall on a third syllable) and "pronounce". In middle English, ⟨ou⟩ represented [uː] and (short) ⟨u⟩ [u]. Trisyllabic shortening reduced the [uː] in pronunciation into [u], and then it was further reduced to [ʌ] in modern english. At the same time, the great vowel shift began diphthongizing long vowels, changing [uː] to [ʊu̯], [əu̯], and then to [aʊ̯], leaving us with the vowel alternation we have today. Its pretty interesting, especially because a new vowel shift is occurring with that vowel as we speak! Many (at least American) english speakers are regularizing the pronunciation of pronunciation into "pronounciation", as I tend to do, and you obviously do too. Phonological change is so exciting!
You should do a speculation video on how Japanese may evolve in the future. I think the sound ふ fu could disappear and officially become hu, as h eventually took over that whole line originally from a p sound. I would assume some particles like は を will change to get rid of the sound difference of ha/wa and o/wo. And I assume there will be more Western influence, as we see in current slang like words like the ending -なう, which means to be doing something "now." We also could see the い sound dropped from i-adjectives, as many people nowadays do.
Cool video I enjoyed, but I have some minor criticisms. I'm not sure if this is just your pronunciation but at 5:47 the "る/らる" r's were pronounced very harsh, not as they are pronounced in Japanese. They are a lot "softer" for a lack of a better word. Also, this might just be me but I think you should take a sec to breath for a few moments especially when u cover the screen with text, I'd like a moment to be able to read it all instead of just seeing it and it then being gone. Just my thoughts though, carry on
I kinda agree, the pronunciations in the video made me question the credibility of the channel and actually confused me sometimes in my understanding of what was going on
Oh my god. I studied Japanese for 15 years and have my N1, and this completely blew my mind. We need like 8 more videos diving into each of these topics please! 😅
I’m learning Japanese and hearing people say “I’ve been learning/learned Japanese more than a decade” reinforces my patience in learning because it basically tells me that it doesn’t matter how long it takes to learn a language so long as you’re learning
How did tou start off?
@@purpleplays69420 It depends on what your native language is, it should be easy if yours is one of the Ural-Altaic languages for example. I’m Turkish, that’s where I know from :)
@@purpleplays69420 not really, English is not my native language but wouldn't say I'm still learning English cus I speak it like a native
@@Osz6ural-altaic isn’t backed up by much evidence. It’s far more likely to be a sprachbund, which means the languages don’t share a common root, yet influenced eachother due to proximity.
That was very interesting! I've been learning Japanese for some years now, but I've never really questioned how the sounds of the language as they are today came to be. I would also love to hear more about the evolution of Japanese grammar, which I am very fond of.
Me too
the comparison of hiragana and katakana to their original manyougana explains so much, thank you. this is so fascinating
Anyone who enjoyed this great video should also read Bjarke Frellesvig's "The Japanese Language", which covers all these changes in great detail with lots of sample texts. I had the pleasure of taking his class and it was one of the most enjoyable I have ever taken.
After reading G.B. Sansom's Japan: A short Cultural History I've gotten a taste for a good non-fiction now and then and so I looked it up on amazon, I can't lie I was startled by the £111.40 hardcover price tag haha. Guess I'll be sticking to paperback😅
"safe and secure, just like your internet connection will be if yo-" *aggressively skips 1 minute*
初級から中級に移行する時に、書き言葉に残る文語の表現を理解することは大事ですが、このビデオではその音声的な面が簡潔に解説されていて、秀逸だと思います。
It's rare to see a youtube video with so much background research and knowledge. Well done!
That transition to the sponsor was smooth as butter.
時間があれば日本語のアクセント変遷を解説して頂きたい
Beautifully done and appreciated!
ありがとうございます。
This was super interesting and also I would've watched a video twice as long with you speaking at a normal speed and keeping the slides there for more than a blink of an eye :D Should probably watch this at half speed :D
Thanks for putting this info together! It seems all too often people talk about the language as some static monolith, without taking into consideration the history and diversity associated with it. This is a great reference guide for looking at some of that history!
Awesome video. Following for one of the smoothest add transitions I’ve experienced. Linus lvl transition
No frickin' way! I basically asked for this exact video (implicitly) a while ago on one of your videos and you did not disappoint one bit. Super dense and super interesting, thank you so much!
That transition to your sponsor was smooth as butter!😁
Something quite similar to the aspiration and latter lost of the Japanese /f/ took place in Spanish as well almost by the same period of time (around 1500) at the beggining of words, for example /farina/ or /ferida/ became /harina/ and /herida/, but the combination of /fu/ remained, like in /fuerte/. Japanese and Spanish vowel system is also quite similar, with the same 5 vowles...perhaps with a slightly different /u/
The /u/ is definitely different. I understand how to make the Japanese u, but I can't actually do it correctly. Whenever I try it in front of native Japanese speakers, they always burst out in laughter.
@@bigscarysteve The /u/ in Japanese is with the lips compressed rather than protruded, so in IPA they're described as /ɯᵝ/.
@@bigscarysteve As @GTC2 said, the Japanese 'u' is compressed, so don't stick your lips out like a duckface
[ɯ̟ᵝ]
Really interesting video! I enjoyed learning a lot here.
I just have one mild criticism, in your attempt to show how a non-affricated /ti/ and /tu/ were pronounced at 1:16 you still affricated these sounds because you do this in your regular English too!
Not many people realise that their aspirated /t(ʰ)/ is actually affricated, and it's not widely taught, but once you start noticing it you can't stop hearing it!
I feel like there's such a gap between the written and actual phonetic english, especially considering the different varieties that are spoken and how much variation they bring, that it can actually be hard to grasp how different so many phonemes are pronounced compared to the corresponding IPA symbol.
This is actually something I've noticed seems common in the Asian-American sociolect. /t/ tends to be affricated when aspirated, as well as often utterance-finally or even word-finally, sort of as a counterpart to the common ejective realization of word-final voiceless stops. Is this a common realization in any other dialects?
@@aloysiusdevadanderabercrombie8 It's virtually ubiquotous, but most noticeable in modern RP English as well as Irish English which contrasts aspirated alveolar and non-aspirated dental T, the former being affricated, and the latter being their pronunciation of the voiceless TH as in _think._ The most well-known accent where it isn't affricated is Italian-American English along with the older New York (Manhattan) accents; as well as Indian English.
@@Unbrutal_Rawr Interesting. I don't think it's affricated in General American though, no? At least, mine isn't affricated (though I speak Californian English) and it's not noticeably affricated in most speakers I interact with outside those with a stronger Asian-American accent.
@@aloysiusdevadanderabercrombie8 It's not noticeably affricated to most English speakers because some degree of affrication is a baseline for it in English, necessiated by the place and manner of its articulation. To speakers of languages where /t/ is dental, it sounds halfway like /tʃ/. The farther back you go the more affricated it becomes because it's laminal (articulated with the blade, not the tip). Listen to the way Indians approximate it - using the tip, and likely even further back than in RP, being retroflex. That's the articulation you need to avoid affrication completely. That or it being dental-apical as in Italian(-American).
Another language where /t/ is heavily affricated is Danish - which is part of what makes it sound like very drunken English with the German R.
oo i’ve been waiting for a video like this on japanese. i’m not too confused on why, but am confused on how to use the sound changes 😂 it’s interesting to see why and how though! i really love the history of languages, especially around asia. your videos are great.
Thank you very much, this is exactly the type of content I was looking for considering Japanese language history!!! 😍
didn't know how much i needed this video
I've always had a mild fascination with the history of Japanese, but I rarely find time to dig for good resources on the phonetic details, despite having interest. (KInd of unrelated, but I also briefly had an interest in Old Japanese / 文語). So this was really helpful.
Sound changes are so fascinating. I watch a lot of Simon Roper's videos also on Proto-Germanic into English, and it's wild so see all the unexpected ways words can change. Really hits home that words and meaning can be so fluid. Amazing job! 🌸
This was fascinating, also I'm really happy with myself for being able to read/understand almost every instance of (modern) Japanese used in the video. Thanks!
Great video, very thorough
I find the massive spelling reform in 1946 quite notworthy... it introduced small kana (きよ vs きょ) and changed every ゐ (wi), ゑ (we), を (wo) to い (i), え (e), お (o). before 1946, おお was spelled おを(owo)
Didn't know about this and im half japanese thx
how did を as a particle survived then?
@@cubing7276 Like MeChupa says, they made an exception for particles.
You can look it up if you want, my comment obviously doesn't give the whole picture.
@@jort93z Do you know what "me chupa" means in Portuguese...?
@@gabiu2429 hahahaha
I'm just starting to learn the language, but the history of the language is very interesting. I just got to これ/それ/あれ part and I thought: It looks like this part of language didn't change much since earliest times, how it can be that such frequently used words obey such consistent rules. And then I see ko2 and so2 at 2:05 and I like, yeah that was a good guess. IE languages would keep such consistency at best in spelling (like in wh-(qu-) questions, and Russian doesn't even have that). At the other side it's interesting to look at things that are similar to my mother tong (Russian), like u-unrounding, palatalization, short /i/ and /u/ drop and as I see from this video merger of dj and j. Language history is fascinating.
P.S. And, yes, on /tu/ not being /tsu/ and pronounced /tʰˢu/ it was pretty funny. Also /ti/ sounded like palatalized Russian ти as well, wile the point was that it's not.
Ooh how fun!
Could you do Korean sometime in the future? I think that would be awesome
Cảm ơn bài nghiên cứu thú vị của bạn về tiếng Nhật trong lúc mà mình đang lười biến học nó. Bài nghiên cứu rất hay, tạo thêm cho mình sự hứng khởi để học tiếng Nhật tiếp 😁 日本語は難しいですが、面白いです。
That's some really interesting and rare content about historical evolution of Japanese.I think it would be awesome if you do a similar video about the historical evolution of Chinese next.
Oh boy, now that's gonna be a project and a half.
There is no good Proto-Trans-Himalayan reconstruction that exists, and Proto-Sinitic is still being hammered out. You might be able to do one from Middle Chinese to the various non-Min Sinitic languages, but there is honestly not enough data to do it well, imo. Add the possibility of Middle Chinese as traditionally defined may not even exist, and this would be a project worthy of several PhD theses.
@@vampyricon7026 The main difficulty would be that Chinese is rather a language group than a single language, so the author of the video would either have to choose to track the evolution of one specific Sinitic language or dialect, or making an overview on the evolution of the whole Sinitic language group would still be good.
I like the history. Thank you for the video
Been looking a video like this for a long time, finally! Really great stuff dude
Classical/Old Japanese is generally not talked about enough.
Which is a huge shame, it really deserves it!
Very comprehensive!
Very interesting video, I've never heard of those dutch influence so this is a first.
I liked the amount of detail you put in this video. Although it seems to move quite quickly. Just my observation, but i will need to re watch and pause many times to fully digest the amount of information you put into this.
Loved the video! I was wondering, could you share the sources, please? Not trying to be skeptical, I'd just like to read more about it!
Or, if anyone in the comments has any recommendation, that would be appreciated too!
Such a good video, as someone both learning japanese and a world history fan this one is a gem. Will have to rewatch it a couple of times at lower speed tho, too much to process!
I’ve since rewatched it several times, still too much information to process.
great video as always, keep up the great work!
Impressive research!
I just found your channel and binged watched all your videos. Thank you for sharing all of these information in such an entertaining way!
Me: "What an interesting video!"
My brain: "Really? I didn't understand anything they discussed."
Me: "... right."
that plugin was smoother than my brain(very smooth)
Oh my God, I was literally looking for anything like this a few hours ago. And then I fins this masterpiece
Japanese is one of the coolest language
and this is not because I'm a weeb
but because it has such a cool and fascinating history
absolutely, same. it’s so different, and unique.
If so, maybe you'll also like Korean, the Ryukyuan languages, Ainu, and the Altaic-type languages.
Japanese is one of the coolest language
and this is because I'm a weeb.
Hmmm...interesting maybe, but not cool at all. I am studying it for two years and is a hell of a nightmare
@@rvat2003 I'd love to learn those languages too!!!
That was the fastest video to sponsorship transition I've ever seen
Your sponsorship introduction was A+😁
Uh oh this is going to make me try to learn Japanese again. I tried but gave up the two previous attempts but hey, maybe this time will be different
The words ending with -ng in Hanbun (Chinese) were symbolized with う in Japanese, but they were pronounced as “-ŋ” until a consonant change occurred.
This is very helpful - thank you.
The topic sounds so complicated so I am not surprised nobody makes videos on it.
This is perfect timing for this video to release, I’m currently doing an essay on this exact topic! This helped a lot, so thanks!
本当面白いでも... I found myself really wanting to simmer on pretty much everything.. You're just too darn fast. Could you post a slower version! ❤️
It helps a lot if you set playback speed to 0.75
great job. お疲れ様でした。
yesss was waiting for this
So when did the dialect spoken by the imperial court deviate from the general language? Like the kind Hirohito gave the surrender speech in.
It's called kanbun- kundoku
A special way of reading Chinese text in Japanese style
Never used in everyday life
Hentaigana are really cool for calligraphy, shodou, where they provide multiple ways of writing the same text. It's pretty cool.
Extremely well done. It may take a couple of replays to catch all the wealth of information presented.
One thing, though, is that there is no word "pronounciation" in English. It's "pronunciation," with a change in vowel between noun and verb forms.
During the Meiji era, some Japanese people wanted to replace Japanese kana with Romaji (Nihon-shiki), to make writing easier.
6:46 "These obsolete varients are collectively known as Hentaigana!" (with happy cheerful tone)
Can i have the resources and citation for this video pls, I’d like to read into it. :3
One interesting thing: For the relatively new found electricity the same one-syllable word is used in three Far Eastern countries: In Vietnam "điện", in China "diàn" and in Japan "den". And in Europe this is a five-syllable monster!! In Germany that word is sometimes circumvented by saying "Strom" (stream), but that word does not nail down the exact meaning.
I think some of the older kana might've been useful for modern loan words.
0:30 ぢ and づ are ji and zu, not di and du. the reason they are often not written is because there are other kana that represent those sounds (じ and ず)
Dum dum s and z kanas 😤
they are tji and dzu
@@siyacer not really. in a romaji keyboard they're di and du but they're pronounced ji and zu. it's the same pronunciation as じ and ず.
@@moorooster223 there is a t sound before those two, which is not present in the regular kana. they are distinct, but sound similar enough that there's no real need for them
@@siyacer from what I understand there's a bit of a t sound to ず as well. are you japanese or where did you learn this thing I've never come across? it was always explicitly explained to me as being the same.
haven't seen such a comprehensive vidoe about Japanese language so far.
Hmm... for some reason this didn't show up in the subscribed tab. Can't believe I almost missed this!
This was eye-opening
I can feel the passive racism from your comment
@@cheerful_crop_circle何？！ I don't get it
@@_WhyIsEveryHandleTaken. He makes fun of Japanese people
@@cheerful_crop_circle could you explain it in more detail please?
@@_WhyIsEveryHandleTaken. You have to guess yourself.
i find the fact that the whole sponsor segment is just written as "(Sponsor segment)" in the captions really based.
this was great, would love a similar video for chinese
I think this video is too difficult to understand if you're not already studying linguistics, which isn't really that bad, but I have watched it from the first seconds to the last and I think I didn't get anything.
It shows a new topic every 3 seconds it’s like Mr Beast on coke
One thing you forgot to mention is that along with the adjectival suffix ~ki becoming ~i, adverbial suffix ~ku became ~u for a short period of time; and then if it follows ~a~ then it becomes contracted to ~ou, e.g. arigataku - arigatau - arigatou. (omedetou and ohayou also originated from these contractions.) But later on the adverbial ~u reverted back to ~ku as we know today.
in which period was that? do you have a source that explains that, like a book maybe?
10:33 Ironically, Japanese 「系統」 no longer means "system" but "bus route" instead whereas Chinese 「系統」still means "system" which was loaned by old Japanese. Nowadays Japanese only use loanword 「システム」for "system".
Ack, thank you for catching that!
We still use 系統 man
@@山川川山 But the meaning of 「系統」only remains "bus route" from Japanese texts that I've read and always「システム」for "system" (I'm not Japanese so welcome Japanese to judge me). Do you mean that 「系統」 still has the meaning of "system", right?
@@LinusYip sorry it is difficult to explain
@@LinusYip 系統 is like used as a lineage (kinds) ,for ex あか系統の服 you can find on twitter .システム is used as a structure(system) in Japan .
That was fast! 1500 years in not even 12 minutes.
Voiceover is like X10 speed and some slides (full of info) changes to the next in one second. Need to pause to watch numerous times. Choke-full useful information certainly!
Jesus that's a lot of information in short space of time. Well done! Dense and informative.
Thank you for this! Would have been interested to also know how the pitch system has evolved throughout the centuries
9:52
OH MY GOD IT'S THE NASALIZED G EXPLANATION I'VE BEEN LOOKING FOR A GOOD EXPLANATION FOR THIS FOR ACTUAL YEARS
Interesting how basicalyl every language is 150 years old and its older forms can be understood for about 500 years.
Mind doing a video on Okinawan and how that evolved?
That sounds difficult. Can't imagine there's much information about that.
Or how about Tsugaru-ben? That would be interesting too.
Cool video. I just don't understand why you're going so fast. Especially about important/interesting topics.
It's so crazy and interesting how languages evolve over time
The modern division of labor between hiragana and katakana only became standard after WWII. Male authors in the old Empire age only used kanji and katakana, as did official texts; hiragana was considered only appropriate for women, who weren't literate with kanji.
i was wandering whe he says in the video that that was standarized before
@@floptaxie68 6:10
I would like to have more details about it! Do you have any reference? books or articles?
I want to learn more about old japanese
Ok, correct me if I'm wrong, but... for what I've heard, in some places of Japan zu and dzu (and ji and dzi) are still distinguished. Is this right?
Also, o and wo are occasionally distinguished, specially in songs and stuff. This isn't reliable, but it's definitely a tendency. Also, words ending in -ou are sometimes pronounces as "-owo/-owʌ" when singers need to fit two syllables there, which I find kinda fun.
This was a very informative video! Although the way it ends seems to imply that only 2000 to 3000 kanji exist, which isn't true at all, as those are just the basic ones; it also seems to imply that hentaigana are dead which... fair enough, mostly yeah, and that man'yogana is dead entirely, which thousands of sushi restaurants around the world would disagree with (in the context of words like sushi, these spellings are called ateji; ateji are pretty absurd).
Make a video about Czech and Slovak
I really want to know how to specifically pronounce the 3 old vowels
ï, ë and ö
Does your mouth have to be more flat?
0:31 づ is neither weird nor rarely used anymore. In fact it is quite common in modern Japanese language, and appears in many words and phrases like 付き 尽くし 漬け 詰め 連れ etc
Neither is ぢ which is used in words like 縮む, 鼻血, 身近, 散り散り etc.
I think what he meant is di du became standardised when they shifted to ji dzu. What you’re talking about is rendaku where the spelling is changed to reflect voicing.
三日月 (みかづき)
Crescent moon
pls, add spaces between words in the next spell reform!
any resources you can recommend about early japanese verbal morphology? especially old and middle japanese!
I am searching about the order of letters of Hiragana and Katakana. It seems to me that their order has been influenced by Sanskrit. I haven't found anything solid to prove it, so any clue would be helpful.
I like your speaking style
'Pão' was spelled and pronounced 'pan' in Old Portugese. Otherwise it would be kind of strange that パン is supposed to derive from Portugese, the only Romance language that doesn't spell the word with an 'n'.
Spanish - pan
Italian - pane
French - pain
Romanian - pâine
if you know history
The word doesn't have an /n/ sound in Japanese and it didn't have it in Old Portuguese; what's written/transliterated as 'n' was pronounced identically in both languages, as a nasal consonant without a definite place of articulation, varying between the ng-sound and plain nasalisation of the preceding vowel. You're right that the Portuguese pronunciation changed, although there might be a few dialects left that preserve it.
@@Unbrutal_Rawr My statement was more about general spelling and pronunciation and not about specific phonetics of the letters 'n' and 'ン/ん'. My point is that if the Japanese word for bread derived from Portuguese pão, we would expect the Japanese word to be パオ and not パン.
@@wZem I understand your point, but I think you're only half correct. It's not the spelling that determined how the word was borrowed, but the pronunciation. It's a mistake to conflate the two and imply that Japanese パン contains a sound found in most Romance languages. I would expect MoPt _pão_ /pãw/ to be reflected as パンお or パンう. Both your hypothetical form and the actual form would not match up with _pão_ if that was the form at the time of borrowing.
Español debe ser lingua franca
No te quejes por las conjugaciones
Thank god for the pause and skip back functions of UA-cam 😳
I don’t think I’ve ever heard those words before (at 7:57). I don’t know what they are or how to spell them.
Edit: the first one is affricate. Idk about the second one.
affricatize/affricatise and palatalized/palatalised
i'm leaving a like for the ad segue, but I'm never coming back for the same reason
Amazing video, super interesting! One thing: I'd really appreciate if there were breaks between ideas, just the span of a breath between sentences, because right now the video is hard to follow because all ideas are crammed together. Maybe you could also speak a bit slower. I would appreciate if the video was longer, but therefore easier to understand. As it is, if I want to follow along with what is said I have to pause every 3 seconds 😅
But I don't know how the algorithm works so if this speed is required, so be it^^
I'd like to make a note on your pronunciation of the word "pronunciation": in middle English, there was a phonetic process called tri-syllabic shortening. Generally, long vowels were shortened if located in the antepenult, or 3rd syllable to the end of the word, leading to such pairs as private with a long vowel and privacy with a short vowel (although American English has since restored that vowel by analogy). A similar change affected "pronunciation" (probably through some sort of intermediate, like "pronunciate" which would make the ou fall on a third syllable) and "pronounce".
In middle English, ⟨ou⟩ represented [uː] and (short) ⟨u⟩ [u]. Trisyllabic shortening reduced the [uː] in pronunciation into [u], and then it was further reduced to [ʌ] in modern english. At the same time, the great vowel shift began diphthongizing long vowels, changing [uː] to [ʊu̯], [əu̯], and then to [aʊ̯], leaving us with the vowel alternation we have today.
Its pretty interesting, especially because a new vowel shift is occurring with that vowel as we speak! Many (at least American) english speakers are regularizing the pronunciation of pronunciation into "pronounciation", as I tend to do, and you obviously do too. Phonological change is so exciting!
You should do a speculation video on how Japanese may evolve in the future.
I think the sound ふ fu could disappear and officially become hu, as h eventually took over that whole line originally from a p sound.
I would assume some particles like は を will change to get rid of the sound difference of ha/wa and o/wo.
And I assume there will be more Western influence, as we see in current slang like words like the ending -なう, which means to be doing something "now."
We also could see the い sound dropped from i-adjectives, as many people nowadays do.
Wait, why do people drop the -i in the i adjective?
Cool video I enjoyed, but I have some minor criticisms. I'm not sure if this is just your pronunciation but at 5:47 the "る/らる" r's were pronounced very harsh, not as they are pronounced in Japanese. They are a lot "softer" for a lack of a better word. Also, this might just be me but I think you should take a sec to breath for a few moments especially when u cover the screen with text, I'd like a moment to be able to read it all instead of just seeing it and it then being gone. Just my thoughts though, carry on
I kinda agree, the pronunciations in the video made me question the credibility of the channel and actually confused me sometimes in my understanding of what was going on
It was painful to watch and took me around 30 minutes to finish, thank you, quite educational, now some things start to make sense anew in Japanese
All of that, or as Sensei Tsugawa would say, "The council of old Japanese men agreed upon it on mount screw you (スキルーユー山)"