Japanese and other languages (mere coincidence)

When I heard a new word somehow my mind try to make sense of it in English. As a result I bumped into serveral coincidences.

帽子を被る「ぼしをかぶる」 to wear a hat
kaburu sounds like cover in English.

詰まり「つまり」 in short, in conclusion
tsumari sounds like summary

無茶「むちゃ」 its means very
mucha sounds like spanish mucho/mucha

絵文字「えもじ」
emoji sounds like emotie in Dutch

If you look closely at 「 た」 it looks like a caligraphically simplified
「Ta」
the same goes with 「か」 , it looks like a big 「K」。
「は」 looks like 「H」
「や」 looks like 「Y」
「ん」 looks like 「N」
「ミ」 looks like 「三」 , the kanji for みつ (three)

ax

Here are some more :

itchi (1), shichi (7) and atchi (8) sound a bit similar to the same number in many Indo-european languages (eins, sieben, acht in German; ek, sata, ashta/atha in Hindi).

戸 ("to") sounds like "door" in English or "Tor" in German and mean the same.

缶 ("kan") is pronounced exactly like the English "can" and means the same.

女 ("onna") sounds like the Italian "donna" and means the same.

"Arigato" sounds like Portuguese "obrigado" and means the same.

There were others but can't remember them now.

Maciamo said:

There were others but can't remember them now.

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How about "namae"?

There was a thread about this on sci.lang.japan a few months ago, although I think it only dealt with Japanese-English correspondences. If you search the Google Groups archives it'll probably come up.

Maciamo said:

缶 ("kan") is pronounced exactly like the English "can" and means the same.

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We must pronounce English very differently, you and I.

You can also find 缶 written as 罐 sometimes.

mikecash said:

We must pronounce English very differently, you and I.

Click to expand...

Well alright, the "k" sound is stronger in English than Japanese and the "a" sound is "ae" in English, but that's not so different.

mikecash said:

We must pronounce English very differently, you and I.

Click to expand...

People usually do. Just about every time somebody trys to explain YYY sounds like ZZZ it turns out that there are people saying ZZZ in about four different ways.

Does anyone know why "台風（taihuu）" and "typhoon" are so alike?
I did search some Japanese sites to find an answer, but couldn't get...

台風（たいふう） - 語源由来辞典
「"台風"の語源は一定しない」（興膳宏）……広東語か、ギリシャ語か、はたまたアラビア語か

As far as I know, "typhoon" is directly derived from 台風 it's a loan word, like tofu.

Hi! New to the Forum, new to the thread, introduced by ToMach from Society & Humanities > History & Traditions "Origin of Japanese Language" post #34
Japanese and other languages (mere coincidence) | Japan Forum

If I may add, this line of investigation started by AX is an unexplored territory from the linguistic point of view. I'd like to offer two points for you to consider.

1. The fact that for any two languages selected at random, there will be a small number of word pairs from each language that will show striking similarity in both sound and meaning.

Needless to say, the number of "similar" word pairs one finds will depend on how you define "similar." If you employ a set of strict rules of closeness when filtering out non-matches, then the correspondence figure will be small. If you loosen the rules, the number will increase.

For example, when Prof. 服部四郞 did his comparative study of Japanese and non-Japanese languages, he discovered the random correspondence rate somewhere between 5% and 10%. Apparently his "filter" was not very strictly defined, and also the range of figures 5% to 10% is only a rough range (requoting from 李男德, 韓國語語源硏究II, pp.18-19, III; supplemented with 江實's reconstruction, 日本語の系統, 1980, requoted from 李男德, 韓國語語源硏究IV, pp.250-254)

服部四郞's five "stray" matches between Old Japanese and Modern English
SN OJ江實 OJ服部 : English
27 tane(實,種) sane : seed
31 Fone(骨) pone : bone
36 Fane(羽) pane : feather
37 kE (毛) k(e)i : hair
49 Fara(腹) para : belly
58 kiku (聞) kiku : to hear
62 kOrOsu(殺) korosu : to kill
66 ku (來) kuru : to come
82 FI (火) pIi : fire
100 na (名) na : name

服部四郞's fourteen "stray" matches between O. Japanese and Archaic Chinese
SN OJ江實 OJ服部 : AC董同龢(?)
2 nare (汝) na : njag (thou)
20 tōri (鳥) tOri : tŏg (bird)
40 mE (目) m(e)i : mŏg (eye)
41 Fana (鼻) pana : bjed (nose)
42 kuti (口) kuti : k'ug (mouth)
44 sIta (舌) sita : djat (tongue)
45 *** (爪) tum(e)i : cŏg (claw, fingernail)
48 tE (手) t(e)i : t'jog (hand)
56 kamu (咬) kamu : kŏg (to bite)
61 sinu (死) sinu : sjer (to die)
76 kaFa (河) kapa : har (river)
82 FU (火) pUi~po : hwěr (fire)
83 FaFi (灰) papi : hw(e)r (ashes)
91 kurosi(黑) kuro : hwek (black)

Capital vowels E, O, and I stand for e diacritic, o diacritic, and i diacritic resp.
(e): schwa, for lack of fonts
SN: Swadesh numbering
OJ江實: Old Japanese reconstructed by 江實
OJ服部: Old Japanese reconstructed by 服部四郞
AC董同龢: Archaic Chinese, broad transcription from Tung T'ung-ho董同龢's(?)

Since such matches are considered "stray, random matches," few linguists trained in the tradition of modern linguistics would take such matches seriously, but the Professor reported on it anyway. Good for him! (I am working on a short paper regarding how to define "similarity" and how the range of correspondence ratio is mathematically related to this similarity. When it is done, I will make it available upon request.)

2. The recent trend in one sector of the linguistics community to experiment with long-distance, mass comparison among huge vocabularies of multiple languages.

Such studies conducted by Joseph Greenberg, Merritt Ruhlen, and others have shown successes in many cases where narrow comparisons have either failed or given inconsistent results. Merritt Ruhlen goes even further by postulating a Proto-Language, the precursor and ancestor to all modern languages of the world. Ruhlen initially offered 27 Global Roots, which he claims to be traces of a common origin. Here is a summary by M.Ahaya AIM where you can go over the 27 roots for yourselves.

To the comparative linguist who is looking for two, genetically related languages, this is both good news and bad news. If Ruhlen's list turns out to be correct, any "correspondence" that should have supported the genetic relationship between two languages prior to the common origin hypothesis must now NOT include any words springing from a globally common root. This means one has to work harder to establish genetic relationship. On the other hand, given that the global roots list is well studied and close to perfection (which should be fairly larger than 27), one need not concern oneself with words in the list to begin with.

Concluding remark:
Since there will be coincidences resulting from random matching and regular correspondences originating from a globally common origin, anyone doing a comparison of two distinct languages will discover a fairly LARGE number of word pairs if one looks hard enough. This is an exciting field that you have touched upon, AX.

Live long and prosper!

I never know such a short topic I made could invite such a complete and well researched reply. You must be some kind of college professor or researcher in field of lingustics. Yeah... I have always love languages, and have a faible for anything linguistic. I enjoy matching unrelated words in my head just for the sake of remembering them. Establishing connection or association between words in different languages is one of my technique to build huge amount of vocabulary in short time. Recognizing similarity between languages will give us a headway in language learning. I am sort of a lazy person like most people, always want the easy way out, so I always try to find shortcut to learning languages.

ax

I didn't know you, or anyone, would read it so quickly. Was a bit surprised. I think I noticed some poppup but I'm pretty new with this JREFsystem, and was struggling not to lose my posting, which kept disappearing...really strange. Is there a normal time lag between "submitting" a revised post and actually seeing the revised post? I was able to get the formatting almost right, with a struggle that is. But now it's gone again?!?

Anyways, it's really nice to be a part of JREF, with all you intelligent and civil people here. And I was really happy to discover this thread, because it clicked right in with one of my own interests.

I could see you were really into this language thing. I think it happens to people when they really love what they're doing, whatever that may be. I'm gald you're enjoying your gig, and so am I.

I think maybe you should look into picking up a book on ancient scripts. The way you're being drawn to analogies and parallels between isolated language bits, searching for relations that maybe you've never thought of before; all this may be telling you something.

Since you seem to know Japanese, and Kanji as well, would you be interested in taking a dip into one of the two major ancient scripts?

1. Cuneiform, Mesopotamian

2. Turtle Shell, Bone, and Bronze Vessel Scripts, Chinese

I have a feeling that you will enjoy either tremendously.

My long time favorite is "Chinese Characters; their origin, etymology, history, classification, and signification. a thorough study from chinese documents, by Dr. L. Wieger, S.J., english translation from the 4th french edition, Dover Publications ISBN 0-486-21321-8.

I got mine for 13.95 at Eastwind Bookstore, Berkeley, CA. Most Libraries should have a copy, though not sure. If you can get a copy or borrow one, please turn to page 385. This is something that shocked me deeply. That early scribes and students of the confucian classics were reading and writing "this" type of script, I wish I had an image file so I can show it to you. It's hard to describe in words. If you get a chance to see that page, I'd be curious to know what you thought of it.

Maciamo said:

Well alright, the "k" sound is stronger in English than Japanese and the "a" sound is "ae" in English, but that's not so different.

Click to expand...

I've noticed from the Mother Language Poll that this is a very mixed (not mixed-up!) community. So isn't it only natural that people pick on each other for teeny-weeny differences when they may, or may not, be discernible depending on which language spectrum you're from?

However, it's interesting that MikeCash brought it up. Were you serious when you said that, Mike, or just pulling a leg? I'm not familiar enough with the varieties of English to tell whther there was one that made a clear and absolute distinction between the low "a" and the mid "ae," that is both on the phonological (physical) level and the phonemeic (opposition of vowels). Can someone fill in my void?

The non-germanic languages have all sorts of shifted vowels which is practically nonexistent in the Romance languages. Perhaps you have a phonological filter that makes you more discriminating with the vowels? I really don't know. English does vary from place to place.

Some intersting matches

Here's a couple

江 KAWA. GAWA (river) and Latin AQUA (water)
鑞 NAMARI (lead, metalic) Semitic L-B-N (white, moon, lead)
黑 KURO (black) and Mongolian KARA (black)
吾等 WARE (we) with Korean URI (we)
車 KURUMA (cart) with Korean KURU- (to roll)

There's actually a fair number of matches between Japanese and Korean, but some people think they are either genetically related cognate words, or later loans. So I couldn't exactly call them random.

Now I think
靴 「kutsu] sounds like malay kasut (shoes)
頭 「atama」 sounds like malay utama (first, top, most important)

ax

I just found another coincidence today...

怖い[kowai] has similar sound with 怪[guai4] in chinese
kowai means scary, but guai means weird. strange. and sometimes can carry a slight meaning of scary.

ax

lexico said:

吾等 WARE (we) with Korean URI (we)

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Isn't ware usually written "我" nowadays?

When I typed the kanji you posted into my dictionary program thingy, it gave me the following:

吾等 【われら】 we, us

Perhaps the "ware" you posted is an older form? It's not in the Goo online dictionary.

Here's another oddity about "我": as far as I know it's often read "wa", which almost sounds the same as the way "我" is pronounced in Mandarin, right? It's even written the same, even though its usage is different.

If so, why is the Japanese on reading of "我" "ga", then? Does that mean "我" was pronounced "ga" in Chinese at some point in time, then?

RE: John Lemon's Remark

John Lemon said:

Isn't ware usually written "我" nowadays?
When I typed the kanji you posted into my dictionary program thingy, it gave me the following:
吾等 【われら】 we, us
Perhaps the "ware" you posted is an older form? It's not in the Goo online dictionary.
Here's another oddity about "我": as far as I know it's often read "wa", which almost sounds the same as the way "我" is pronounced in Mandarin, right? It's even written the same, even though its usage is different.
If so, why is the Japanese on reading of "我" "ga", then? Does that mean "我" was pronounced "ga" in Chinese at some point in time, then?

Click to expand...

Thank you for correcting me, John. I don't speak Japanese. After reading your post, I looked up Rose-Innes' Beginners' Dictionary of Chinese-Japanese Characters & Compounds, which says
我 /ware/; kanji reading /ga/; "I, my, we, our"; 10 compounds listed
also reads /wa/ before postposition GA; "my, mine, self-will"
吾 /ware/, /waga/, /a/; kanji reading /go/; "my"; 2 compounds listed

Rose-Innes does not list 吾等, but has 我等 /warera/; "we"
so obviously, your "dictionary program thingy" (can you tell me the title, and where I can get it?) is the only support I can get for 吾等. So please don't bother with the kanji 吾等; it's looks like either a dead or dying usage. I wasn't quoting the kanji, actually, only WARE-URI correspondence. I'm sorry if this caused any confusion.

As for the other two questions you raised, I cannot explain the "wa." Could it be a contraction of /ware/, or an alternate kanji reading of 我? I doubt the second possibility. According to another dictionary, both the Kanon and Go'on are /ga/. Could it then be a third(?) kanji reading, from Early Mandarin or later?

As you guessed correctly, 我 had an initial /ng/ in Archaic and Middle chinese, which was lost some time between late Tang-Song dynasties (Late Middle Chinese) and Yuan dynasty (Early Mandarin).

我 /nga^/ Archaic C. > /nga^/ E.M.C. > /nga/ L.M.C > /wo3/ Early Mandarin

吾 followed a parallel path losing the /ng/ along the way.

吾 /nga^g/ Archaic C. > /ngo/ E.M.C. > /nguo/ L.M.C. > /wu2/ Early Mandarin

Broad transcription from Tung T'ungho for Archaic Chinese, Edwin Pulleyblank for Early Middle Chinese, Late Middle Chinese, and Early Mandarin. a^ for "a" diacritic, "o" for both schwa and open "o." Arabic numerals for Mandarin tones.

It is interesting to note that the isolated 我, an exclusively plural "we" in Shell & Bone inscriptions, became exclusively singular "I" in Mandarin and Sino-Korean, whereas Sino-Japanese retained the plural "we" as well as extending its denotation to the singular "I."

That was a rather long road thru purgatory. Thanks for reading!

John Lemon said:

Isn't ware usually written "我" nowadays?
When I typed the kanji you posted into my dictionary program thingy, it gave me the following:
吾等 【われら】 we, us
Perhaps the "ware" you posted is an older form? It's not in the Goo online dictionary.

Click to expand...

Those two characters both mean "I" and are used for "wa(re)" in Japanese
See for example Natume Souseki 's Waga hai-wa neko dearu 『吾輩は猫である』

Here's another oddity about "我": as far as I know it's often read "wa", which almost sounds the same as the way "我" is pronounced in Mandarin, right? It's even written the same, even though its usage is different.
If so, why is the Japanese on reading of "我" "ga", then? Does that mean "我" was pronounced "ga" in Chinese at some point in time, then?

Click to expand...

Chinese characters and their readings were first borrowed during the 5th-7th century, so yes at this time Chinese, and Japanese too, were pronounced differently. The character 我 was at that time pronouced ŋa (=nga) in Chinese, while 吾 was ŋo (=ngo). Both words (both = I, me) are I think ultimately related and derived from the same root in Chinese.

I was told that Kanji is very irregular in Japanese. Japanese borrows Kanji based on their meaning, not on their sound. So at some point, you will see a Kanji in one word is prounounced differently with another Kanji in other word. This irregularities can be very frustrating for us foreigners learning Japanese.

ax

Originally John Lemon's question:

Does anyone know where that /wa/ came from?

Is it considered kanji reading or non-Sino-Japanese reading?
Is there a connection between Japanese /wa/ and Mandarin /wo3/ beyond the superficial?

我 /ware/; alternate /wa/ before postposition GA; "my, mine, self-will"

lexico said:

As you guessed correctly, 我 had an initial /ng/ in Archaic and Middle chinese, which was lost some time between late Tang-Song dynasties (Late Middle Chinese) and Yuan dynasty (Early Mandarin).
我 /nga^/ Archaic C. > /nga^/ E.M.C. > /nga/ L.M.C > /wo3/ Early Mandarin
吾 followed a parallel path losing the /ng/ along the way.
吾 /nga^g/ Archaic C. > /ngo/ E.M.C. > /nguo/ L.M.C. > /wu2/ Early Mandarin
Broad transcription from Tung T'ungho for Archaic Chinese, Edwin Pulleyblank for Early Middle Chinese, Late Middle Chinese, and Early Mandarin. a^ for "a" diacritic, "o" for both schwa and open "o." Arabic numerals for Mandarin tones

Click to expand...

For Old Chinese (=Archaic Chinese) you should rely on up-to-date reconstructions as in :
William H. Baxter (1992) A Handbook of Old Chinese phonology, Mouton de Gruyter
with the adjustments in :
Laurent Sagart (1999) The Roots of Old Chinese, John Benjamins Publishing Co
rather than Dong Tonghe (=Tung T'ungho 董同龢) 's outdated reconstructions from the 60s.

lexico said:

Does anyone know where that /wa/ came from?
Is it considered kanji reading or non-Sino-Japanese reading?
Is there a connection between Japanese /wa/ and Mandarin /wo3/ beyond the superficial?
我 /ware/; alternate /wa/ before postposition GA; "my, mine, self-will"

Click to expand...

There is no apparent connection with Japanese 1st person pronoun wa (< *ba ?) and mandarin wo < Old Chinese *ŋaj? (?=glottal stop here)
This is a Japanese word attested since the first writings, and not a Chinese loanword. The original pronoun is simply "wa", as we can see in the possessive waga "my" (< 1st person wa + genitive marker ga, compare with kimi ga yo "my Lord's reign") and in Ryukyuan pronoun waN/wanu. "re" in "ware" is a suffix, which can be compared with the one in kore, sore, are, etc.

ToMach; I have some more.......

questions for you, 'cause you seem to know your way around in Old (Archaic) Chinese.
1. What is the best source to look up consonant clusters in Archaic Chinese?
2. endings -s, -b/-d/-g? (Perhaps on of the books you recommended?)
3. Is there evidence of these Archaic features of Chinese reflected in Sino-Japanese?
I remember a Mei Tsulin citing /*tush/ of Tsushima Island 窶ｺ窶昶?拵窶懌?｡ as an example of Archaic -s reflected in Sino-Japanese, but I'd like to know if you were aware of any other evidence in Japanese.
4. Have you come across anything that might suggest that Archaic or earlier Chinese may have been polysyllabic at some point? Such as in the entering tone chacacters evolving along the hypothetical path by contracting;
*C1VC2VC3 (pre-Archaic)> *C1C2VC3 (Archaic)> *C1VC3 or *C2VC3(Middle )
Just a wild thought.

lexico said:

questions for you, 'cause you seem to know your way around in Old (Archaic) Chinese.
1. What is the best source to look up consonant clusters in Archaic Chinese?
2. endings -s, -b/-d/-g? (Perhaps on of the books you recommended?)

Click to expand...

See the references I gave above. For the endings, it is now believed that there were no final voiced stops b/d/g. There were on the other hand final -s an -? (glottal stop)

3. Is there evidence of these Archaic features of Chinese reflected in Sino-Japanese?
I remember a Mei Tsulin citing /*tush/ of Tsushima Island 對馬島 as an example of Archaic -s reflected in Sino-Japanese, but I'd like to know if you were aware of any other evidence in Japanese.

Click to expand...

Sino-Japanese is derived mainly from Early Middle Chinese (go-on 呉音 stratum, with influence from Late Old Chinese) and Chang-an Late Middle Chinese (kan-on 漢音 stratum), long after the final -s of Chinese had disappeared. For Tsushima and other old transcriptions of Japanese, see the article I already talked about in another thread :
Marc Hideo Miyake, "Philological evidence for *e and *o in Pre-Old Japanese"

4. Have you come across anything that might suggest that Archaic or earlier Chinese may have been polysyllabic at some point? Such as in the entering tone chacacters evolving along the hypothetical path by contracting;
*C1VC2VC3 (pre-Archaic)> *C1C2VC3 (Archaic)> *C1VC3 or *C2VC3(Middle )
Just a wild thought.

Click to expand...

Laurent Sagart has suggested that some Old Chinese syllables were iambic in fact : CCV < CvCV (v=short/weak, V=ordinary vowel).

Oops, lexico, I almost forgot... I use the dictionary feature of the Japanese word processing program JWPCE, but as far as I know, its dictionary entries are based on Jim Breen's WWWJDIC. However, a few months ago, I saw the light and realised that if you're looking for idiomatic Japanese, the goo.ne.jp online dictionary simply can't be beat.

だめ is similar to english damage..

ax

I think 舌「shita」 sound similar to 舌頭 「shitou」 in Chinese.

ax