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 :)
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😅
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.
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!
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
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!
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! 🌸
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.
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 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.
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。
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.
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.
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!
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!
I liked the content, but man, it was at a super speed. The speaker should say "proNUNciation" not proNOUNCEiaton, which I admit is a pet peeve. As a student of Japanese, I really would like to see some interesting examples of sentences with native speakers showing how it sounded. I gave the video a Like because it was a brave attempt to explain an ancient language. English only has old, middle, and modern. Japanese has been around at least three times longer.
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.
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.
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.
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?
@@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.
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.
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).
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
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.
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.
Thank you for talking about old Japanese! I have a question about the Higarana/Katakana tables. The modern depictions of these tables use latin letters to represent the row and column headers, but this does not feel right to me, why would an alphabet of a language use another language as a guide? So my question is, how were these tables depicted and taught before the latin letters were used to denote the rows and coumns?
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 loved the video and I have some humble criticisms for you: I want to know WHY things like fu changed in late-middle Japanese, not merely that they happened and what changes came along with them. What I mean is that your video makes it seem like the entire evolution of Japanese was completely arbitrary and that all these changes are meaningless. I wish you dug deeper into things like 8:32 where, hey, does this mean that で is an ontological synthesis of に and て? That's important! The point of this history to me is to inform the viewer how its history can reward you with a much deeper understanding of the language, and I just don't think you sold that almost at all, you mostly dove into the theory and glossed over the theory's importance or perhaps hoped that the viewer would fill that part in for themself. That's another thing, each slide of information went by so fast I couldn't even cognize what was going on especially in conjunction with how quickly you moved on from talking about each slide. I think you could definitely get away with making this a 20min video and I think it would benefit the viewer much more. You could honestly make this a video essay because there's just so much to comment on for each slide. It may also help to visually highlight what sounds in the slide you're referring to as you say them for a more visual learning viewer. I love what you do, making a video like this and other videos of yours seem like a huge undertaking so I hope you're proud of yourself for what you've been doing so far. I think this your videos are an incredible start and if you're passionate about this I believe you'd make an excellent edutainment channel!!!
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.
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!
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.
'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'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!
When did the rule of pronouncing and transliterating ん as “n” in the majority of cases but prior to m, b or p (such as sembei, sempai, semba, sempuki, tempura, etc) it be transliterated and pronounced as “m” occur? I am aware that in some idiomatic place names like Gunma prefecture or when there is a hard semantic gap between two kanji it may still be clearly announciated and transliterated as “n” even prior to m, p or b too though.
@@gregoryford2532 The modern version hasn’t become “the standard” by any stretch of the imagination. Many public signs, language textbooks and public officials use the original, more accurate Hepburn system. It is far more helpful in ensuring correct pronunciation.
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.
