How Similar Are Chinese and Japanese? 

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"

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.

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

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.....💀

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?

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)

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.

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.

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

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！

LOL

WHAT

hidden message lmao

😂😂😂

He abducted by the CCP

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.

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

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

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？

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.

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

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 went to school. Past tense went I have gone to school. Past participle tense gone etc.

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.

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

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

tiansun li xiao si wo le

Sit down! Chen duxiu

厉害了

陈独秀你坐下

lmfao, (internet slang in English)

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

“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

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

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😂

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

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 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 RU-vidr also said how the pronunciation was determined when it is borrowed

kabigon check 10:41.

Killing two birds with one stone eh

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

Jomom Language is not Japonic Language. Yayoi is ancestor of Japonic Language Family

「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

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

because Japanese was developed on the basis of Chinese

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.

Hongjin Yang hahaha

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 :)

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?🤣

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.

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

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.

这些词确实是日本人率先翻译的，不过大部分都是从中国古籍中找的词汇

其实有很多 物理 化学 象限…… 这些学科的名词很多也是从日本来的

半数夸张了，而且很多词其实是中国人先翻译，后在日本流传开来，再回流中国的。

@@zehechen920 angry?

As Chinese I know these words created by Japanese,and I think this is cultural exchange ,we two countries learn each other

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

☮️ 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.

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.

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.

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?

👁👄👁

👁👄👁

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

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 RU-vid videos about Cantonese. 6 tones! And how go I get them into my brains?

@@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 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

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!

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.

yup

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

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

But native Chinese don't seem to have any trouble reading both, I wonder why, quite curious.

@@jayeden3532 有很多关键词都有汉字，如果有些用平假名写就不好认了，得专门学习了

确实如此

Jay E Japanese people need to learn how the characters are simplified in China. Chinese People probably have some exposure to the traditional characters, so they may have an easier time grasping the core meanings.

​@@jayeden3532 Maybe traditional Chinese is in the DNA of every Chinese. LOL

どういたしまして．😊

The fact that Japanese was a lot more complicated and kanji-heavy pre-1946 probably also contributed to that lol

Japan is a subsidiary of China in the Tang Dynasty and has studied Chinese culture for many years

Chinese old text っていうのは、日本でいう漢文のことを言うてるんかな？

@@adzumahaya I think it means classical Chinese，the Chinese before the 20th century

@@fluckyu7 like 文言文？

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.

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

Yeah!

I want him to do video on the languages of Taiwan

We speak Mandarin which is 99% the same as Putonghua (spoken in China). We also speak Taiwanese but it's simply a dialect of Chinese, so.....I think there isn't too much to talk about.

Are you including L2 speakers of Mandarin? Because, you say that %99 of the population speaks Mandarin, but how about Southern Chinese dialects, nobody speaks them? I don't think so...

ali akman Nono, I mean the Chinese we speak (which is spoken by 99.99% of Taiwanese) is 99% the same as Putonghua. As for the Southern Chinese dialects, we do speak them as well, depending on where our ancestors cam from. The biggest one is called Taiwanese, which is understandable for 90% people. But in most cases it's not our mother tongue so most people don't 100% master it.

it's not tones, but rather pitch accent

@@user-zl3se4qj8m sorry i mistook

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?