Japanese & Hawaiian Are Weirdly Similar 

Let me know if you're watching from Hawaii or Japan! Or even if you are Japanese Hawaiian!

During the Meiji Era, Hawaii almost became part of Japan or at least a protectorate. The King of Hawaii at the time made an offer to the Meiji Emperor, but the offer was rejected. Imagine how different history would have been had Hawaii been Japanese instead of American.

…did he really pronounce "mochi" as "mockey" ?

The Austronesian language family originated in Taiwan. It is entirely possible for settlers to have sailed along the chain of islands between Taiwan and Japan. They could have been the Jōmon people. The Yayoi came by way of the Korean peninsula. Korean is the language with a grammar - but not an indigenous vocabulary - most similar to Japanese

If I learned one thing from this video it is that Japanese and Hawaiian are not related

The way he pronounces Japanese words physically hurts me. He says every word slightly wrong every single time.

Can you explain the origins of the Asian expression “Ayaaaaaaaa?” It’s like a universal word that elicits so many different meanings, contexts, and emotions especially with different inflections.

I really don't think the phonologies of Japanese and Hawaiian are that similar. Like other Polynesian languages, Hawaiian's consonant inventory is very small, one of the smallest in the world. It'd be better to say that Japanese's inventory is more similar to that of other Austronesian languages like Indonesian and Tagalog; having coronal obstruents, the sibilant fricative /s/, palatal consonants, a voicing distinction in stops, and allowing coda /n/. Also, Japanese lacks the the Hawaiian /u/ and /l/, the closest equivalent being unrounded [ɯ̟] and tapped [ɾ]. Not to mention that Hawaiian lacks pitch accent. At best, these languages have somewhat similar vowel systems and phonotactics.

Japan always kind of had a slight Pacific Islander vibe to it to me at least.

Honestly katakana would be a better writing system for Hawaiian than the Latin alphabet.

Japanese does have syllable final consonants, specifically the moraic nasal (which can manifest as a variety of nasal sounds depending on the context) and the sokuon which can be analyzed as a final glottal stop that assimilates to the following consonant creating geminate consonants. You even gave an example word with syllable final nasal sounds in "gannenmono". There is also vowel whispering which causes the vowels I and U to become virtually mute which can result in more final consonants at an acoustic level

Ocean people in Pacific = same Well actually some Italian dialects and Finnish ones sound extremely similiar even they are two entirely separate language families

In the US mainland you’ll see signs in both Spanish and English because of how much people are descended from Hispanic/Latino people (mainly Mexicans). In Hawaii the signs are in Japanese and English cause of the amount of Japanese tourists as well as Japanese descended Hawaiians. Everywhere you go in Hawaii you see the cultural touches of Japanese people like restaurants, grocery stores, hobby shops, and even a rice paddy or two. Also while WWII definitely had an effect on Japanese-Americans, many were still heroes of the war. Second generation Japanese Americans served for the US in spite of what was going on in the mainland. Theres memorials for them in Hawaii to this day.

Ooooo boy. You really ought to have done more research on this one brotha'. The similarities aren't a coincidence at all. Hawaiian is a Polynesian Language, and the Polynesian Languages are members of the Austronesian Language Family. Proto-Austronesian is likely from the island of Taiwan, and an ancient relative of it existed on the Japanese islands. The Japanese Language only arrived on the island of Japan by Japanese migrants during the Yayoi period in 1000BC to 300BC. Before then, there's evidence of Austronesian people living on the southern half of the island. As the Yamato Japanese conquered more and more of the island, their language started taking on more Austronesian influence. I've been studying Old Japanese recently, and I was actually kind of surprised how some words could sound like Turkish. The language had a different character to it then - as do certain Ryukyuan Languages. That being said, similar phonology does mean that there will be legitimate coincidences.

Hawaiian is, as you point out, a member of the Austronesian language family, the most geographically widespread language family, stretching 30,000 km from the island of Madagascar to Rapa Nui. However the Austronesian language family originated on the island of Taiwan. It is only 1,200km from Taiwan to Kyushu, far less than the distance from Tahiti to Hawaii. And there is a chain of islands, including Okinawa, between Taiwan and Kyushu. About 4,000 years ago people expressing the neolithic culture of Taiwan and the adjoining coast of the mainland set sail and settled in south-east Asia including Malaya, the Philippines, and the islands of modern Indonesia. If they set sail in that direction, why would some not have followed the island chain to Kyushu? However in Japan they would have disappeared into the native Jōmon culture. There is no sign of cultural influence on Middle Jōmon, particularly in pottery and housing styles from the contemporary Dapenkeng culture of Taiwan.

After some time of watching anime I watched "Lilo & Stitch". And I keept hearing that older sister is called "what", or "flower means family" XD

A japanese speaker should be easily read "aloha"? How fast will it becoma "aroha" beacuse of the lack of L in japanese?😅 Mochi, karaoke, and maybe mlre what I did not notice. Please, if you talk about a language, and want to say a handful of words on it, check the pronunciation. With google translate around it is not a big task by any means.

I do know they have been forever connected, figuratively and quite literally, on December 7, 1941.

There's some research on Japanese people's origins being partly Austronesian. Portuguese, especially the European dialect has this Slavic-like feel, although it's Romance. Phonetics sometime cause this.

I'm just shocked you didn't mention the most blatantly obvious part. .. the word Hawaii is constructed exactly like Japanese adjectives. For example, kawaii (cute).

Swahili also has this vowel - consonant alternating "bebakokaga" sound. Indeed this is just a common feature for many languages families around the world.

They are weirdly similar in such cultures and language

1868 was not just before Hawaii was a state, it was before Hawaii was part of the U.S. at all. It was the Kingdom of Hawaii up to 1893 and the Republic of Hawaii was annexed by the U.S. in 1898.

2:25 So by your classification, they have very similar greetings as "Hallo" as well

You think that's weird? You obviously haven'theard of "Spirit" name connection across the world; Breath/Spirit in Coptic=Ka Breath/Spirit in Chinese=Qi Breath/Spirit in Japanese=Ki Breath/Spirit in Hindi=ChaKra (These are the examples I know of)

I think there is a more broad similarity between japanese and polynesian languages. I realized one time when I was investigating about Rapa Nui, and I noticed the similarities between the phonetics of japanese and rapa nui languages, like the relatively short number of phonemes, and the syllabes being unable to end in cosonants. I also remember i saw that for foreign words they added vowels between the consonats to avoid consonat clusters and the result is almost the same as the adaptations the japanese make for english words, for example there was a king of Rapa Nui called "Atamu", an adaptation of the name Adam, and the name "Kerekorio" adapted from the spanish name "Gregorio", and those names sound just like Japanese.

That was a cool little exploration of two cultures and languages! Very nice!

Greek and Hawaiian are also so close in some ways a guy wrote a book about it. I forget his name. Never looked at the super validity but on the surface makes a compelling argument.

mochi❌ mokee✅

Bro said French and German are in the same family 💀 (context: French is a Romance language, and German is a Germanic language)

i find this video painful to watch. the pronunciation of the Japanese words is just terrible, cmon, it would’ve taken like 2 seconds to even just open google translate to get a rough idea of how the words are pronounced IN A VIDEO ABOUT PRONUNCIATION IN THAT LANGUAGE‼️ (also did he just pronounce mochi as ‘mockey’? 😭) oh yeah edit, he also said that no L sound exists in Japanese, which is debated, and should at least be mentioned, even if he doesn’t agree. the L/R sound in Japanese is a sort of in-between that doesn’t exist in English, and could be transcribed as an L or an R, which is crucial about the phonology of Japanese, and should DEFINITELY be mentioned in a video about Japanese phonology! i’m sure theres a billion mistakes in Hawaiian too, but I don’t speak Hawaiian so I can’t comment on those

Some Japanese words end in -n, such as the honorific -San. Also, while Japanese doesn't have L and Hawaiian has a lot of L's, Japan has R and Hawaiian does not. The Japanese R is an Alveolar Trill much like an L. They're both Sonorants. So, while it technically is a difference, I think it's a similarity with a different haircut and color.

Niche topic, but I have the perfect thing to add. Nada sou sou (涙そうそう) from Okinawan singer Rimi Natsukawa (夏川りみ) in a duet with Hawaiian-born former sumo ōzeki KONISHKI (元大関小錦), both singing in their languages. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-vZg8B1n0FKs.htmlsi=O7v7RI0DuLpYUG1C

In fact, Hawaiian Creole and Japanese Ogawasara Creole share the same influences: English, Chinese, Tagalog and Filipino and Portuguese What changes is the base language in Hawaiian Creole and the Hawaiian language and in Ogawasara Japanese Creole and Japanese. But both creoles contain Japanese and Hawaiian. What changes are the bases of the creoles, which are still interchangeable with each other today. I left this info to deep the content of video throughin by science of Linguistics.

I liked your video and I agree with you, English, Japanese and Hawaiian are not sister languages, related or neighbors to each other, but they are married languages. In Hawaii Hawaiian Japanese and English are mixed into a Hawaiian dialect, and in Japan this same dialect exists that mixes Hawaiian Japanese and English. Japan's relationship with Hawaii and the love of an Asian indigenous people who love an Oceanesian indigenous people both love each other is beautiful even if they are not related to each other. Japan and Hawaii are brothers in heart and soul 💓❤️

there is a pretty good reason why these languages have similar phonetics. they both have very simple, small phonetic inventories. languages have a natural tendency to spread the consonants and the vowels as far apart in the mouth/in the space of possible sounds. if you are limited to 5 vowels, you'll naturally end up with a e i o u, like in modern Hebrew, or classical Latin. now, you also have the rules of how you combine sounds, and where you put them in a word, aka phonotactics. an English syllable or a Korean cannot start with an ng (/ŋ/) sound, but they can both end a syllable with it. In Hawaiian, every syllable has to end with a vowel. You can't put a consonant at the end (except for very few load words). In Japanese it's pretty close, a syllable can either end with a vowel, or end with n*. these rules are pretty simple, you don't need to break your teeth saying clusters like STReNGTHS, TBilisi (good luck saying this right, English speakers). what I'm saying is, if your language's phonology is simple in some sense, the space of possibilities is small, so two unrelated languages with simple phonologies might end up sounding similar. the chance that two languages with bigger, more complicated phonologies happen to be similar is much smaller. now, take a look at the huge list of the world's languages, and it's suddenly very likely that languages with simple phonologies might sound similar to non speakers. *that n will be rendered as /ŋ/ or /m/ depending on what comes next, but the Japanese consider both cases as valid versions of n, even though at the start of a syllable they tell n and m apart. Also, modern Japanese allows for clusters like ks, sht, sk, sp, and a few more, but if you asked them to spell a word with these clusters, they will tell you something like ku s(vowel), shi t(vowel), su k(vowel), etc, they kinda image it as being two syllables.

I have studied Japanese and learned a bit of Hawaiian and Māori. I noticed similarities on my own since about 3-4 years ago, when I started learning. For example, some phonological coincidences: "whale" is "鯨 (kujira)" in Japanese, "kōhola" in Hawaiian and "tōhora" in Māori. In Polynesian languages, feminine nouns (not in the sense of grammatical gender, but in nouns refering to women) usually end in "-hine", and in Japanese, I remember the name of a goddes or princess which ended in "-hime". "Kai" and "tai" also mean "sea" in Hawaiian and Māori respectively, and the Japanese kanji for "sea"(海) can also be read as "kai", although that's the Chinese reading of the kanji, not the Japanese reading. There are also words that sound similar and mean related things, such as "ika", meaning "fish" in Māori and "squid" in Japanese. "種 (tane)" is "seed" in Japanese and a similar word or root is found in the names of two Māori gods associated with vegetation, Tāne Mahuta, god of the forest, and Rongomatane, god of agriculture. In order to determine if two languages are related, one must look at recurrent patterns, there have already been academics who have tried to link Austronesian and Japonic languages. Maybe the examples I put are too anecdotal and isolated, but I think they're worth taking into account.

Japan said hi to Hawaii in 1941 but USA said nuh uh

Growing up Japanese in Hawaii, I always liked this. Also how did you get Ke-ki-ha from Kekaha at 1:43? Break down your pronunciations man!

It is the consonant-vowel-consonant and vowel-consonant-vowel word structure that is striking. Also, the vowels (the sound) are identical. The consonants, are too, almost identical. The phonology.

Incidentally, the specific *mixing* of combinations of consonants and vowels in Japanese are frequently distinctly different, likewise, from Hawaiian.

On your comment about making Italian sounds without actually speaking Italian. There's an Italian song Prisencolinensinaincusol which is supposed to sound like English sounds to Italians.

I didn’t know Buddhism was popular in Hawaii.

Japanese syllables can end in consonants. Japanese has one lone consonant, ん, which can be seen in words like はんぶん or じかん. Additionally, syllables ending in U and I will devoice those vowel sounds if the vowel is found between voiceless consonants or following a voiceless consonant at the end of a sound, creating a lone consonant sound. Examples include the devoicing of し, つ, and す in しつれします, or the devoicing of き in いきて.

Tokyo Prefecture ends a few miles from Hawaii. Japan has been encroaching on the North Shore for a few hundred years. When the United States returned the Ogasuwara Islands and Okinawa it made both countries borders closer than most Americans and Japanese people realize.

Many Japanese Americans live in Hawaii and speak a mixed language called Pigeon which is a mix of Hawaiian, English and Japanese.

Anti-Japanese sentiment specifically has been dead in the US since the 1980s. Anything left would have washed out with the generation that fought in the Pacific in WW2 passing away, which almost all have. There’s still general racism, against Asians, too, sadly, but I’d say the Japanese and their culture are quite revered in the US, relatively.

Not as weird as the uncanny similarities between korean vs japanese grammer and sentence structure. 🤷‍♂️

So, one of the reason they sound alike is because both languages read vowels as they should be read?

6:35 “Mokki” 💀

How did a linguist pronounce mochi wrong?

1:45 ki-kee-hah?

My mum is Japanese and my grandfather is Italian and they claimed that they sound alike

There are Polynesian languages closer sounding to Japanese than hawaiin, idk y u picked hawaiin, and not samoan or maori which sound closer. Coz in hawaiin the Americans made them change t to k. Coz hawaiin didn’t make the k change like southern polinesian languages did. And polonesian peoples used to inhabit the mainland Asia before setting out to sea, so their pronounciation may of influenced them in ancient times, and boats did move around later on.. ok I’ll give you the fact they have a history together

Glottal stops (っ and ʻ), lack of consonant clusters (Merii Kurisumasu and Mele Kalikimaka instead of Merry Christmas) , and sharp sounds.

Another strange connection I've noticed due to similar phonology is how despite not being related, Korean & Tibetan sound very similar.

The languages only seem similar because they have smaller sound inventories than most European languages do, but this isn't especially unique given the other languages in the Japonic and Austronesian language families, as the phenomena you mention are typical features of their members' phonological systems. There are features of Japanese that Hawaiian completely lacks, such as VOWEL DEVOICING (vowels occurring between voiceless sounds are often devoiced in Japanese, such that it doesn't sound like they are actually in the words), PITCH ACCENT (depending on dialect, Japanese words are pronounced with specific pitch patterns that rely on where in the word the pitch accent falls), MORAIC WEIGHTING within syllables (all vowels along with the sole nasal coda carry moraic weight, which has a bearing on whether syllables are short or long and whether syllables carry one or two pitch levels), CONTACT WITH CHINESE (Japanese has thousands of loanwords from formal Chinese that have their own phonological phenomena associated with them such as rendaku), aa CONTRAST IN CONSONANT VOICING (Japanese has voiced and voiceless consonants, such as oral stops and fricatives, but Hawaiian only has voiceless oral stops and fricatives), WORD ORDER (Japanese basic word order is SOV - subject + object + verb, whereas Hawaiian is typical of Polynesian languages in that it is clearly VSO - verb + subject + object), et cetera. Hawaiian is well-known among linguists for is a LACK OF DISTINCTION BETWEEN /t/ AND /k/, that is, stops that contrast in the coronal (alveolar or dental) and dorsal (velar) places of articulation: in standard university Hawaiian, this stop sound is /k/, but it Niihau dialect, which is said to sound closer to the original pre-colonial form of Hawaiian, the stop sound is /t/. Hawaiian also makes extensive use of PHONOLOGICAL REDUPLICATION to create new meanings from existing morphemes and lexical items, and additionally SYLLABLES CANNOT END IN CONSONANTS (e.g. nasals) and there is NO CONSONANT GEMINATION (consonants that are "doubled" versions of their singleton counterparts), unlike in Japaanese.

WHO TRIES TO CONFIRM THAT JAPANESE IS A POLYNESIAN LANGUAGE ?

From the sound perspective, A/E/I/O/U are also the same sounds in German. The consonants are basically identical, with a slight variation on S/Z, which are more distinct in Japanese than in German. (Basically a similar problem Japanese have with German or English L/R in the opposite direction. )

Ok even I know that mochi is pronounced mo-shi and not mokky

Is there any possibility of insularity influencing the two languages? That is, they live on islands -> there's a lot of fishing/travel over water -> there's a selection pressure towards phonemes that can be clearly distinguished when yelled between boats. IDK, just a wild guess.

From Hawaii to Taiwan, there are not only similarities, there are actual words used throughout every island in between. Not that it debunks what you said, but your beginning portion would have to account for all of their languages as well. Not mentioning the similarities in culture.

There's a theory floating around that climate influences phonology, so that's my guess

OMG, this video is so validating for me because someone else sees this weird similarity. I learned Japanese as L2 and worked as a translator for many years. I studied hard and trained my brain to instantly make sense of anything remotely reminding Japanese. Several years ago I moved to the States and Hawaiian keep catching me off-guard. My translator muscle strains instinctively when I see similar syllable structure, and I suffer silently. It is so great that I'm not the only one who saw this similarity which nobody around me sees. (No hate towards Hawaiian, only love.)

Polynesian cultures are notable for their tradition of 'wayfinding' - the oceanic equivalent of being nomadic. Between learning the stars and understanding how birds and fish react to nearby islands, these cultures spread across the Pacific. Similar to how the Phoenicians influenced Mediterranean languages, the Polynesians surely had considerable influence upon the languages of the lands they frequented. Not as strongly, of course, owing to the great expanse of the Pacific Ocean compared to the Mediterranean Sea, but surely enough to account for the similarities which persist to this day.

Obama is the surname of an American president whose father is from Africa. Obama is also a city in Japan. There are Africans living in Japan.

If you do a video on Italian phonology, or especially people imitating Italian phonology, you'll also need to talk about Prisencolinensinainciusol, so you can show what it's like from the other direction.

Hey if you're still doing completly unrelated but similar sounding languages check out Igbo and compare it Japanese, very oddly similar sounding if you ask me

4:13 Not quite correct; Japanese allows -n codas and in some dialects, even -m endings. Hell, you even said a Japanese example in 5:22! All in all, this video feels more like a deformed brainchild which should never have been given space beyond the confines of some personal journal or notebook. In fact, you mention having to "pad out the video" at 7:42. Their only connection, as you yourself have admitted, is the "similar" phonology. In all honesty, this little correlation is nothing but misplaced passion on what is simply a coincidence of two simple systems being similar.

I always thought that the Japanese word Kawaii sounded like Hawaii.

>Japanese integrated well Nobody tell him about the Niihau Incident.

Kekaha is NOT pronounced "keh - key - ha". I cannot see how you could say "ka" as "key", particularly when it's followed by the rhyming syllable "ha". I'm also cringing at Makena, ohayo, mochi, karaoke, manga, tako, and musubi. The grating mispronunciations are especially problematic after the chart at 3:48 is shown and spoken, making the correct sounds clear.

You should check hokkien and see how crazily unique and interconnected to different languages

Love your vidddss!!

It's pronounced tah-ko, not tayko. It's the same tako in takoyaki

The Japanese who came to work sugar plantations in Hawai'i... A whole lot of them were Okinawan's (arguably not Japanese) who were "encouraged" by the Japanese government to migrate when they were forced to sell their land and become tenant farmers.

Polyglot Brian Loo Soon Hua believes they are related to each other as Austronesian Languages.

poke =raw fish rice bowl sounds japanese but came from hawaii from what i understand

Maori and Japanese sound incredibly similar if you're not familiar with any of the two

Look up Ed Bassmaster's Mumbles and see how much of that phonology you can understand.

German and French are NOT from the same language family…

Well, linguistically; they are not related. But by blood,we are ALL related (All humans and animals generally) 😊

In America we hear it pronounced "mo chee"

There were supposedly some austronesian communities living in japan in the past but not to the extent they had an influence on genetics and language. Māori would sound more similar than Hawaiian to Japanese from a phonetically pov to those not familiar with either language . Poly languages dont have ch, th, sh sounds in their languages.

2:12 bro using the cube roll music

"Looked down on" is a hell of a way to describe concentration camps

And European Portuguese sounds like Russian

Hawaiian has like the smallest consonant inventar there is so i doubt they can produce all the Japanese vowels without problems

There are much more similarities between Japan and Japanese and New Zealand and Māori.

Why did you explain the 5 consonants so weird 😂 It's literally the base consonants in many languages and English is the odd one out. aeiou done really need an explanation or do they?

I wouldn't say weirdly.

The Hawaiian word "ohana" (family) sounds like Japanese to me.

I am of the opinion the Japanese language is actually distantly related to Austronesian languages.

The Hawaiian language has only 12 letters phonetically and a guttural stop. How many letters does Japan have?

My Druid friend said the same thing about Irish and Maori!

I just remembered Pearl Harbor 😭

2:32 Ohayo kinda sounds similar to the American State Name Ohio

9:47 don't worry, Japanese is coming down as we speak.

Use IPA bro. And Japanese syllables can end in consonants

This is finding something onforce, so it is kinda naciongane, aloha does sound similiar to ohayo but its very little similarity.