When reading phonological descriptions of Japanese and Russian, there a good amount of similarities between their sounds, as I share in this video! Please subscribe if you enjoy the video! #language #japanese #russian
@@varvarith3090 K, can you say a perfect "th" in english, "r" in French and pronounce a chinese word with perfect tones and correct consonants? Oh, and also words with clicking sounds from african languages, don't forget those! Do this and THEN you can say that author's ы wasn't peRfEcT enOuGh. It was good and clear, don't expect a native level from someone who's clearly not native
Когда изучал японский язык он мне показался гораздо легче английского. Методы построения предложений, лёгкие формы глаголов и ТРИ времени как и в русском языке делают его простым для освоения русскоговорящим ) А ещё тот факт что после каждой согласной идет гласная разгружает язык от таких слов как «контрвзгляд», «подвзбзднуть», «контрвстреча» и «контрвзбзднуть» :)
Смотрел лекцию по языкам где-то на просторах ютуба, да и в процессе изучения английского обнаружил следующее. Если копать грамматику, то при взгляде на русский язык, как на иностранный язык, то в нём далеко не 3 времени, а штук 20 тоже. Всякие причастия и деепричастия, приставки и суффиксы, меняющие смысл глагола и его место во времени, плюс виды глаголов (совершенный и несовершенный), которые многие ошибочно приравнивают к перфекту в английском языке. В общем, куча своих приколов. Ну вот типа: "Я еду" - present continuous, "Я езжу" - present simple, а может быть и present perfect continuous, "Я уехал" - может быть и past simple, и past perfect, и present perfect. Да и кстати, английский, как и любой язык германской ветки - это язык индоевропейской семьи, как и русский (и любой другой славянский). В русском даже подобие артиклей есть и своя версия английского present perfect. Так что, у русского и английского есть общие корни (очень далеко и глубоко только), а вот азиатские языки - отдельная песня.
Fun fact: Ikura (Japanese for salmon roe, a common sushi/spaghetti topping(!)) is derived from Russian икра (ikra), which means fish roe/caviar in general. This is hilarious, as ikura sounds like the most Japanese word on the planet, though its katakana spelling of イクラ probably should have clued me in to its foreign etymology.
@@DipperPines1986 только оно тупо нигде не используется. Это скорее чтоб иностранные слова/имена записать, а это редко. Многие не знают какой звук это обозначает, я лично спрашивал. А просто 'з' все конечно могут произнести, но и разница значительная.
Absolutely true! As Russian, I noticed it many times how easy for us to pronounce Japanese sounds. We both have very open strong and very straithforward pronounciation. The main difference is that we have stress in words, and Japanese pronounce words very flat. We even have sounds for Japanese "shi" - which is somewhere between "shi" and "si"
@@Dmitry_Timchenko, the concept itself is not a hard one really, but when learning new language pitch accent is not a thing to focus at first. It surely is important for advanced learners but beginners should just know about it.
Fun fact: "yama" in Russian means a pit in the ground and in Japanese, on the contrary, it means a mountain. Also it's quite interesting that there is a word "kazan" of Turkic origin in Russian which relates to a deep bowl/saucepan used for cooking food, usually on fire, and in Japanese it means a volcano, which also pertains to some boiling process and fire :)
I am a native Russian speaker and learning Japanese. Pronounciation came easy for me because of how similar the languages can sound. Even before I started learning Japanese, while watching anime or reading manga, pronouncing the character's names was easy for me, while I sometimes heard westerners making mistakes because their pronounciation differs. So long story short, I always noticed how Russian and Japanese are similar for me, and someone made a video explaining this in great detail. Never thought about a lot of this before. Great video!
Fun fact, Korean 알았어 (a-ra-sso) sounds like Russian хорошо (ha-ra-sho) and also means the same - okay, fine, deal. I always wondered why. Maybe because Russia is half Asia after all. And also it's fun how we share a lot of commons in language structure, for example, in Chinese, Korean and Japanese the words are made of syllables (a pair of a consonant and a vowel), and in Russian too. And we also have honorifics. And morpheme (like building suffixes and other words around a word to make a similar word but different for different reasons, idk how to explain it sorry). Anyway it's kinda easier for Russains to learn grammar and sentence structure of Asian languages. Oh, and also the famous Russian "Ы" that is the same with Korean "으".
from what i looked up хорошо comes from proto slavic word for "brave". 알았어 comes from the middle korean 알〯다〮 "to know". Its definitely a coincidence but Russia is "half asian" in geography only. They were very much european from the west, and they colonized eastward into asia. i know what youre trying to say about morphemes tho далеко means far and Недалеко means "not far". i think this is what you mean right?
funnily enough im chinese american and my parents find english complicated, russian an eldritch language. altho maybe bc their first language is cantonese. theyre fluent in mandarin too but cantonese in some ways is prob more like kinda some neighboring seasian languages than mandarin, even tho c and m are in the same sinitic language fam. diff flavors of chinese lol.
Russian "Ы" that not is the same with Korean "으". For Russian "ы" is an allophone "и", and cannot appear at the beginning of a word; in fact, this is also after a hard consonant, and the letter itself came from ЪI (a hard sign, i.e. short “o”, and “i” - “и” after a vowel). The Russian “ы” is similar to the English “i” in words like “lift” (in the Beatles, “wisdom” sounds with two typical “ы” (“wыzdыm”).
I'm a Russian learning Japanese. Pronunciation and grammar is quite easy most of the time, but writing and kanji specifically... Oh... This makes me cry sometimes. Still do not understand why you need to have 2 alphabets.
@@nonameuserua not only written, but pronounced too :) It was a feature in Old East Slavic as well, not only in Church Slavonic. Ь and Ъ changed their prononciation at the 12-14 century, but before that the word like тьмьнъіи and жьньць would be pronounced like [tĕmĕnɨj] and [ʐĕnĕtsĕ] respectfully.
@@teo5203 yes, some of old believers (especially bespopovtsy) still sing their clerical songs with all those “fallen down” unstressed vowels pronounced as o and e respectively
Тоже всегда так думал. Я русский и мне нравится, как звучит японский язык. И мне всегда казалось, что японский язык звучит будто слоги русских слов поменяли местами. А совпадений оказалось куда больше)) Спасибо
learning japanese in hs as a russian, my pronunciation was the best in my class and my teacher said she had another russian student before who also was the best in the class for pronunciation xD
I studied Japanese and now Russian. I thought am I the only one who thinks like that XD. Thank god that there are more people realizing the similarities. Also, in both languages, when you want to ask someone (formal) to do something the verbs of both languages have "-te" endings.
Being fluent in both English and Russian while learning Japanese, I swear I have always swapped to my "Russian accent" and managed to reproduce the sounds more accurately. Russian and Japanese are very different but its cool to see that knowing one helps learn the other and it wasn't just me.
Yet another great video! Both your Russian and Japanese pronunciation was pretty decent in my opinion, except женщина which sounded like зенсина, but that's no big deal. You've actually covered rather an interesting topic imo. Keep it up!
I think, that he messed up /zh/ trying to palatalized the consonant before the letter [е], even though this sound can't be 'soft' in Russian. And thus make it sound like /z/ (which one has 'soft' version of itself)
@@Avenger_QQ its prononciation is too very strongly mistakened. It was too soft. And for some reason he added a vowel after it. Sorry for being nerdy and cruel((
Ещё в японском есть послеслог "но", обозначающий принадлежность первого объекта ко второму, например, неко но мими (неко - кошка, мими - ухо), и в русском некоторые имена с существительными среднего рода дают похожие словосочетания, например, Василисино горе, Митино поле
But I noticed that in japanese there are some words that sound like some russian words, but they have completely different meanings. For example かばん (kaban) which means Bag in japanese, means in russian boar (Кабан).
I appreciate your thorough comparison of Japanese and Russian phonologies! It's fascinating how languages can share similarities despite being unrelated. Thanks for shedding light on this linguistic connection. до свидания and またね!
And they both have the name "Yuri". Even though the Russian (and actually every Slavic version) Yuri is the equivalent to "George", and the Japanese "Yuri" is the equivalent to "Lily".
As a native Russian speaker who learned Japanese for a while, another similarity I noticed between the two languages is ‘eto’ which can be used as a filler when you don’t know what you say (kind of like uhhh) I am also aware that in Russian ‘eto’ is usually referring to ‘this’ but in certain contexts I think it’s interesting that both languages share this
I think that's interesting because in Spanish eto sounds like esto which does mean this. And many accents drop the s so you end up hearing what is essentially eto
ive been thinking this for so long!!! and i finally see someone agreeing and explaining this. thats so cool. everytime i would hear japanese it would remind me of russian alot.
As someone who hears people talking Russian in my daily life they do have some similar sounding words (just like many other languages) but that’s all. Russian pronunciation is strong and bold while Japanese is a bit soft.
When you said зеньсина (женщина, zhenschina, woman) you literally sounded like a stereotypical Japanese from a russian mocking joke, since the pronouncement of ji and shi sounds very unfamiliar for a russian native
На самом деле очень здорово, когда люди говорят на иностранном языке, не стесняясь своего акцента, потому что правильное произношение формируется только при постоянной практике))) в этом видео прекрасно все, спасибо ❤
I’m learning russian, but I’m very good at pronouncing words. My mother kept teaching my hard words as a kid. So yea I’m also good at accents btw if I practice enough. I need the accent to learn languages
Это так мило, что он просто внезапно нашел Японский и Русский язык похожими и записал об этом видео:'0 Не знаю, я люблю когда люди так чем то увлечены💕 . . . не думала что именно эта моя фраза в интернете станет такой популярной
@@user-yq8tg2lv7t это тебе не тяжёлый, т.к. с тобой на нем с детства разговаривают. Типа колесо среднего рода и даже не задумываешься над этим. Иностранцам это надо запоминать как и хреналион других правил
@@-Akavir- абсолютно верно, даже многие русские не могут грамотно изъясняться на родном языке, что уж говорить об иностранцах😂 Да и русский язык всегда был в группе «трудных для изучения», сразу после языков с иероглифическим письмом
иностранцы ещё не знают как перевести славянский язык,а это уже ещё сложнее,так как БУКВИЦА является одной из ПРАродителей всех языков,тем более в БУКВИЦЕ каждая буква имеет значение.
I'm learning russian and my father is learning japanese and when he hears some words from russian he is like "Oh! Oh! That word sounds like this word in japanese!" and now we see why lol. Very interesting and informative video. 👍 I think I'm gonna stick with this channel. Спасибо! :)
As a Polish person, absolutely Russian sounds like Polish. We have many similar words. However, if I hear someone speaking Portuguese from afar I will assume its Russian, for some reason they are so similar.
As a native Russian, I actually thought Japanese was pretty easy to both understand by ear and to pronounce even without knowing the meaning of most words. For a couple of years as a teen I studied it, even though on an amateur level ("i wanna understand anime with subs better!"), and if I had any better reason to invest time into it, I'd probably find about zero difficulty in learning the listen/understand/speak part (but not the written bit, obviously). Who knows, maybe I'll get back to it one day! 😅 Thanks for interesting video!
I studied Russian for a while and am currently taking Japanese. I always said I thought they sounded similar and my classmates thought I was crazy! Thank you for articulating this
It's true. Iam native russian speaker and learn japanese, they are sounds very similar. Russian sounds like more "flexible" japanese, because we don't have that fixed syllabary system.
I’ve been helping international students at a Japanese university as a tutor and this video really confirms my experience: Russian or other slavic language native speakers are really good at speaking Japanese. I don’t mean to generalize people but oftentimes their Japanese doesn’t have an accent specific to non native speakers and it’s usually very easy to understand. Sure, they do struggle with the writing system but when it comes to pronunciation, they are almost flawless. I’d say some are even better than Chinese or Korean native speakers, who also have very high Japanese proficiency in general. Aside from the phonetical aspects of the similarity between the two languages, I guess the declension of Russian might play a role here as well?? You know, that allows you to have relatively free word order and Japanese grammar has that kind of trick too. Not as free as Russian tho. Anyway, very interesting video! Really liked it 👍
I was very into reading manga as a teen and because I often got tired for waiting for translated versions coming into our stores, I started learning Japanese and I made the same observation.The declination felt very familiar and followed a similar sentence building structure which meant I kinda only had to learn what the words mean and of course, kanji.
As someone who learned both as a foreign language I can say, they don't sound much alike at all, and most of the similarities mentioned in this video could be found in many other languages, too, and aren't really that special or surprising, with a few exceptions that stand out. Probably the most striking similarity to me would be the exclamation "oi!" which exists in both Russian and Japanese.
@@cheerful_crop_circle Russian and Japanese are vastly different; the whole premise of the video is wrong because Japanese does not in fact sound anything like Russian, and finding some similarities between the two does not change that. If you want to make the case that Japanese is closer to Russian than English, that may be true but is not the point here and not really a useful comparison either.
I learned some Japanese as my first foreign language, Russian longer down the line. The rhythmic speaking feels quite similar too, especially since a lot of sounds are made in a short amount of time.
Что вполне себе логично, учитывая, что японская азбука - слоговая, а значит концентрация гласных и согласных звуков в японской речи примерно одинаковая, к тому же и оканчивается каждое слово, обычно, на гласную. И оба эти фактора делают японскую речь более "дыхательной", пропеваемой. В то время как в других языках концентрация согласных звуков в речи зачастую выше, чем гласных, и эти согласные выступают в роли некой примеси, запинок в речи.
Some Japanese words sound like Finnish (i am not finnish myself but was introduced to both languages). Especially words with double consonant like Japanese 'yukkuri' or Finnish 'rakka'. Some given names sound similar or even the same since in both languages they tend to be short: names Mika, Niko, Riina, Ukko seems to exist in both Japan and Finland
@@cheerful_crop_circle it is for sure. Like in the case of Japanese and Russian there is no genetic relationship between the languages. Funny coincidence tho
I speak English, Japanese, and Russian at the level of a native speaker, and it has always amused me to see such similarities in the most unexpected ways.
@@cheerful_crop_circle bruh russian has 33 letters which makes 33 sounds meanwhile in english they pretend some unesicting silent half letter exists nothing is read the wya it is written they pretend they can tell v and vv apart without looking at person (with zero double blind studies proving it) they pronounce the same word 15 times the same way and pretend all 15 sounds so different that people will start fighting over it. theyr pretend they don't have soft and hard consosnants they pretend they don't have a half of russian sounds only because english is a bad french dialect of german and they transliterate everything terribly. they pretend there are some shwahs a a upside down a dots not a fake a a without the stick which alsi despite being IPA is read three different ways
Уже лет 15 увлекаюсь японской попсой и роком. И всегда считала, что японский язык возможно самый легкий в изучении произношения для русских, потому что звуки легко воспринимаются и различаются. Японский разговорный очень хорошо воспринимается на слух, потому большая часть людей, которая некоторые время смотрит фильмы, анимацию или слушает музыку на японском языке, может достаточно легко и быстро запомнить основные фразы и их произношение. Но если в русском у нас больше грудного и глубокого звукоизвлечения, то в японском чаще горловое с направлением звука вперед.
as a person who is learning both russian and japanese, this video helped me a lot because ever since i started learning japanese i feel the similarity between russian and japanese. it even confuses me and i use random «но, да, и» in japanese and "あの、いいえ、の、はい" in russian because it feels so normal in my head. languages are truly amazing.
They did a lot of things together, so it makes sense there are some similiarities. by that I mean that they fought so they did speak eachother's languages at times
Ah, the two languages I truthfully studied with passion. I started with russian, than for various reasons, I ended off kinda hating russia, so I stopped learning it, but I was so much in love with multilinguality that I needed a new language: japanese. And so I come to the point where I learn passionatly with the intention of moving and living the rest of my life in japan. Sheare YOUR "falling in love with a language" story with me, I want to hear your caus(es) All language learners forth to becoming polyglot!
First thing I noticed when learning Japanese as a Russian-Canadian were the similar vowels. My teacher quickly realized I have a near perfect pronounciation after I got the hang of the phrase pacing and fixing up my "o" to be a little less new y'o'rker. Aside from that, vocab wise I ended up uncontrollably laughing after my japanese teacher had us all repeat after her saying "dai suki" with full enunciation 🤣 (it is a grammatically correct and phonetically accurate pronounciation of a different yet strangely fitting russian phrase)
That's one of reasons why i love Russian. It might sound like any other language depending on what the words you use. For example like Chinese when you say "тёщь, дай щи". Or like Japanese when you say "от икоты кому то туго"
Finally someone talking about this. There’s actually a lot of jokes in Russia, based on these similarities. The joke always starts with: “do you know how to say … in Japanese?” And then you just say a phrase in Russian, but with no stress and no intonation, so that it really sounds Japanese. For example: how to say “ambulance” in Japanese? Komuto hirowata” (кому-то херовато is the russian phrase meaning “someone’s sick”). Or “what is the name of the famous Japanese sniper? Tokoso Tomimo” (то косо, то мимо) 😇😇😇 Greetings from Tokyo
As Russian I want to share my favorite: there was a joke about "famous Japanese piano player and fixer" named Heranuka Poroyalyu - Херанука Пороялю what means "(I'll) fucking smash the grand piano" Edit: if you want more absurd you should google her, you'll get a lot of info on her biography, career and other stuff
ooo that reminds me that there are similar jokes in polish, for example: a famous japanese sumo wrestler - takito mamase ("taki to ma mase" which could be roughly translated to "that guy has some weight")
Notes: This video hasn’t aged too bad, but I’ve made better quality videos since this one and you should give them a watch if you’re interested :) I would’ve liked to elaborate on this more, but it can’t be understated how different the speech patterns and intonation are between Russian and Japanese, which contributes to them sounding hardly anything alike outside of isolated strings of words. I am not saying Japanese and Russian sound exactly alike, just sharing some similarities I noticed between their sounds. I am NOT claiming Portuguese is a slavic language, “both” refers to Polish and Russian, I just phrased it awkwardly. I KNOW I SAID ЖЕНЩИНА WRONG YOU CAN STOP COMMENTING AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
We had a retired Japanese ballerina as a classmate at uni in Moscow. She was adorable, even when she was expressing her frustration with consonant clusters in Russian.
у нас корень один. слова по слогам были во всех языках, у некоторых они просто забылись, включая и русский. буквица этим самым слоговым чтением и была. каждый слог означал определенную вещь и нес определенный смысл. в целом русский, как корневой язык, позволяет раскрыть все остальные языки мира, если знать его достаточно хорошо. а тем более знать его эволюцию, я нахожу сходства с ним во всех языках мира.
I think I heard a joke about an imaginary Japanese dude being named toyama tokanava, which is literally just Russian for "either a hole (in the road) or a ditch" (kinda implying you see one after another all the time). So yeah, there are some surprising similarities in the way some words sound :D
Yeah, and also a joke about famous japanese pianist Heranuka Poroyalyu. It comes from one of the form of the Russian slur "херануть" (kheranut') that means either to hit somebody or something or to do something so intensive that you can break it. And from "по роялю" ( po royalyu), it's basically piano in Russian with appropriate preposition
@@1234567qwerification it's "Komuto Herovato" (which is a pun-name of an imaginary japanese doctor which name in russian would be literally translated as "someone's not feeling well")
I am subscribed to the channel (Samuraika) of a Japanese man who has been studying Russian for only 1 year and speaks Russian as a native Russian speaker. Italians also quickly learn Russian and speak it without an accent.
Finally someone talks about this! I learnt some Japanese when I was younger, and started learning Russian a few months ago. I unconsciously mixed both languages, mixing words
In Old Russian all syllables where open too! Just a lot of vowels got reduced over time. Try to search in RU-vid: "Чтение по-древнерусски с произношением до 12 века" and you will hear it
Еее, наконец доказано то, что уже давно сама услышала и заметила. Спасибо автору! Русский, японский и немецкий - самые крутые языки по звучанию (для меня, конечно). Бруталити 👍🤟
to add to similarities in the comments, check wata (cotton) (although i look up wiktionary for etymology and see other languages also having similar word for it)
As a Russian person who is studying Japanese, I can confirm many sounds in Japanese can be also found in Russian. Thanks to that, to us, Russians, speaking Japanese clearly is somewhat easy from the very beginning. Though, of course, perfecting pronounciation takes time, it isn't as hard as, for example, learning to pronounce English sounds (sich as th). And... it isn't the same for Japanese people. Japanese is less flexible, so even after lots of practice it's hard to pronounce some Russian sounds for native Japanese speakers. I have a native teacher at my university, who is pretty good at Russian, but he's always astonished by our russian surnames, asking us to pronounce them multiple times before he can even try to repeate.
One more thing I want to share is that I have studied English since childhood, and it had always seemed very different and alien to me... Had, because when I started to study Japanese, I learned it was on a whole other level of being different. When comparing Russian to English and Japanese, Russian almost feels like a long-lost brother of English - there are SO many little similarities that are unnoticable unless you actually know a different language without those similarities. Russians and English-speaking people actually think and formulate their thoughts in a pretty similar way. Japanese people... don't. Now that it's been almost 5 years of me studying Japanese, I finally start percieving their line of thought as intended, but before that... let's just say I've struggled with understanding the meaning of sentences a lot.
@@hana-vg9vd потому что русский и английский входят в индоевропейскую ветвь, то есть в далеком-далеком прошлом были одним языком но после разошлись. Также как и немецкий и другие славянские языки. Дверь и door, вода и water, похожие поговорки, i и я, конструкции.
@@larissasplaylists тебя в гугле забанили, Лариска? Какой тебе источник нужен? Или перед тобой надо бисер метнуть и изложить эссе с доказательствами? Иди сама пошарься, найдешь источник и сама убедишься
I'm uzbek and honestly say that russian and japanese totally different sounding languages. It's like two guy wore their same colored clothes, but type of their clothes are different. Like russian guy wore long clothes while japanese guy wore short.
@@cheerful_crop_circle I played the intro in russian and in japanese and found at times both languages to sound alike. Stumbled upon this video via the algorithm ,though.
Дерзай брат. У нас с вами больше общего чем мы можем себе представить и я бы честно, хотел, чтобы государства исчезли и была единая цивилизация, но увы, не в нашем веке, не в нашем времени.