Hi, I am back with some hopefully better audio quality. I wanted to remake my older video on negations in Japanese as it is no longer up to a standard I am happy with. I feel like I understand the topic better than I used to, and thus am begged equipped to explain the topic. Additionally there is a greater deal of nuance here than before. (Minor audio glitch 10:20-10:30) Please see my playlist for all videos I have made in this format: ruclips.net/p/PLGGdWQoxz4TKXd2cXbJ-cW1149Hizgsiw If you enjoy my content, please consider a small donation as these videos take quite a while to make: buymeacoffee.com/japaneseetymology
Fun fact about the transition of ず being common to ぬ, this probably happened for two reasons, 1. When using certain particles like なむ or ぞ it forces the final verb to be in the 連体形 form for some reason which is why some sentences will end with ぬ despite it clearly being the end of the sentence. 2. The ancient Japanese loved to put verbs in the 連体形 form and then leave the expected verb out because why bother using the word when it's so obvious that an implication is all that's needed. Thus they would cut their sentences short and allow the listener to fill in the rest which led to sentences actually ending with ぬ and just not finishing the thought. Also, a personal request, can you explain to me the origin of the honorific お in words like お大事 and お話. I'm aware of where the ご and み uses come from, but I'm not sure about the お use. It's ostensibly a 訓読み but in the 古事記 it's always pronounced as み and never お, as far as I'm aware.
Oh wow thank you that is really interesting. It seems then like ぬ was often being used in effectively the 終止形 position for quite a while? It makes sense then that the two forms began to become interchangeable. Thanks for the idea, that is great thank you. I had wondered where み went, as it only seems to show up in incredibly incredibly old words. A video on the origins/uses of お・み・ご would be fun to do.
I am very impressed that this is 'easy' listening! I've just heard the echo, how strange. I went back and listened to it in my video software and it is fine, so absolutley no idea what has happened there. Let's just pretend it was intentional for that 15 seconds.
Thanks for making a new video with more theories! With regard to why ぬ and ず coexisted, I think you need to understand the six base model of Japanese conjugation: 未然形・連用形・終止形・連体形・已然形・命令形. Every verb has these six forms (some auxiliaries lack a few). They are all used to connect to different particles and serve different roles in the sentence, hence they coexist. You couldn't(*see below) use ぬ at the end of the sentence like you could ず, and you couldn't modify a noun with ず like you could with ぬ. During the middle ages, the 連体形 replaced the 終止形 in all verbs and adjectives. This was probably related to the 連体形 being used at the end of the sentence in limited situations (this includes ぬ): as the 結び of the mid-sentence emphatic particle ぞ (which got ousted in favor of が) and なむ (which disappeared), the mid-sentence question particles や and か (which got ousted in favor of は/が), and for questions in general. Look up 係り結び for more information on this. And yes that's right, the question particles often frequently came in the middle of the sentence (they could still come at the end with slight difference in emphasis or nuance). So, this is why ぬ replaced ず. This is why we say 食べる (< 食ぶる) and not 食ぶ today. This is why we more often say する than す. This is why we say くる and not く. This is why we say ありうる and not ありう. This is why we say 良い ( nafe > nae) to ない (nai). This intervocalic lenition of /p/ occurred almost universally in Japanese. The other piece of the puzzle is that ない is not observed to conjugate as an adjective when it first appeared, and wouldn't complete its transformation until late Edo. This is explained in the ない entry of 日本国語大辞典, which you can check on Kotobank (do check it out, there is a lot of useful information): 「今日のような活用をするようになったのは、後期江戸語以来と考えられている。それは形容詞の活用に類推したものである。ただし、その初めは、「なかった」よりも「なんだ」、「なければ」よりも「ないければ」の言い方のほうが普通である。」 This says that it didn't conjugate like an i-adjective at first. Hence it would make sense that it could be the direct descendent of the なへ form of なふ. Note how peculiar it is that the なへ form does not end in -u like most verb attributive forms. It would not have easily conformed to any part of speech.
Thank you very much for your kind words. Apologies, but I am a little lost with some of your explanations. Probably because you understand the subject matter far better than I do. For this section: 'This is why we say eat (< eat) and not eat today. This is why we more often say than す. This is why we say くる and not く. This is why we say it is possible and not there. This is why we say good (
@@tonythesopranos5310 So in Old Japanese, you would say this: 人 家より出づ (The/a person emerges from the house.) 家より出づる人あり (There is a person who emerges from the house) Notice how at the end of the sentence, it takes the form 出づ and when modifying a noun it takes the form 出づる. This is what it means for the 終止形 to be 出づ (idzu) and the 連体形 to be 出づる (idzuru). When a 係り結び particle is in the sentence, the verb at the end of the sentence has to agree with it. The ぞ particle agrees with the 連体形 (or we say the 連体形 is the 結び of ぞ): 家より人ぞ出づる (A person emerges from the house. (emphatic)) Eventually, Japanese would evolve as follows: 家より人が出づる (idzuru) 家から人が出でる (ideru) 家から人が出る (deru) The 終止形 form 出づ is no longer used. The subject が particle becomes prevalent. 出づる shifts conjugation class to 出でる. 出でる loses its initial i- sound and becomes modern 出る. This is just one example to illustrate it. Hopefully some things are more clear. The examples are contrived, so just take them as demonstrations of the grammar.
@@nickpatella1525 Oh wow that is so interesting. I get it now. 食ぶ was the 終止形 and 食ぶる was the 連体形. Do you know why the ぶ became a べ sound? As in 食べる？ Or is that just a random sound change? I still don't fully understand 係り結び but I will go away and do some reading on them. Thank you!
@@tonythesopranos5310 So I think the easiest way to understand it is that verbs have conjugation classes, and one form of shift a verb can undergo is to all-together change its conjugation class. 食ぶ/食ぶる is a "nidan" verb, but 食べる is an "ichidan" verb, so the verb switched its conjugation paradigm from "nidan" to "ichidan". This isn't a phonetic shift but a category shift. The reason the -e vowel appeared is because like how ichidan has -iru and -eru verbs, nidan had verbs that took -i and verbs that took -e when conjugated into the 連用形 and 未然形 forms: 食ぶ→食べ (連用形/未然形) 滅ぶ→滅び (連用形/未然形) Thus if you keep the vowel category of the verb the same, i.e. keep its 連用形 and 未然形 the same, but change its conjugation from nidan to ichidan, you get 食べる and 滅びる. There is only one nidan verb that survives in modern Japanese, which is うる in the compounds ありうる、しうる、できうる、おこりうる, etc. In colloquial Japanese, people say ありうる as ありえる instead, which annoys grammarians, but that's just another example of the shift. Sometimes you will see people describe this shift as る having attached to the 連用形, but that's just saying the same thing from a different perspective. This is actually a large shift that happened, and most of the ichidan verbs today used to be nidan verbs. There are Western dialects which didn't fully undergo the shift and still retain many nidan verbs today. In English materials, ichidan is called "monograde" and nidan is called "bigrade". Whether the verb belongs to the i vowel category or the e vowel category is expressed by the words "upper" and "lower", or "kami" and "shimo" in Japanese. So "shimo ichidan" would be "lower monograde" in English.
9:32 I don't know much about Japanese etymology or Japanese philology, but my immediate thought here was that it may have changed to match the adjectives via analogy, because people just thought it seemed similar and should have the same conjugation. I have no idea how plausible this is in this case and I'd rather ask an expert, but it's a possible explanation
There's a bit of a walk-through of the past tense endings showing every occurrence in the old literature in "A Descriptive and Comparative Grammar of Western Old Japanese - Vovin (2020)." It starts at page 636 and getting to the nu/zu form at page 645. It's complicated to say when '-nu' became it's own thing because the 'n' was a very common nasalization in Old Japanese that is explicitly written in Vovin's book, but not usually in other texts similar to the way that 'ga' is often pronounced 'nga' but never written that way. (The schwa 'e' is actually an 'o' in Vovin's books as he differentiates between ko and otsu forms of the old vowels.) There's a small blurb on page 202 of "The Evolution of the Japanese Past and Perfective Suffixes - Sandness (1999)" positing a theory (that I had never heard before) of 'nai' deriving from an emphatic from the Yonaguni region.
ruclips.net/video/1hTOMZM2_ys/видео.html Of course me being casual watcher and this guy being an amateur probably could have missed the mark but I found his theory quite interesting. In short, an was a common negative forming word (as shown in Sanskrit and Korean) and in Japanese, it has formed a connecting sound with wuri and suru to form nu and zu.
Hi, I am back with some hopefully better audio quality. I wanted to remake my older video on negations in Japanese as it is no longer up to a standard I am happy with. I feel like I understand the topic better than I used to, and thus am begged equipped to explain the topic. Additionally there is a greater deal of nuance here than before. (Minor audio glitch 10:20-10:30)
Please see my playlist for all videos I have made in this format: ruclips.net/p/PLGGdWQoxz4TKXd2cXbJ-cW1149Hizgsiw
If you enjoy my content, please consider a small donation as these videos take quite a while to make: buymeacoffee.com/japaneseetymology
So refreshingly honest.
どうもありがとう
Fun fact about the transition of ず being common to ぬ, this probably happened for two reasons,
1. When using certain particles like なむ or ぞ it forces the final verb to be in the 連体形 form for some reason which is why some sentences will end with ぬ despite it clearly being the end of the sentence.
2. The ancient Japanese loved to put verbs in the 連体形 form and then leave the expected verb out because why bother using the word when it's so obvious that an implication is all that's needed. Thus they would cut their sentences short and allow the listener to fill in the rest which led to sentences actually ending with ぬ and just not finishing the thought.
Also, a personal request, can you explain to me the origin of the honorific お in words like お大事 and お話. I'm aware of where the ご and み uses come from, but I'm not sure about the お use. It's ostensibly a 訓読み but in the 古事記 it's always pronounced as み and never お, as far as I'm aware.
Oh wow thank you that is really interesting. It seems then like ぬ was often being used in effectively the 終止形 position for quite a while? It makes sense then that the two forms began to become interchangeable.
Thanks for the idea, that is great thank you. I had wondered where み went, as it only seems to show up in incredibly incredibly old words. A video on the origins/uses of お・み・ご would be fun to do.
>a semester and a half with cure dolly
kek
Perfect! Just sitting down to work on reports at work, needed some easy listening!
The audio is better!
There is a strange echo at the 10minute mark, but it's short.
I am very impressed that this is 'easy' listening! I've just heard the echo, how strange. I went back and listened to it in my video software and it is fine, so absolutley no idea what has happened there. Let's just pretend it was intentional for that 15 seconds.
Thanks for making a new video with more theories!
With regard to why ぬ and ず coexisted, I think you need to understand the six base model of Japanese conjugation: 未然形・連用形・終止形・連体形・已然形・命令形. Every verb has these six forms (some auxiliaries lack a few). They are all used to connect to different particles and serve different roles in the sentence, hence they coexist. You couldn't(*see below) use ぬ at the end of the sentence like you could ず, and you couldn't modify a noun with ず like you could with ぬ.
During the middle ages, the 連体形 replaced the 終止形 in all verbs and adjectives. This was probably related to the 連体形 being used at the end of the sentence in limited situations (this includes ぬ): as the 結び of the mid-sentence emphatic particle ぞ (which got ousted in favor of が) and なむ (which disappeared), the mid-sentence question particles や and か (which got ousted in favor of は/が), and for questions in general. Look up 係り結び for more information on this. And yes that's right, the question particles often frequently came in the middle of the sentence (they could still come at the end with slight difference in emphasis or nuance).
So, this is why ぬ replaced ず. This is why we say 食べる (< 食ぶる) and not 食ぶ today. This is why we more often say する than す. This is why we say くる and not く. This is why we say ありうる and not ありう. This is why we say 良い ( nafe > nae) to ない (nai). This intervocalic lenition of /p/ occurred almost universally in Japanese. The other piece of the puzzle is that ない is not observed to conjugate as an adjective when it first appeared, and wouldn't complete its transformation until late Edo. This is explained in the ない entry of 日本国語大辞典, which you can check on Kotobank (do check it out, there is a lot of useful information): 「今日のような活用をするようになったのは、後期江戸語以来と考えられている。それは形容詞の活用に類推したものである。ただし、その初めは、「なかった」よりも「なんだ」、「なければ」よりも「ないければ」の言い方のほうが普通である。」 This says that it didn't conjugate like an i-adjective at first. Hence it would make sense that it could be the direct descendent of the なへ form of なふ. Note how peculiar it is that the なへ form does not end in -u like most verb attributive forms. It would not have easily conformed to any part of speech.
Thank you very much for your kind words. Apologies, but I am a little lost with some of your explanations. Probably because you understand the subject matter far better than I do.
For this section: 'This is why we say eat (< eat) and not eat today. This is why we more often say than す. This is why we say くる and not く. This is why we say it is possible and not there. This is why we say good (
@@tonythesopranos5310 So in Old Japanese, you would say this:
人 家より出づ (The/a person emerges from the house.)
家より出づる人あり (There is a person who emerges from the house)
Notice how at the end of the sentence, it takes the form 出づ and when modifying a noun it takes the form 出づる. This is what it means for the 終止形 to be 出づ (idzu) and the 連体形 to be 出づる (idzuru).
When a 係り結び particle is in the sentence, the verb at the end of the sentence has to agree with it. The ぞ particle agrees with the 連体形 (or we say the 連体形 is the 結び of ぞ):
家より人ぞ出づる (A person emerges from the house. (emphatic))
Eventually, Japanese would evolve as follows:
家より人が出づる (idzuru)
家から人が出でる (ideru)
家から人が出る (deru)
The 終止形 form 出づ is no longer used. The subject が particle becomes prevalent. 出づる shifts conjugation class to 出でる. 出でる loses its initial i- sound and becomes modern 出る.
This is just one example to illustrate it. Hopefully some things are more clear. The examples are contrived, so just take them as demonstrations of the grammar.
@@nickpatella1525 Oh wow that is so interesting. I get it now. 食ぶ was the 終止形 and 食ぶる was the 連体形. Do you know why the ぶ became a べ sound? As in 食べる？ Or is that just a random sound change?
I still don't fully understand 係り結び but I will go away and do some reading on them. Thank you!
@@tonythesopranos5310 So I think the easiest way to understand it is that verbs have conjugation classes, and one form of shift a verb can undergo is to all-together change its conjugation class.
食ぶ/食ぶる is a "nidan" verb, but 食べる is an "ichidan" verb, so the verb switched its conjugation paradigm from "nidan" to "ichidan". This isn't a phonetic shift but a category shift.
The reason the -e vowel appeared is because like how ichidan has -iru and -eru verbs, nidan had verbs that took -i and verbs that took -e when conjugated into the 連用形 and 未然形 forms:
食ぶ→食べ (連用形/未然形)
滅ぶ→滅び (連用形/未然形)
Thus if you keep the vowel category of the verb the same, i.e. keep its 連用形 and 未然形 the same, but change its conjugation from nidan to ichidan, you get 食べる and 滅びる. There is only one nidan verb that survives in modern Japanese, which is うる in the compounds ありうる、しうる、できうる、おこりうる, etc. In colloquial Japanese, people say ありうる as ありえる instead, which annoys grammarians, but that's just another example of the shift.
Sometimes you will see people describe this shift as る having attached to the 連用形, but that's just saying the same thing from a different perspective.
This is actually a large shift that happened, and most of the ichidan verbs today used to be nidan verbs.
There are Western dialects which didn't fully undergo the shift and still retain many nidan verbs today.
In English materials, ichidan is called "monograde" and nidan is called "bigrade". Whether the verb belongs to the i vowel category or the e vowel category is expressed by the words "upper" and "lower", or "kami" and "shimo" in Japanese. So "shimo ichidan" would be "lower monograde" in English.
@@nickpatella1525 really fascinating thank you! Any recommendations of books where you got this sort of knowledge?
9:32 I don't know much about Japanese etymology or Japanese philology, but my immediate thought here was that it may have changed to match the adjectives via analogy, because people just thought it seemed similar and should have the same conjugation. I have no idea how plausible this is in this case and I'd rather ask an expert, but it's a possible explanation
@@syystomu interesting theory!
I feel like English has a pretty good comparison point for some of these with "don't" (do+not) kind of becoming a negative auxiliary verb
@@syystomu Oooh, I had not thought of that. But that makes sense now, 'do' is an auxiliary I think?
Hell yeah!
@@SM-ok3sz linguistic history, heeellll yeeeee
There's a bit of a walk-through of the past tense endings showing every occurrence in the old literature in "A Descriptive and Comparative Grammar of Western Old Japanese - Vovin (2020)." It starts at page 636 and getting to the nu/zu form at page 645. It's complicated to say when '-nu' became it's own thing because the 'n' was a very common nasalization in Old Japanese that is explicitly written in Vovin's book, but not usually in other texts similar to the way that 'ga' is often pronounced 'nga' but never written that way. (The schwa 'e' is actually an 'o' in Vovin's books as he differentiates between ko and otsu forms of the old vowels.)
There's a small blurb on page 202 of "The Evolution of the Japanese Past and Perfective Suffixes - Sandness (1999)" positing a theory (that I had never heard before) of 'nai' deriving from an emphatic from the Yonaguni region.
Nice video. Microphone quality was also better this time👍
Thank you :)
The image at 10:34 😂
This Tae Kim, he ain't go respect for dish thing of ours
ruclips.net/video/1hTOMZM2_ys/видео.html
Of course me being casual watcher and this guy being an amateur probably could have missed the mark but I found his theory quite interesting.
In short, an was a common negative forming word (as shown in Sanskrit and Korean) and in Japanese, it has formed a connecting sound with wuri and suru to form nu and zu.
shogun 2 lol