How similar are the Japanese and Chinese? Can Chinese Speakers Understand Japanese?
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- Опубликовано: 7 фев 2025
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Can they understand each other?
How does it sounds to you?
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JP Marino @malino.____
CN Henry @henryli4340
#japan #japanese #china #chinese
Props to the guy for changing seamlessly between Korean, Chinese and English!!! Impressive.
And at little Japanese! He said 我 = Watashi lol
fr esp when korean has like different sentence structure than chinese and english
He can also say a little bit French
She is switching between Korean and Japanese also
thank you !
This channel is the most important piece of résistance of humanity as a place where everyone can understand each other on RUclips. If the world goes to war, I want to remember these times...
Dramatic yet cute placement.
@@Wyllwho what's dramatic?
Sincere and Clear like cristal,message
We can choose not to care about politics
It's politicians who push for war, most people don't want war.
I live in Korea and have been learning Korean and Chinese for a while now, but I find Chinese more intuitive to learn because the sentence structures are more similar to English. My friend speaks Chinese quite fluently and visited Japan with no knowledge of Japanese. She was able to guide her co-workers around using only Chinese because she could read everything enough to guess, so it's really helpful in that way too.
you might find chinese easier to learn due to the grammar structure. Korean and Japanese has the opposite. Both Chinese and english uses Subject, Verb, Object. Korean/Japanese uses Subject-Object-Verb
Yeap. reminds me of a time a celeb from my country went to guess the meanings of the entire sentence using only kanji, which would help us pick up the language faster. a mandarin background, 65-70% of the time the meaning is consistent with mandarin except for a number of translations, for example,
却下 kyakka
蕩け toroke.
大丈夫
結構です
煩悩
風船
Those are not exactly consistent with standard mandarin. Also.... 時間、時刻 since 24時間 meant 24h back in the day.
好き、食べる、喜ぶ
etc.
@@musenw8834 The truth is many Japanese words don't exist in Mandarin or in other Chinese languages even if they can be written with Chinese characters. "大丈夫" in Chinese would just mean a strong man and doesn't have the meaning of "it's alright". And the word "風船" doesn't exist in Chinese either, a Chinese person would likely interpret it as some type of ship although the actual meaning is balloon.
@@tibowmew Chinese is actually not hard to learn, western people are just scared of the words which are just vocabs that you have to build up, you have to go through that when learning any language. And yes, the tones are a bit hard to grasp for many, but there are only 4 tones in Mandarin, anyone can handle 4 tones I guess... Better than having to memorize all the genders of each word for no reason in French/Spanish for example.
Chinese grammar is just English in reverse
Probably she will understand more if they put the traditional characters, for example “面” and “麵”
That's true. In Japan it's written as 拉麺
I would say a better example is 确认 and 確認 . or 杂货 za huo and 雑貨 zakka
Those are two different characters with different meanings
@@GL-iv4rw those are same meaning, just the difference between traditional Chinese characters and simple Chinese characters.
@@HuaWilliam In traditional Chinese, "面“ is face, "麺” is flour. In Simplified Chinese, there is only the character "面".
China is to East Asia what Rome Empire is to the West; an ancestral land that brought many cultures aspects that can be noted even nowadays.
Rome is a great cultured place
@@yxeanget-any in high contrast to....
true but i think half way! the roman empire had much influence to all europeans!
like all of the european languages use latin and greek loan words! all of us use the same latin abc and even such abc like cyril (russian) came from the greek abc. (latin abc also a version of that greek abc)
some example:
sun word:
came from the latin sol and solis
french - soleil
spanish - sol
german - sonne
swedish - sol
norvegian - sol
italian - sole
polish - slonce
czechish - slunce
slovak - slnko
sloven - sonce
croation - sunce
bosnian - sunce
serbian - sunce
bulgarian - slüntse
russian - slontse
ukranian - sontse
lettish - saule
romanian - soare
and a few more!
the only different is hungarian and finnish also albanian but they are not came from latin but anotehr groups even if adopted many words.
in hungarian it is nap, finnish aurinko, dielli
in other hand in greek it's: ílios
in other contect all of our scientifical and art words use from latin and greek.
west europe not west
Rome is not even a core civilization, what they had is based on the Greeks, and not even the Greeks because their writing is from Levant and Egypt another core civilization. The Minoans are the only true equivalents to the Chinese in the West and they are gone, but the Chinese are still around.
最近見始めた者です。
Marinoさん同郷で勝手に親近感持っちゃいました。頑張ってくださいね！
ちなみに仙台は今日、雪です❄️❄️❄️
Супер!
そもそも仙台出身で（出身なのに）魯迅と日本語の中華人民共和国と言う現代中国の国名を知らないレベルだからね
そんなに活躍は出来ないかもね？
東北大学の直ぐ隣に仙台医療学校があり魯迅留学の展示が保存されてるよね！
仙台なら東北大学の隣の仙台医療学校の魯迅留学の展示記録を知らないかい？
仙台と言ったら魯迅が留学して現代医学を学んだ土地だからね！
@@b17blue47
仙台出身とはいえ背景や興味の方向性までは知らないわけですから、そんな言い方をしなくても…🥺
片平の階段教室とかその辺は、昨年知り合いが来日したときにも送って行きました。
Thats because half of Japanese (and Korean) words, came from Chinese. So these 3 languages have connections, Japanese grammar similar to Korean, Japanese Kanji similar to hanzi
More formal and technical/Scientific Korean and Japanese words tend to be more similar to Chinese
@@A-ID-A-M Almost like us in the western world we use latin/greek
The Chinese origin words don't mean much though. They're just loan words like how English has vocabulary from Latin, French or Greek origins but is nothing like any of those languages.
That's because both Chinese and Korean borrowed heavily from Wasei Kango in the early modern era, especially for terms related to science and politics.
@@trex1448 Most of the similar vocabulary in these 3 languages aren't of Chinese origin but was created by Japanese thinkers and philosophers in the 19th century through Wasei Kango (using Sino-Japanese vocabulary to translate new western concepts and ideologies)
She said they dont have the “accent” like in Chinese. But while they don’t have tones, they do have pitch accents. Eg the way they pronounce flower and nose is different.
That's a concept Japanese are not aware of, Chinese have tones while Japanese have intonation, but mostly on dialects. She speaks standard Japanese without too much intonation.
I think the reason why Japanese people can hardly aware of the pitch accent is that there isn’t a lot of homophone in native word, and that they didn’t mimic the tone in loan words from Chinese, so they don’t usually have to differentiate word actually by pitch
but if you wrote them down as hiragana they are exactly the same. はな..which is why they have kanji.
@@Blahaj-the-shark there are plenty of homophones in japanese, it's just that they use kanji to separate the different words, other than that they'll have to depend on context like in korean.
@@lyhthegreat Indeed its a big problem in Japanese in my opinion and convienent things about Mandarin Chinese which has more syllables, word combinations and tones to lessen this issue in speech
風船 means balloon （Chinese: 氣球）in modern Japanese. Totally different meaning from Chinese word 帆船
I believe the Japanese girl can understand more if you use Traditional Characters.
mostly, except for a few words such as 数 状 国 会 and 学. and they also use some words that are not used in modern day traditional mandarin
@@musenw8834 Traditional forms like 國 and 學 are still encountered lots in Japan though, whereas China-only simplifications like 风 and 饭 really never are--so the tradeoff still heavily favours traditional even with Japan's simplifications in mind.
@@Cherodar tai wan uses traditional chinese
@@shaquille.oatmeal.-uv1zf Yes I know, and Hong Kong too.
@@Cherodar hong kong is cantonese
Both are fascinating languages in their own right, but it's not hard to see why foreigners might be intimidated by the idea of learning Chinese, especially when even Japanese people struggle with it.
Why did you say Japanese people struggle with it? She was able to perfectly guess a sentence of a language she doesn't speak one bit in the video lol.
Because it’s hard
Do you think us westerners can learn Chinese? Absolutely not
It’s a different language with different system
@@LollipopLop Where did I say anything about Western people easily learning Mandarin?????
I went to study Chinese in China, and as far as I know, the Japanese have the easiest time to learn Chinese compared to other international students (based on my own personal experience and teachers).
@@cleve21ful because it’s a close neighbour
It’s the same
A Chinese and Koreans can learn Japanese easily than other international people
Simplified Chinese characters were used throughout the history, with reference to historic paintings, text etc. It’s not modern vs old but official vs popular. like how traditional Chinese characters are not called traditional in Chinese.
not throughout but i think after 1956...
“complicated” more accurate
agreed. my parents are taiwanese and when my dad writes, especially in cursive chinese, i see that to write quicker, some words are simplified (e.g. 學 vs 学 and 門 vs 门). of course for official texts as seen on street signs and subtitles, i'm definitely more biased to seeing traditional as i grew up with that
@@bluninjadragon traditional is definitely more beautiful, but it's a pain in the ass to write! also according to my taiwanese friend, they have a lot of trouble trying to read simplified, but for us who learned simplified, it is easier to figure out traditional characters
Japanese also simplified. like both Japan and mainland China use 国 for country, but Taiwan, Hong Kong and South Korea use 國
The Chinese language we speak today refers to Modern Standard Chinese, which is based on Northern Mandarin, represented primarily by the Beijing dialect, particularly the Beijing Mandarin of the Qing Dynasty. During the Qing Dynasty, as Beijing was China's political, economic, and cultural center, its Mandarin gradually spread and gained prominence nationwide. Over time, Beijing Mandarin became the foundation of Modern Standard Mandarin (the common language of the Han Chinese people).
However, China is a vast country with many regional dialects that differ significantly in pronunciation from Standard Mandarin. Among these, Wu Chinese(吴语) stands out for its striking similarities to Japanese pronunciation. For those interested, you can explore relevant comparisons on this topic.
To add on, there are some differences in grammar between the dialects. For example In Mandarin we say 客人 for guest but in Cantonese we say 人客 instead. Also some Cantonese words such as 冇are exclusive and not found in standard mandarin
Chinese: I play tennis
Japanese: I tennis play
Arabic: Play I tennis
Thanks for this video !
Native Chinese here, I would like to make a few correction here, the first character in [帆船] specifically refers to the the flag shape of sail boat that empowers the it the ability to travel through wind. The control is a different character as in [舵] which means the rudder, which allows the boat to change directions. Though this won’t make much a difference but [帆船] specifically refer to the kind of boat that uses wind as the sole power to move.
For me, Japanese and Korean are much easier to learn because they are not tonal languages.
but the grammar is harder to learn, and there's probably more keigo to learn as well..i dont know about korean but japanese also has different reading for the same character when it's paired with different kanji/hiragana which means a single kanji can have up to 10 different readings which is insane. for chinese the difficulty lies in the tones and the kanji, the grammar is similar to english and it's pretty flexible so you can arrange words in different orders and still be sorta grammatically correct.
@@lyhthegreatCompletely agree with your analysis; in regards to speech, Mandarin is way easier than Japanese. For writing, due to having kana to rely on when you forget a kanji, it's easier than Chinese but the multiple pronunciations for any given kanji depending on context is frustrating 🙁
mandarin is by far the easiest (big) language to learn in the world. The grammar is so much simpler than anything else, and tones are not that hard once you get the hang of it.
Pitch accents in japanese is way harder to understand than tones because there's no simple rule to understand pitch accents.
@@ysf-d9i Pitch accent seems to be more of a concern for the purists or perfectionists though. Not all regions such as Osaka speak with the same pitch accent as those from Tokyo yet they can still understand each other more than if you use the wrong tones in Mandarin (though context should still help!)
@@everythingtorah I disagree. If you speak with the wrong tones in mandarin, you can still understand if the context is clear. It sounds really weird though.
On the other hand, I find that japanese people can't understand my pronunciation at all because I don't get pitch accents.
And I'm sure it's because of pitch accents and not actual pronunciation, because when I sing in Japanese, they say I have 0 accent and sound completely native.
I am from western Siberia and I don't study Chinese or Japanese, so I have nothing to do with these two videos.
But.
For some reason, it is very interesting for me to observe how two people of different Asian nations find common ground and differences through language.
It's hard for me to verbalize my thought, but there's something very exciting about it when you see the similarities between two different languages, being an uninvolved observer from the outside and not a native speaker of one of them.
And it was no less interesting to read many of the comments under this video, where people discuss languages, their condition at different times, ways of development and dialects.
It's fascinating. And it was no less interesting to read many of the comments under this video, where people are discussing languages, their state at different times, evolution and dialects. ( and even including other languages like Korean or Vietnamese )
It's fascinating... 👀
And its soul-warming, watching how different people from different parts of the world and different cultures talk so sweetly and casually with each other. This channel is definitely something special 👉👈
Thanks for the video. This was quite inspiring 👏🏾
I thought I was still half asleep cause I was expecting her to speak Japanese until I thought it sounded Korean. I just woke up, don't blame me.
I speak Japanese and my guess for Chinese is the same as this Japanese lady.
But it was easy to navigate in taiwanese subway, because they don't use simplified characters,it saved my life
henry也是好起来了 上节目了
李大根出息了说是
henry re了你，你造吗（手动狗头）
Her Japanese is kinda Koreanized… She doesn’t sound 100% pure Japanese any more actually.
She definitely getting a korean BF
She lives in Korea
she sounds pretty fluent in korean so shes prob just forgot her japanese over the time she lives in korea
@@NcraftmateNot really, you need to be a first generation Japanese to forgot Japanese language
I’m Koreans who moves to the west over the age of 18, although my Korean did degrade but I still have the accent of Korean.
You have to be first generation or second generation to speak an accent similar to that.
@@Ncraftmate if japanese forget japanese imagine non japanese anime watchers who tried to learn lol
Can you do a video showing us the difference between Chinese dialects? I suggest featuring only Cantonese, Hokkien, Teochew, Hainanese and Hakka first since it’s hard to represent all 1 million + Chinese dialects in one video. Best to feature a speaker from the respective provinces their dialect is spoken such as a Fujian native for Hokkien. For Hakka if you can’t find a native speaker from the mainland you can try finding one from Singapore or Malaysia where it’s commonly spoken
As a result of Chineasy, duolingo and hellochinese I can understand some of what they are saying. I am enjoying this video very much
There are certain corresponding patterns between the pronunciation of Chinese characters in Chinese and the on'yomi (Sino-Japanese reading) of kanji in Japanese. If you know Chinese, you can roughly infer the on'yomi pronunciation of a kanji based on its Chinese pronunciation. While it may not always be 100% accurate, it's usually close enough.
Modern Mandarin has maybe a 50% to 60% correspondance with Japanese pronounciation. It's a lot higher with Cantonese (about 75%), and even higher with Hakka (about 95%).
1: yi (Mandarin) == jat (Cantonese) == i-chi (Japanese)
6: liu (Mandarin) == luk (Cantonese) == ro-ku (Japanese)
100: bai (Mandarin) == baat (Cantonese) == hya-ku (Japanese)
@@deepseer Pronounciation of numbers in japanese is a bit of a mess, but it gets better in the higher numbers:
1000: 千 qiān (Mandarin) == 千 cin1 (Cantonese) == 千 sen (Japanese)
10,000: 万 wàn (Mandarin) == 萬 man6 Cantonese) == 万 man (Japanese)
100,000,000: 亿 yì (Mandarin) == 億 jik1 (Cantonese) == 億 oku (Japanese)
@@deepseer Baat is eight in Cantonese, whereas hundred is Baak. And also I don't think Cantonese sounds that similar to the Sino-Japanese readings, Hokkien and Wu are likely closer.
@@weifan9533 Sorry for the mistyping of Baak.
I don't think Cantonese sounds similar to Japanese either, but this comparison shows different directions of the checked tone in Middle Chinese.
Mandarin == completely dropped.
Cantonese == mostly kept.
Japanese == added another vowel and created another syllable.
I wonder if any Japanese or Chinese can understand Vietnamese if it was written in the old writing system?! Try to guess:
1: 𣈜𣈕倅𠫾𦤾場學
2: 𣘊𫗒呢𤯆過
3. 艚電𫇐便利
4. 𫇐惕𫗒Ramen
5. 館𫗒呢𫇐浽𪱐
I'm unable to understand except for a few characters "場, 學, 過, 電, 便利, 館" as well as the word Ramen. Although as a L2 speaker of Zhuang (a Tai-Kradai language spoken in South China) this kinda reminds me of Saw Ndip or Old Zhuang characters, though in modern times Zhuang people use the Latin alphabet instead. For instance, the sentence "tomorrow I go to school" can be written with Latin letters as Ngoenz Gyog Gu Bae Ruenz Rien (Ruenz Hag), where Ngoenz Gyog = Tomorrow, Gu = I, Bae = Go, and Ruenz Rien or Ruenz Hag = School. I'm wondering if this makes any sense to Vietnamese speakers.
我不明白，因為古越語借用漢字衍生出符合自己語言的詞語。
@@weifan9533 I see
half of the chu nom is unsupported on my display 💀
喃字和汉字还是区别很大的，只有个别字相同
My life goal is to be able to switch between three languages flawlessly like this guy.
i know an american youtuber who can switch between english(her native tongue), mandarin, japanese and korean effortlessly.
I wish you do more video like this. Its like a guessing game.
Some of the subtitles written in Japanese are wrong. I'm going to school tomorrow is 明日は学校に行きます. The 学校 written in hiragana is がっこう. It was written as がっこ in the video which is not correct. The former correct one is gakkō in romaji and the latter would be gakko. Japanese differentiate the long vowel and short vowel.
Chinese subtitles are also wrong. It's Lao(3) Po(2) not Lao fu
母音を長く押すと拼音を出す事が出来ます。
The same thing happened with 風船. They wrote it ふせん, but the romaji was correct lol (fūsen)
@ yes, you’re right. I am Japanese and I’ve noticed that, too.
As a German I could detect the difference of sound! So I will be able to say Japanese or Chinese. But it's very foreign to me, so much depends on the inflect! We do much more on the letter placement
I'm kinda sad as a Japanese that she has little knowledge about Japanese but i guess it's okay
??
Her accent was very hard to understand until I read it was Korean
@@Mintininja_SSB is she a zainich korean?
@@lyhthegreat maybe
i notice her Japanese has a Korean accent.
Chinese is mostly hard because it's a very context and written driven language. Tones are not too common so it scares beginners.
I'm Chinese and there are advantages and disadvantages in tonal languages
Actually Japanese is a lot more contextual than Chinese. Also Japanese uses lot of particles in their sentences so their sentences are longer and complex than Chinese sentences on average. In terms of information density per syllable Japanese has a much lower information density. If you wanna get a rough idea of how many syllables you will hear each second for both languages you can try listening to the Lord’s Prayer in both Chinese and Japanese
@@BibleAddict-p7o Japanese is spoken faster than Chinese because it is a low information dense language like Spanish while Chinese is slower because it is a high density language like English
Chinese has many different languages. I think Min Nan (or some variation) sounds the most similar to Japanese (and even Korean); in fact, some words are identical sounding.
It's almost like as if languages, once they cease to be modified, they start to simplify themselves.
Well languages are evolving constantly, and as a need to have more people acceds litteracy rises in most countries, languages tend to simplify (especially for hard ones like chinese).
chinese bro's english is really good. his chinese also sounds like it has a slight taiwanese accent
Japanese kanji looks more like traditional Chinese than simplified Chinese.
well yeah, Japan's kanji is actually very old. Its basically old chinese from the Song dynasty. I went to kyoto once, although i could read all the kanjis but i wouldnt understand the meanings until i looked up and its just very old terms that modern china/hk/taiwan wouldnt understand.
不一定 日本也自己改造了很多汉字😂 他们那种写法 繁简中文都打不出来
@@colinzen Some are new kanji created in Japan
omg, Herry was finally invited!
In Chinese restaurant = rice store: doesn't it sound like a funny cliché? 😄
more like “meal store”…？😊米=rice 饭=meal, and people sometimes use the word 饭meal instead of rice in the context that they eat rice almost every meal🍚
Well the character "饭" in Mandarin also has the meaning of "meal" so the correct translation would be "meal store".
@@Cynthia-kv8zv in Chinese, 饭 can also be used to refer to rice. Just that in Chinese, a distinction is made between uncooked rice 米, and cooked rice (ready to eat) 饭. In restaurants, if you wanna order a bowl of white rice, you would say 一碗白饭，not 一碗白米。
@@leontnf6144 I googled it. It does have the meaning “cooked grains” so the direct translation is cooked grain store, and the word was initially referred to hotels🤣
herry, love from bilibili🤣
I loved this video !
her japanese sounds korean
I think Korean language and Japenese sound similar. Greetings from a Pole from Hungary.
They sound a bit like Hungarian or Uralic languages as well.
Actually I think most of the pronunciations of Korean and Japanese are more similar to Cantonese pronunciation, I guess it’s because what we classified as dialects exist longer in China.
Wow. 이거 정말 재미있어요. 私は中国語が勉強したいです。
She has to learn more Japanese…
It seems like she’s poor at kanji
5:23 subtitle should be 老婆（lǎo pó）if you call wife. 老妇、老婆婆、老奶奶 means old grandma、old lady
I can translate 2 of the sentences to Zhuang (a Tai-Kradai languages spoken in South China) with my limited knowledge in Zhuang.
Tomorrow I go to school = Ngoenz Gyog Gu Bae Ruenz Rien (Ruenz Hag), where Ngoenz Gyog = Tomorrow, Gu = I, Bae = Go, and Ruenz Rien or Ruenz Hag = School.
This restaurant is famous = Ruenz Haeux Neix Miz Mingz, where Ruenz Haeux = Restaurant, Neix = This, Miz = Have, and Mingz = Fame.
The thing with Chinese is that it's all about the written text. The pronunciation has always changed with time and varies with dialects. This is why some sort of "mandarin" has existed since imperial Chinese times known as "court language". The pronunciations of Chinese and Japanese were probably much close for Chinese characters during the Tang Dynasty as that was when Japan adopted Chinese as its first writing system. After that, Chinese changed a lot throughout the centuries, especially the last three dynasties where Mongolian and Manchurian had a big influence on northern dialects, which was then adopted as "mandarin" during the late Qing Dynasty.
If the Chinese words are written their Traditional forms, it till be easier for her to understand. Some of the simplified words, even we Hong Kong Chinese people cannot understand.
enjoy this a lot!
Should have used Contoness in stead of Mandarin for the comparison. Fun fact Cantonese is the Chinese language that has best preserved the pronunciation of various ancient Chinese languages while also incorporating elements to other languages.
Hokkien will be closer to Japanese than Cantonese.
As a Chinese we grown up playing Japanese games with Japanese language as the only option. Not much problem
I like that chinese guy, idk why😅 and also i miss china from 🇯🇵
I am an Arab. I read the English translation, and if it is not available, I try to translate from Japanese, even though I only know a little.😅
but the video was fun❤
從小就學繁體字並用到現在，並不覺得有什麼麻煩之處，倒覺得簡體字在使用上挺困難的，為了簡化把許多不同的字義合併成一字，像影片中提到的「面」指的是繁體的「麵」，繁體中「麵」專指一種食物，而「面」本是多義字，若再加上食物的意思就更複雜了，而且「麵」字從「麥」部，意指麵條是用麥製成的，雖然多幾筆划但意思非常清楚，而簡體為了省下筆劃捨棄掉了造字的巧思，反而容易讓初學者混淆
繁体字表意更好，但就学习写字来说还是简体字更方便。以中文为母语的人不管繁体简体读起来都认得，但速记还是简体字方便。所以最好的办法是书面语用繁体，日常用简体。缺点是外国人学起来更难。
对外国人来说 繁体字简直要命
别吹繁体了，你可能不知道大多数的简体字都是书法里的草书来精简的，包括你使用的繁体字，也是历代文人简化后的结果，而且就普及教育来说，简体字更方便，并且书写迅速，不容易出现错别字，繁体字书写累赘，容易写错，另外，大陆的书法一直都是繁体，会简体的人自然能看懂繁体，但会繁体的人不一定能看懂简体，这就是简体的奇妙，就像你看不懂草书一个道理
@@dlkjusdjfhur 這不陳述事實嗎哪里吹了？還有這跟書法有啥關係？你黨當初應該沒有沒水準到把康熙字典燒掉吧你們認得繁體字很稀奇嗎？還有我們為啥要認得簡體啊我就不懂了😂不過對我來說不是很難但不覺得比較進化就是了，倒是你們一直在吹簡體字很現代化...
@@user-chan1-1-1 简体字的很多字形并不是这几十年才有的，其中很多都是摘取的以前古人的书法作品、石碑、刻印中的草书。
I'm not sure if the guy misunderstood or the lady didn't explicitly explain the meaning of 風船 (ふうせん) since part of the convo was conducted in Korean which I didn't understand. 風船 is balloon in Japanese or 气球 in Chinese. 貌似帆船但搭不上关系。
The world, especially east asians should learn more Chinese.
Japanese pronunciation of Chinese words are more similar to China's southern dialects like Hokkien/Fujian and Cantonese because when they imported the culture from China, these were the main dialects spoken at the time. Words like 時間 sounds identical to Cantonese's "Si Gan" and 電話 sounds exactly like Hokkien's "Den Ua".
They were all derived from Ancient & Middle Chinese.
So basically it's easier for a Chinese speaker to guess the Japanese sentence. I should have studied harder on Chinese.
i understand why the japanese find it hard to understand chinese, that's because the chinese they incorporated into their language was from the old form of chinese where by characters like 吃 and 喝 dont exist. 好 is 良(ii) and 喜欢 is 好(suki) in japanese.
maybe the pronunciation between chinese and japanese has some similarities. But from the gramma point of view, Chinese and English share a lot commons.
It's curious that almost all the foreigners (non-Koreans) in this channel's videos speak English, yet everyone introduced as Japanese is speaking Korean. And most of them are not very proficient in Japanese.
Henry是有语言天赋的人！牛逼
2:01 Should be "苦盡甘來/苦尽甘来 (ku jin gan lai) “ instead of "戈金甘来 (ge jin gan lai)“. Anyways, nice video!
2:43 Actually, there is. In Japanese, stuff like homophonic words exist, like "hashi" can mean bridge but also mean chopsticks. So the only way to differentiate between those two words is by using tones, or more precisely, emphasis.
3:59 That's because there's on'yomi and kun'yomi readings in Japanese, on'yomi follows the readings carried down from Middle Chinese, whilst kun'yomi is the traditional Japanese readings for the word.
手紙 = tegami
手 - Onyomi: shu, Kunyomi: te
紙 - Onyomi: shi, Kunyomi: kami
4:35 It's missing an additional "う" (u) in there. It's supposed to be "fuusen" not "fusen".
12:05 Overall, I think the reason why Japanese people have a hard time reading Simplified Chinese, mainly used in China, is because of the spelling reform. The Japanese only simplified about 2000 of their native kanji (from the kyuujitai to shinjitai). So most of the kanji in Japanese are still using the traditional equivalents of Hanzi. So I think Japanese people will have a pretty easier time understanding Chinese if it was written in Traditional Chinese characters, like the ones used in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau.
Pls do the recognizing kanji and Chinese character strokes in video
Tbh this is educational
Goals duo ❤
It’s very strange that I feel the boy speaks better English than Chinese, and the girl knows more Korean than Japanese. 😂😂😂
他的中文很好呀，就是母语水平，只是中文说得会慢一些，方便让大家听清
He is Chinese😂
12:02 except it's not so high though, and although they can read kanji, all you need to do to throw them off is add in a few simple negative forms like ない and they'll get everything in the opposite.
The cat eats fish => 猫は魚を食べる ||
The cat doesn't eat fish => 猫は魚を食べない ||
The cat eats fish => 猫は魚を食べた ||
The cat will eat fish => 猫は魚食べるつもり ||
The cat was eaten by fish => 猫は魚に食べられた ||
Like in the above, an average chinese person will only see this and think cat eats fish.
Ofcourse the kanji for wind looks different after the communist party changed it, but yeah traditional chinese character plus the hiragana and katakana scripes were given to the Japanese from ancient Chinese scholars because originally japanese was an oral only language.
This was so confusing. They were speaking in korean with each other, about their mother tongues in their mother tongue, with english subtitles. Don't watch this when high.
I think Japanese would more easily understand the Traditional script over simplified since even though they went through a simplification phase, it didn’t go as far as China.
In fact, kanji is usually replaced by hiragana and katagana in daily conversations so Chinese speakers don’t understand written Japanese that much. 😂
Every language is tonal. If you put the the emphasis on the wrong syllable the word or sentence becomes intelligible or creates a different meaning all together
Much of Japanese is like a distant dialect of Chinese. A lot of similarities to Wu Chinese (Shanghai area). I suppose due to closer proximity
Huh? Why is the Japanese girl only speaking korean? Is she really Japanese? lol?
She is not Japanese. She is Korean.
Word has a lot of info :-) I don't understand either language but I think somebody fell asleep at the wheel.
although I'm Bangladeshi but I like Chinese
Merci ! 🤗
J’ai l’impression avec cette vidéo que le chinois se parle avec les mains. ;)
en effet, ça aide à prononcer les caractères
大哥，如果你真的知道中文和日文，韓文這三個語言的組成都會知道，韓文和日文的一大部分詞都是中文的音譯，大部分就是漢字本身的意思，中文是一個字就是一個意思，基本除了專有名詞是很少用外來詞的，而且本身就可以組詞，幾個字簡單直接就表達完了意思，語法簡單，而且傳達的內容可以簡單，也可以複雜。反觀日文和韓文的語言結構就是自己的語法然後用自己的本土詞和外來詞，因為本身就用的是拼音，外來詞就特別多，都是音譯來的
Yea, some japanese kanji words sound like cantonese and others sound like mandarin.
@@siekensou77Cantonese??? I don’t think so
I think it sounds more like shanghainese dialect
@@LollipopLop
復仇
fuk sau, canto
fuku shu, jp
bog su, korean
fu qiu, mando
毒藥/毒薬
duk yeuk, canto
doku yaku, jp
dog yag, korean
du yao, mando
滿足
mun juk, canto
man zoku, jp
man jog, kor
man zu, mando
佢/渠/彼 - ④かれ。三人称の代名詞
keui, canto, third person pronoun
kare, japanese, third person pronoun
geu/gyae, korean, third person pronoun
kao, thai, third person pronoun
qu, mando, not used
@@siekensou77 Cantonese sounds more similar to Tai-Kradai languages like Zhuang, whereas the Sino-Japanese pronunciation is more similar to Wu and Min, just my humble opinion (I speak Mandarin as well as some Cantonese and Zhuang and also have some basic knowledge of Shanghainese and Hokkien).
As a Cantonese speaker, I think some kanji words sound like Japanese, but Cantonese is much closer to Korean hanja pronunciation.
(Cantonese pronunciation)
시간 時間 （si gan)
문 門（ mun , sounds like mundo without do / “moon”)
가족 家族 （ga jok)
감동 感動 （gaam dong)
이동 移動 （yi dong)
동 東 （dong)
남 男/南 （nam)
Etc… quite a lot 😂
I'd really like to hear that'中国有句古话，识时务者为俊杰' from that cute Japanese girl. that would be super Cool, believe me
Nice. More of these videos, please. Question for Chinese and Japanese people in the comments. What do people from China think of Japan or Japanese? What do Japanese think of China or Chinese people?
Do you need to ask us? You already know the answer. That's it...
Is she Japanese? I know that mostly she speak Korean. But to me, the way she explain about Japanese, doesn't seem like she was originated from Japan.
zainichi korean?
her japanese has a korean accent. i don't think she is a native japanese. but a korean who lived in japan for a while.
woc是henry，怎么最近老是能在外面看到他
Should really compare Japanese with Traditional Chinese especially in the thumbnail. The nouns will be the same. Simplified Chinese completely lost it's essence by removing strokes.
Interesting.
Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau use traditional Chinese. Minland China uses simplified, Chinese in Singapore as well. Chinese in Malysia use both, to my knowledge.
Chinese communities in Malaysia primarily use Simplified Chinese in most official and educational settings, such as Chinese-language schools, newspapers, and media. This is because Malaysia follows the language reforms adopted by China. While Simplified Chinese is dominant, Traditional Chinese is still present, especially in cultural and religious settings.
现代汉语近代很多词都是“和制汉语”，但很少有中国人和日本人知道这一点（考古）。
例如视频里“时间”这个词，就是日本制，包括“图书馆”（汉语是书院）。
19世纪中末期（1860年左右），日本率先接触学习西洋技术，运用中国的汉字、古籍及经文，翻译西方各领域思想，创造了大量的新词汇，不仅反向输入中国，还流传到了朝鲜（韩国）越南等东南亚国家。
和制汉语定义是：是指那些在日本创造、但看起来像中文词汇的词语。这些词汇通常是由汉字组成，但它们并不是从古代汉语直接借用的，而是日本人根据汉字的意义和读音自己创造的。
未被中国广泛使用的和制汉语（仅示范）：
谜解
策定
投资
考案
破弃
想定
引受
呈示
放送
咛金
让渡
控除
创出
雇用
登用
侵攻
经由
离隔
复唱
诈欺
绞杀
着工（竣工）
纷纠
取引
合计
连结
结集
「菩萨（印地语）
沙琪玛/萨其马（满语）
巴士、沙发（英语）
知乎（文言文）」
会计、首脑、杂志、共产、共和、共荣、事变、事件、事故、同志、资本、侦探、教官、委员、社会、解放、出纳、干事、宣言，大部分都是翻译西方词汇概念，还有一些是旧词结合赋新意
学校、同志、幼稚园、革命、蛋白质、共产等词汇也是和制汉语
关于这点好像有很多误会，往往成为民族主义者和逆向民族主义者争论的焦点。但我尽量客观地考察和看待。第一，因为地理和面积的原因，其实中国比日本更早接触西方科学，明朝和清朝时都有大量翻译西方科学著作。我们今天用的很多科学词汇都是那时翻译的，比如“几何”，“化学”，“南极圈”（有兴趣可以看看坤舆万国全图上的天文术语）同时有传入日本，因为中日都使用，会被某些人误以为是和制汉语。因为他们印象里，近代的日本更先进。实际上当时不少中国出版的西方物理学翻译作品随着日本的兰学热潮传入日本，如1855年的《博物新编》，1860年的《重学浅说》，1868年的《格物入门》，在中国出现之后，不出几年就在日本翻印出版。第二，由于近代日本国力崛起，国际交通增强，日本与中国的文化交流增多，确实一部分日本词语进入中文，成为日常用词，但一部分词语是中文中的旧词，日本赋予新意，所以被中文拿来表达新的意思，比如“物理”一词（原词出自《物理小识》）。有些人觉得离开了和制汉语，现在的中国人就没法讲话了，这倒是极端了，因为对于“物理”，本来中文有自己的翻译，但和日本同行的交流中，中国的学者觉得日本的翻译更好或者因为某个作品更流行，就使用了日本的翻译。这种更像是友好的交流中进行有益的术语统一，并非要争某个词的拥有权，也不应成为某些人文化优越论观点的论据。
时间这个词被创造之前这个概念被称为什么呢？
Henry doesn’t know there are 電車 in China 😂
No, there aren't 电车in China, at least not called that way, but the boys all know 电车之狼 growing up playing Japanese video games.
@ it’s just not in the mainland lol
There is actually 电车 in China, but it either refers to an electric bus or an electric vehicle of some sort, and not really an electric train as does in Japan.
電車 in Chinese and Japanese doesn't mean the same thing
@@gonzalos4379 Well, 电车is electric tram in China. or 有轨电车, but most just use 电车.
Thats not true! Hong kong and taiwan still use traditional chinese. For cantonese writing systems, traditional chinese is preferred, as well as for formal places like name of stores or graves
The grammar is very different between the two.
yeah you have to remember that Japanese uses verb at the end of the sentences.
Chinese is more similar to English grammar but Japanese pronunciation is easier for English speakers
@@hayabusa1329 True. Chinese is rather similar to some southeast Asian languages in terms of grammar.
The reason why these two can’t really understand each other is a matter of when Japanese (as a language) adopted Chinese loan words. Japanese adopted Middle Chinese pronunciation, which is quite different from modern day Chinese, which is based on mandarin. If you wanted to get more mutually intelligibility then you would actually get a person that speaks Southern Fujianese (Taiwanese, or Minnan Yu) speaker. Minnan pronunciation is much closer to Middle Chinese than mandarin.
yeah but they'd still have difficulty understanding southern languages like minan like say 無代志 (bodaiji) do you think japanese even know what that means?
汉字was developed in Japan once upon a time. Like 时间，电话，共和国 etc... was created by Japanese
Even 共和国 was created by Japan, a monarchist country? This is new knowledge to me.
@rusticcloud3325 I admire how seriously the Japanese take everything. Even Chinese characters, they not only use them, but also create and develop them. If we relied solely on the poverty of us Chinese at that time, we would now use English names instead of Chinese ones.
@@yangyang7230 胡说什么，严复把所有的日制汉字重新翻译了新的中文词，比如自由翻成了群己权界，哲学改成玄学等等，只不过中国人很现实，认为没必要，另外共和一词早就有了。
電話（电话） is a Japanese-made Chinese word, but 時間（时间） is hardly to be classified as a Japanese-made Chinese word, since we have a dictionary named 英華字典（英华字典，English and Chinese Dictionary） complied by W.H.Medhurst, an an English Congregationalist missionary to China, published in 1848. In Japanese, the word 時間 can only be found in 交易問答 (kōeki mondō) by 加藤弘之 (Katō Hiroyuki) for the first time, published in 1869. So technically, 時間（时间） was "created" by an English missionary in China.
As for 共和國（共和国）, the case was a little complicated, the first part 共和 was taken from Chinese Classics to describe a historical event happend between 841 BC to 828 BC, when in this period there was no ruling king in the Zhou state, and that word was taken by Japanese scholars to translate the western term "republic". So it's not a "created" word, I would say it's a revived word or a calque?
ı would love to sit in a relax bolcony and have some chats about languages with the chinese guy
Chinese is very difficult to speak for western people. i always make sure my children can speak chinese before introducing english. if you do it the other way round, you will absolutely fail.
男生很帅！有气质，声音也好听！
好奇妙的感觉，中文作为第一语言，英语作为第二语言，日语作为第三语言，完全不会韩语的我看这个视频感觉看着更有意思了
Im half Japanese half chinese(hokkien(fujian))… basically closest Chinese dialect to japanese is fujian dialect…
Japan borrowed from China when southern kingdoms are prominent in the past, that's why Japanese is closer to southern Chinese languages than Mandarin which is a northern Chinese language
Japanese sounds closer to Cantonese than Hokkien
@@ExileRicochet13 Not true, I think the Sino-Japanese words sound closer to Hokkien and other Min languages, whereas Cantonese sound more similar to Tai-Kradai languages like Zhuang.
@@ExileRicochet13cantonese sounds like ching chong chang… japanese does NOT sound like that
maybe Shanghainese
A lot of the Kanji word in Japanese actually sound more like Cantonese, Hakka or Hokkien.
Hokkien. Hokkien is from Old Chinese, while both Cantonese and Mandarin is from Middle Chinese.
Not true
Cantonese has a noticeable Tai-Kradai influence whereas Hakka has some She or Yao influences, the closest to Middle Chinese amongst the 3 is probably Hokkien.
@@weifan9533Hokkien is not descendant of Middle Chinese, it's infact direct descendant of Old Chinese.
@上原恵太郎 Cantonese is the oldest, with 2000 years of history when the Qin Dynasty first united China. But Cantonese also had some influences from Middle Chinese (Tang, Song...)