We actually have popular jokes making fun of how japanese sounds like: What do you call a japanese car repair shop? Hajosikotoyotasi = hajosiko toyotasi = did your toyota break down (Edit: I had no idea this kind of jokes were so universal)
The Hungarian variant of the joke: How do you call the Japanese car mechanic? Cheregumi Hamaroda = csere gumi hamar oda = replacement tire [put] fast there We have many of these too :D My favorite is the Japanese bachelor: Maradoka Magamura (I remain independent)
I am Finnish and when I was abroad in a Japanese restaurant I ordered by reading the dishes from the menu. The waiter asked me if I have lived in Japan because I pronounced everything perfectly. I have never been to Japan and I don’t know the language.
Vowel length does matter in Japanese in the exact same way as the Finnish example you gave. This comes up all the time but one common example is ビル (building) ビール (beer).
@@abarette_ I don't think せい is the same as せー even if the sound is identical (which is also debatable). But also, 世界 is a 漢語, a native word would be like 世(よ).
@@abarette_ These aren't native words, but Chinese loanwords. A better example would be something like お婆さん (obaasan, or grandmother) and 叔母さん (obasan, or aunt).
@@vocabula_ardentia Finnish has no strict word order; rather, the sentence structure is highly flexible and reflects the pragmatics of the utterance. This is also the case with Japanese
The only way it sounds similar to me is the rhythm of it, but tbf, I do speak Japanese, so I'm hyper aware of all the very non Japanese characteristics of Finnish.
They actually do sound similar, but the accents definetely give it away, if one was to speak in others language it would probably be hard to tell they are
I've seen a RUclips video with the audience trying to guess which languages an American polyglot was speaking. Although spoken correctly, there was an American accent to all the presentations, which made the exercise quite a bit harder.
One thing about Japanese is that it used to have vowel harmony just like Finnish, but then it dropped its front vowels and hence it no longer needs it.
I've learnt Japanese when I was younger and am learning Finnish now! It does surprise me when I listen to Finnish words and question if it is actually Japanese instead, thanks for solving my question which I've been overthinking for months!
like other commenters have said maybe they dont sound that similar but for me as a finnish person japanese has always been really easy for me to "hear" like when japanese is spoken its very easy for me to pick up on! the characters i sadly do not know but when i hear spoken japanese i can undestand quite a lot! i think the what we call it in finland "speak how its written" rly helps here haha
stops are plosives are interchangeble. It's not because plosives have a puff of air and stops don't. In fact, Japanese stops /p t k/ have more aspiratition than finnish stops /p t k/.
There are so many Finnish-sounding words in Japanese as a consequence of how the syllables in the latter are always formed with either a single vowel (a, i, u, e, o) or a consonant followed by a vowel (ka, ki, ku, ke, ko etc.), plus the abundance of double consonants. I studied the language up to a conversational level a few years ago and discovered a few words that (purely coincidentally) sounded a lot like their Finnish counterparts: せい sei = syy (fault, with some imagination you can probably hear the similarity here) 重ねる kasaneru = kasaantua (pile up, add up) 苦しみ kurushimi = kärsimys (suffering, again a bit of a stretch but yeah) きっぷ kippu = lippu (a train ticket) Plus the way the "no" particle is sometimes in casual speech shortened to a "-n" suffix that's identical to the genitive suffix used in Finnish. An example of this could be 俺ん家 oren chi = mun koti And let's not forget the really common, casual-ish interjection ねー nee~ which reminds me of how Finnish people also tend to insert "Nii!" or "Nii-i!"' into casual conversations. In the end those are still just funny coincidences, and while the grammar and sound of both languages is very similar at times, there's really nothing more to it IMO. Finnish and Japanese are vastly different and unrelated languages in the big picture.
@@kakahass8845 oh yeah definitely! I'm actually living in Portugal atm due to exchange studies and I hear people using né in conversations almost every day
its obviously a stretch to say they sound the same but some words do sound pretty japanese the spoken version of katsoa is katoa which sounds especially japanese when you conjugate it in the te imperative form (katokaa) the imperative forms of odottaa sound pretty japanese too (odota, odotakaa, etc) although in spoken finnish its usually shortened to oota
@@greenbird9531 since you mentioned "disappear", the informal imperative version of that in Japanese is 消えろ or "kiero" which also means "crooked" in Finnish and is pronounced the same minus the pitch accent
@@greenbird9531 Then there are different ways different dialects can say those like "katsoa" being said "kahtoa". Example from my life of local variations: When I was on like 7th or 8th grade in school, the Finnish homework had word "Sanko" in it and I had absolutely no idea what that meant so I went to ask my mother what that word meant and she didn't know it either. My little brother that is 2 years younger also got curious and he had never heard of that word ever before either. After we had been trying to figure it out for maybe 15 minutes, my mothers new partner came in and asked what we were talking about and then he was like "Are you joking?" and my mother got annoyed at him that we are not. He then said that it is "Ämpäri" on other name and then we figured it out. None of us had ever heard that they call "Sankko" "Sanko" in the southern Finland. We were even thinking that could it be typo that it was supposed to be "Sinko" = "Rocket launcher" or "Sanka = "the frame/earpiece of eyeglasses/handle".
I really liked the comparison between Finnish and Japanese, they have a lot of phonology in common, the intonation is similar. They are Asian Altaic languages. The sounds "in,on, en, an, un" the sounds "ka, Ke, ki, ko, ki,ku" "ta, te, ti, to, tu". I'm just talking about phonology and phonetics, there are even more interesting ones that build bridges between the 2 languages. I'm not surprised at all that Japanese passed through Siberia before reaching the Japanese islands, and the Finnish language left Siberia for the Scandinavian peninsula and never stopped being an Asian language. Cool video, I really enjoyed it. 💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚
Every time I hear this comparison I shake my head. I have heard Finnish since I was a child since I had many Finnish friends here in Sweden. I was also a fan of anime. Those who think they sound similar would most likely not hear difference between turkish, hebrew, arabic and farsi. Or any African languages for that matter.
It could honestly be subjective. A lot of Finns say that they think they sound similar and that there are jokes about the similarities. Linguistically, they have a lot of similarities, but when you know the differences, then they will stand out more. I just find your examples hilarious because they are so different from each other. At least Finnish and Japanese have some similarities, even if it's coincidental
@@PolyglotMouse Finnish and Japanese are even more different than those neighboring countries. I see no similarities at all between Finnish and Japanese.
Both languages lack prepositions and definite/indefinite articles, which I believe is one factor what rhythms the Indo-European languages differently. In Indo-European languages, large proportion of the subjects, predicates and objects consist of two separate parts, at least in English this is the case. Another phonetic feature is that in both Japanese and Finnsih short wovels and elongated vowels are not pronounced as diphthongs, and when we want to make a diphthong, it's more clear. Starting with one properly pronounced vowel and then transforming into another, with the exception of letter "i", which can be sometimes pronounced similar to letter "y" in English (e.g. whey, nay, yet). And since front and back vowels are regarded as completely separate vowels in Finnish, you have to have the mouth already in the right shape when you start pronouncing/voicing each vowel. English is more "lazy" in this aspect, and many of your short vowels sound like diphthongs to Finns. I'm pretty sure it's the same for Japanese because when they try to mimic a foreign accent, beside the pitch pattern and stress, that's what they change on their pronunciation. Good example of this difference is how you pronounced 'tyuuli' instead of 'tuuli' on this video. It's only a short beginning of that elongated vowel but it still sounds wrong to native speaker. How you pronounced that word is easily understandable but it's these kinds of dipthongs that give a strong foreign accent to your Finnish.
Hey thanks for the thoughtful comment! I have never actually studied Finnish, and I only learned the pronunciation through looking at a IPA chart, so that's why it didn't sound correct. I definitely want to study it in the future!
idk about sounding similar but they do have a lot of same words but they just mean different things examples: Kita finnish: jaws japanese: north Hana finnish: tap japanese: flower Kani finnish: Bunny japanese: crab Kutsu finnish: invitation japanese: shoes Kasa finnish: pile japanese: umbrella tori finnish: marketplace japanese: bird nami finnish: sweets japanese: wave risu finnish: twig japanese: squirrel sora finnish: gravel japanese: sky taru finnish: myth japanese: barrel
Between almost all languages you can find more or less identical words with different meanings. There is nothing surprising here. All these same words exist, for example, in Russian, but there they also mean something completely different.
kita (кита) - genitive/accusative case of the word whale (kit / кит) hana (хана) - (slang, impersonal) it is doomed, it is hopeless, it's the end kani is available in "tkani" version (ткани) - fabrics kutsu / kutsyi (куцый) - short (in terms of stature, length, size, clothing size)
@@alonzoperez2470Correto, o nosso português é "Syllable timed" (Eu sei lá como falar isso em português kkkk) enquanto o te Portugal é "Stress timed" tipo inglês.
2:36 another mistake. Finnish stress is on first syllable, then every second , but not the last. You mispronounce "omenan" it is O-me-nan, stress on first syllable
My guess (before watching the video): the low number of consonant phonemes and relatively low amount of consonant clustering. (EDIT: Couple of minutes into the video, I guess I should've mentioned also that both languages have 2 lengths for most phonemes but somehow I forgot that.)
@@cheerful_crop_circle I'm not sure that's the case. Looking at the Wikipedia pages for the phonologies of these languages I get 13 consonants for Finnish and 18 consonants for both Japanese and Malay/Indonesian. So Japanese doesn't seem to have that much more consonants than Finnish and about the same as the biggest Austronesian language. Of course, you can get a bit different results depending on the way you count. I didn't count phonemes that are rare and only occur in some loanwords (like [b], [g], and [f] in the case of Finnish) and I didn't count affricates as individual phonemes (but rather as combinations of two consonants).
As a Finn learning Japanese, I've always found the language highly intuitive compared to something like Russian or Mandarin. The first thing that immediately popped up at me was how many similar words there are. Just off the top of my head: Kasa - 'pile' in Finnish, 'umbrella' in Japanese Aki - masculine first name in Finnish, 'autumn' / feminine first name in Japanese Kana - 'chicken' in Finnish, feminine first name in Japanese. If you ignore the pitch accent, the Japanese vowel consonant pairs, the Japanese 'r'/'l' sound being a mix of both, and couple of the more out there Finnish vowels, they're not all that different phonetically. Which is crazy considering there's seemingly no relation between the languages. And don't even get me started on the cultural similarities between the two countries.
To me, it is the similar looking words. Also, the big case system with variety of suffixes in Finnish can really increase the similarity overlap. No huge consonant clusters. Clear vowels. Vowel harmony also limits the vowels used within a word. I think that is pretty much it. Do you need more? 🤪 I mean to me, that sounds already a good cookbook for a phonetic trickery. My grasp of Finnish as native is that it feels like it is designed by a mathematician. You get a big rule book, have very deeply intertwined vocab with crazy layers of hidden abstraction and so on and then you compose. I'd want to understand Japanese more and see how this compares.
Well , vowel length in Japanese is very important (especially when compared to other East Asian languages like Korean and Chinese that dont even have vowel length)
@@kakahass8845 BTW , does the combination of vowel length and consonant length give a certain language a different rhythm/cadence compared to languages that dont make distinctions between short and long vowels, and short and long consonants?
Pretty sure you don't have to be a linguist to hear differences in a foreign language, although you may not be able to pinpoint why that is, thus is the reason I created this video
Hey guys! I'm back with another video regarding Finnish, but this time with Japanese! Make sure to leave a like and subscribe if you enjoyed and let me know what other types of videos I should do next! (Sorry for the audio btw it bugged and I couldn't fix it. Next video is going to be great...)
You pronounced "tuli" as something like "thuli" and "tuuli" as "thuyli". It is very strange how anglos struggle with these things. EDIT: I want to point out that native Finnish speakers couldn't even pronounce "thuyli" without some training. It violates vowel harmony and worse yet, it does so within a single syllable!
I admit that I found the long vowels and double consonants a challenge at the beginning, but it didn't take long to get used to it. I probably still pronounce them wrong sometimes but it's definitely not that hard.
@@corinna007 But.... you already have vowel length distinction in English. That's how you distinguish "ship" from "sheep" and 💩 from "sheet". I'm always mystified how, when Anglos start learning a new language, they suddenly forget some very normal things that their very own language does. It even happens to Jackson Crawford who's a trained linguist.
Hey, did you know that Japonic language family is isolated language family only exists in Japan unlike Germanic or Romance languages are spoken across many countries???
Yeah , Japanese is only similar to the other Japonic languages. It doesn't have similarities with languages that arent Japonic (except Chinese because of borrowed loanwords and characters)
So ? What does this have to do with this video?👀 Even Finnish has no familiarity with the Germanic or Romance languages, it's not even an Indo-European language for that matter.
That's unlikely to be the case, just looking at how absurdly similar the language is to Korean. It's simply classified as more or less an isolate because we don't have proper evidence of the past history of Japanese and Korean. Us being unable to definitively prove something doesn't mean it isn't the case. You can just translate sentences between the two languages word for word quite often. eg. 한국인들은 매일 밥이랑 김치를 먹어요. han-gug-in-deul-eun me-il bap-i-rang kim-chi-reul meog-eo-yo. kan-koku-jin-wa mai-nichi go-han-to ki-mu-chi-wo ta-be-ma-su 韓国人は毎日ご飯とキムチを食べます。 The only structural difference is that Korean uses 들 _deul_ to note the plural when talking about people - both languages mostly don't distinguish between singular and plural that way. If you remove that: *han* _gug_ *in* _eun_ *me* _il_ *bap* _irang_ *kimchi* _reul_ *meogeoyo* *kan* _koku_ *jin* _wa_ *mai* _nichi_ *gohan* _to_ *kimuchi* _wo_ *tabemasu* *Han* _state_ *people* _topic_ *every* _day_ *rice* _with_ *kimchi* _object_ *eat* It's that identical down to their grammatical marking particles.
No no, I actually do see the similarities. Never thought two languages so different from eachother would sound similar in some way. Really cool video! Looking forward to your future content.
Swedish sounds more similar to Japanese / A finnish person. - it really does, pitch tone, aspirated fricatives, no full-vowel diphthongs. The grammar is similar eg. the simplistic verb conjugation and modal particles are practically identical in Swedish and Japanese Maybe it has something to do with your Hunnic ancestors,
@@cheerful_crop_circleDefinitely it is. Consonant doubles are as well. I am suomi so I know about it. Video gave example of tuuli, tuli. But there is more. Tuuli, tuli, tulli. Tiili, tili, tilli. Taakka, taka. Kylä, kyylä, kyllä. Uuni, uni. Tali, talli. All complete different words. Also different vowels of a ä o ö u y (y is same as ü in Deutsch or Eesti), words: talli, tälli. Hame, Häme. Työ, tuo. Different pronunciation and different meanings unrelated.
Japanese can create consonant clusters and consonant endings in only 3 ways (and they don't exceed more than 2 consonants next to each other) : 1. With the sound "n" like in the words "riNGo" and "niNGeN" 2. With geminate consonants/consonant length like in the words "Nippon" and "kekkon" 3. With vowel devoicing where the vowels "i" and "u" get devoiced between voiceless consonants or at the end of words like in for example "ichi" being pronounced like "ich" and "yakusoku" being pronounced more like "yaksok"
I don't think ん quite qualifies as a consonant it only releases between vowels (全員 "zen'in", everybody), otherwise it's more like a purely nasal sound, kind of like a /m/ with no release I guess it is sometimes released before fricatives like /z/ (存在 "sonzai", existence) or /ɕ/ (論証 "ronshou", proof) but ehhhh that seems like assimilation more than anything
@@abarette_ Yeah true. It is more specifically a MORAIC nasal consonant because the Japanese language is spelled syllable by syllable or mora by mora because there arent symbols that represent individual consonants and "n" is the only exception
@@abarette_ That is distinct about Japanese writing (specifically Hiragana and Katakana) because there arent symbols/characters that represent a single consonant sound. Everything represents either a consonant + vowel or a single vowel. I dont know if there are other languages that have a similar syllabic/moraic writing system. Maybe there arent
saying finnish sounds like japanese is clickbait, the better wording (which you used in the video) is that they have surprisingly many similarities. I have heard that finnish is much easier for japanese to pronounce.
In my opinion the two languages are completely different. Completely different sound systems. Only a couple of words can be considered similar to Japanese, that is, for example, jotakuta, jousi, haarukka or jorottaa
Perhaps Japanese sounds more similar to some Austronesian languages like Maori or Hawaiian or maybe some African or indigenous/tribal languages (perhaps Swahili)?
@@cheerful_crop_circle Not at all in my opinion. Completely different sound systems: in Korean aspiration occurs often and closed syllables are more common, there are more vowels (which do not have length difference as in Japanese) and consonant clusters. Both languages have the yo ending (in Korean it occurs especially often because it is the verb ending of the "polite" speaking style), that can make the expression they sound similar
Regarding phonetic inventory and your comment "Honestly, for two completely unrelated languages, there's a big bag of similarities", I beg to differ. There are only about ten consonant sounds remaining, with the bulk very common cross-linguistically.
Hungaryan Tokaj -tokyo Toyota -Toyota Szuzuki - Suzuki Baka - baka Naphon -Nihon, nippon There is a connection proto Turanoaltaic-sumer-aryan(middle pre-jurassic hungaryan)
As a Japanese, I can at least say that finnish people are very good at pronouncing Japanese, they speak REALLY well without any weird accent, and actually finnish words are really easy for me to pronounce.
I'm a Finn and have always secretly hoped that Finnish and Japanese would be related languages. I've always thought there are some similarities. The similarities are more in the singular words than on anything else.
I think only similar is when they speak a letter or with K its so obvouis same sounds other than that nothing else. Finnish sounds more italian for me.
I'd say your pronunciation of Finnish "talon" sounds more like "tälon", with an /æ/ sound. Otherwise there isn't anything too notable in the pronunciation, at least nothing that I notice.
@@PolyglotMouse Except for the fact that the stress should be on the first syllable if any, as you mentioned previously in the video. Also your vocal length for a is like short and a half there. It's difficult, no hard feelings ;)
Ok, but why do finnish and greek sound similar to me? Finnish and japanese don't really sound any similar, japanese sounds like anime, finnish doesn't sound like anime
@@hayabusa1329 I think there was a theory that tonal languages were an areal feature that originated with mostly unrelated languages being in contact with each other.
Finnish and Japanese sounding vaguely similar hardly give any credence to the altaic theory as none of the other languages in the group sound similar to either of them
I can speak Japanese and they don't sound similar at all to me, have also seen a video saying Russian and Japanese sound similar which is just wrong, but idk it might sound similar to a person that doesn't speak Japanese nor Finish
Yes I feel like once you speak either you can hear the differences more than the similarities, although I've had Finns comment that they think they are similar!
Finnish and Japanese can sound similar only to people, who know about 2 languages, American and Gibberish. F.e. Finnish has 8 vowels, and it uses A LOT of diphthongs, while Japanese has only 5 vowels, and it uses NO diphthongs at all.
@@cheerful_crop_circle Actually, Russian has 6 or even 7 vowels. In addition to a, e, i, o and u it has "ы". The 7th one is similar to Finnish ä (ae) and has no sign of its own. It appears very rarely, like in words pyat' (5), and "blyad''" (ho).
@@cheerful_crop_circle The 6th, "ы" is usually Latinized as "y". Words like ty (you sing.), vy (you plur.). What is confusing, is that if Latinized for English, y can be either that vowel, or the consonant marked j in other languages than English.
Not really. I've been following Japanese RUclipsrs, artists and bands for many years. Still, I don't have a clue, how to understand and speak even a little. Kanpai = kippis, kawaii = nätti. That's all...
No, no. I didn't mean that you could magically understand the other if you spoke one, but rather they sound the same when spoken. Sorry if I didn't make that clearer
To my ears, Finnish sounds nothing like Japanese at all. Korean, however, totally sounds like Japanese to me (I don't speak either); the accents and the syllable structure sound quite similar, even though the vocabulary is totally different. So my rule of thumb is, if something sounds like Japanese to me but there is no "wa" and no "-masu" anywhere to be heard, then it's probably Korean.
I have always thought that Japanese sounds more similar to Russian (or the other Slavic languages like Serbo-Croatian, Macedonian and Bulgarian) than it does to Korean.
@@cheerful_crop_circle The perception probably depends on what your native language is. When I hear Russians speaking German, I notice they tend to diphtongize a lot, like "ye" instead of "e", "uɐ" instead of "u" and "oa" instead of "o", something that Japanese speakers don't do. Also, slavic speakers tend to pronounce postalveolar fricatives way more in the back of the mouth than Koreans or Japanese.
Well, Finnish is a language from Asia, so that makes sense. Even there were some linguists that claimed Ural-Altaic language family theory in which they said Finnish and Japanese had a common ancestor, although it's completely denied nowadays.
They actually both belong to the super mega Altaic family encompassing Uralic, Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, Koreanic, Japonic and Inuit too because why the hell not I also didn't know where to put Mapudungun so let's put it in there too along Georgian and Basque
The most similar languages to Japanese outside of Japonic, are Korean and Ainu. No other language is similar to Japanese. Because of the Kanji, it is similar to Chinese
Finnish doesn't even have [b] and [g], unless you count [p] and [k] which are what English speakers mean when whey write and , but they don't aspirate their written [p] and [k], like in English, so bussi (bus) and pussi (bag) sound the same.
In most dialects of modern Finnish, if not all bussi and pussi sound different. You'll really only not hear a difference when some old people speak. b and g exist nowadays for loanwords
No, they don't sound similar at all. I only know a few simple words and phrases in Japanese, but I've been learning Finnish for about 9 years. But even as a beginner, it never crossed my mind that the two sound remotely similar.
@@cheerful_crop_circle I speak some russian and very very little japanese and i don’t think they are similar. Many russian words to me sound similar to english and italian (the italian one must be because of the latin influence).
@@chiarapavone780 Well , they are either from Latin influence or the common Indo-European connection. Russian itself sounds very different from Japanese but Japanese itself sounds kinda like Russian
@@chiarapavone780 Russian - Japanese with a Slavic accent Japanese - Russian with a samurai/ninja accent Spanish - Japanese with a Spanish accent Japanese - Spanish with an East Asian accent
No. It doesn't
Yup, it's definitely subjective. Hope you enjoyed regardless!
*Mongolian throat singing*
@@PolyglotMouse I did. Your channel is great. 👍
@@PolyglotMouse cope
I learned both too and yes, I don't think they sound similar at all
We actually have popular jokes making fun of how japanese sounds like:
What do you call a japanese car repair shop?
Hajosikotoyotasi = hajosiko toyotasi = did your toyota break down
(Edit: I had no idea this kind of jokes were so universal)
Lol that's hilarious!
The Hungarian variant of the joke:
How do you call the Japanese car mechanic?
Cheregumi Hamaroda = csere gumi hamar oda = replacement tire [put] fast there
We have many of these too :D
My favorite is the Japanese bachelor: Maradoka Magamura (I remain independent)
@@Csibe_Hapsi does gumi mean tire by any chance? Because kumi means rubber in Finnish
@@romeolz Yes, like gummy. It's the same word, we use it for tires as well.
@@Csibe_Hapsi huh, i only knew of the cognates mez=mesi and kez=käsi but cool to see that there's more
I am Finnish and when I was abroad in a Japanese restaurant I ordered by reading the dishes from the menu. The waiter asked me if I have lived in Japan because I pronounced everything perfectly. I have never been to Japan and I don’t know the language.
Love this anecdote! Hope you had a great stay
hontokanaa? Vuinranttosinva saikooni nihonkkoovo saperu .
Vowel length does matter in Japanese in the exact same way as the Finnish example you gave. This comes up all the time but one common example is ビル (building) ビール (beer).
Yup, completely missed that. Thanks for letting me know!
But what about pitch accent? Finnish doesn't have pitch accent
even in native words
世界 ("sekai", world) vs 正解 ("seikai", correct)
@@abarette_ I don't think せい is the same as せー even if the sound is identical (which is also debatable). But also, 世界 is a 漢語, a native word would be like 世(よ).
@@abarette_ These aren't native words, but Chinese loanwords. A better example would be something like お婆さん (obaasan, or grandmother) and 叔母さん (obasan, or aunt).
Sentence structure can also be surprisingly similar at times.
I definitely should've included that!
Japanese: SOV
Finnish: SVO
Yeah, they're so similar
@@vocabula_ardentia 😂
@@vocabula_ardentia Finnish has no strict word order; rather, the sentence structure is highly flexible and reflects the pragmatics of the utterance. This is also the case with Japanese
The only way it sounds similar to me is the rhythm of it, but tbf, I do speak Japanese, so I'm hyper aware of all the very non Japanese characteristics of Finnish.
My friends hear Karelian singing for the first time and ask me, what (Chinese) dialect is this
They are not Chinese, right?
I dont think your friends know what chinese sounds like
@@turkoositerapsidi They are Chinese. I think the reason is that Karelian runo chants stress all syllables equally. They sound like garbled Cantonese
@@Qiyunwu I see. But shouldn't they understand something, or they just thought it was too unclearly said? Thanks for info tho.
@@turkoositerapsidi The mutual intelligibility between Chinese languages is poor enough that (sung) Karelian becomes Chinese-passing
They actually do sound similar, but the accents definetely give it away, if one was to speak in others language it would probably be hard to tell they are
I've seen a RUclips video with the audience trying to guess which languages an American polyglot was speaking. Although spoken correctly, there was an American accent to all the presentations, which made the exercise quite a bit harder.
There are some pretty noticeable differences between how they sound. But it's not as night and day as English Vs Japanese for sure
@@letusplay2296 English actually has a lot of similarities with Japanese phonetics
@@cheerful_crop_circle How.
Finnish according to me: monotone
Japanese according to me: ↗️↘️↗️↘️
But isnt Japanese monotone too?
@@cheerful_crop_circle please read the ACCORDING TO ME part
@@cheerful_crop_circle no, because there's pitch accent. It's more monotone than other neighboring languages though
@@pyrylehtonen-caponigro3198 You mean compared to Korean, Chinese and Russian?
@@cheerful_crop_circle Korean and Chinese mainly, because Russian is quite a new language in the region and most Russians live on the European side.
One thing about Japanese is that it used to have vowel harmony just like Finnish, but then it dropped its front vowels and hence it no longer needs it.
I have been thinking the same and i actually live in finland 😂
Glad to see I'm not the only one lol
I've learnt Japanese when I was younger and am learning Finnish now! It does surprise me when I listen to Finnish words and question if it is actually Japanese instead, thanks for solving my question which I've been overthinking for months!
Glad to have helped and I'm happy you enjoyed!
Metsuri
I haven't learned Japanese but I've been learning Finnish for 9 years, and I've never thought they sound even close.
Another Finnish example:
Tapaan sut = I meet you
Tapan sut = I kill you
X3
I am currently leanring Finnish, I wanna learn Japanese as well! :3
Good luck!
@@PolyglotMouse Thank you very much! ^^
like other commenters have said maybe they dont sound that similar but for me as a finnish person japanese has always been really easy for me to "hear" like when japanese is spoken its very easy for me to pick up on! the characters i sadly do not know but when i hear spoken japanese i can undestand quite a lot! i think the what we call it in finland "speak how its written" rly helps here haha
Wow that is very interesting actually
Ural-Altaic is not abandoned as a convergence zone however. There was real contact between these in the old days, even if they weren't related.
stops are plosives are interchangeble. It's not because plosives have a puff of air and stops don't. In fact, Japanese stops /p t k/ have more aspiratition than finnish stops /p t k/.
Really?
There are so many Finnish-sounding words in Japanese as a consequence of how the syllables in the latter are always formed with either a single vowel (a, i, u, e, o) or a consonant followed by a vowel (ka, ki, ku, ke, ko etc.), plus the abundance of double consonants.
I studied the language up to a conversational level a few years ago and discovered a few words that (purely coincidentally) sounded a lot like their Finnish counterparts:
せい sei = syy (fault, with some imagination you can probably hear the similarity here)
重ねる kasaneru = kasaantua (pile up, add up)
苦しみ kurushimi = kärsimys (suffering, again a bit of a stretch but yeah)
きっぷ kippu = lippu (a train ticket)
Plus the way the "no" particle is sometimes in casual speech shortened to a "-n" suffix that's identical to the genitive suffix used in Finnish. An example of this could be 俺ん家 oren chi = mun koti
And let's not forget the really common, casual-ish interjection ねー nee~ which reminds me of how Finnish people also tend to insert "Nii!" or "Nii-i!"' into casual conversations.
In the end those are still just funny coincidences, and while the grammar and sound of both languages is very similar at times, there's really nothing more to it IMO. Finnish and Japanese are vastly different and unrelated languages in the big picture.
Thanks for the interesting comment! I love learning more about these two languages
The ね thing is used and almost pronounced exactly like the Portuguese word "Né" (Contraction of "Não é").
@@kakahass8845 oh yeah definitely! I'm actually living in Portugal atm due to exchange studies and I hear people using né in conversations almost every day
@@kakahass8845 Cool
its obviously a stretch to say they sound the same but some words do sound pretty japanese
the spoken version of katsoa is katoa which sounds especially japanese when you conjugate it in the te imperative form (katokaa)
the imperative forms of odottaa sound pretty japanese too (odota, odotakaa, etc) although in spoken finnish its usually shortened to oota
The pitch accent of Japanese makes it sound slightly distinct as opposed to Finnish which doesn't have a pitch accent
The colloquial version of "katsoa" is "kattoa". "Katoa" is the imperative form of the verb "kadota" (to disappear).
Likewise "kattokaa", "odottakaa".
@@greenbird9531 since you mentioned "disappear", the informal imperative version of that in Japanese is 消えろ
or "kiero" which also means "crooked" in Finnish and is pronounced the same minus the pitch accent
There's actually a word in Japanese that is pronounced "Odotta" (踊った) it's the past form of "To dance".
@@greenbird9531 Then there are different ways different dialects can say those like "katsoa" being said "kahtoa".
Example from my life of local variations: When I was on like 7th or 8th grade in school, the Finnish homework had word "Sanko" in it and I had absolutely no idea what that meant so I went to ask my mother what that word meant and she didn't know it either. My little brother that is 2 years younger also got curious and he had never heard of that word ever before either.
After we had been trying to figure it out for maybe 15 minutes, my mothers new partner came in and asked what we were talking about and then he was like "Are you joking?" and my mother got annoyed at him that we are not. He then said that it is "Ämpäri" on other name and then we figured it out. None of us had ever heard that they call "Sankko" "Sanko" in the southern Finland.
We were even thinking that could it be typo that it was supposed to be "Sinko" = "Rocket launcher" or "Sanka = "the frame/earpiece of eyeglasses/handle".
I really liked the comparison between Finnish and Japanese, they have a lot of phonology in common, the intonation is similar. They are Asian Altaic languages. The sounds "in,on, en, an, un" the sounds "ka, Ke, ki, ko, ki,ku" "ta, te, ti, to, tu". I'm just talking about phonology and phonetics, there are even more interesting ones that build bridges between the 2 languages. I'm not surprised at all that Japanese passed through Siberia before reaching the Japanese islands, and the Finnish language left Siberia for the Scandinavian peninsula and never stopped being an Asian language. Cool video, I really enjoyed it.
💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚
Thanks, this means a lot!
@@PolyglotMouse You are affectionate and loving, welcoming, I liked your way, preserve it all the time, it is beautiful, very human🤗💙🫂🍿👄🥂
@@ReiKakariki Thanks, I have no words... This is genuinely an amazing comment! Keep being yourself and doing good in the world!
@@PolyglotMouse thanks Bro blessings for us all.
Every time I hear this comparison I shake my head. I have heard Finnish since I was a child since I had many Finnish friends here in Sweden. I was also a fan of anime. Those who think they sound similar would most likely not hear difference between turkish, hebrew, arabic and farsi. Or any African languages for that matter.
So overall, do you think they sound similar?
It could honestly be subjective. A lot of Finns say that they think they sound similar and that there are jokes about the similarities. Linguistically, they have a lot of similarities, but when you know the differences, then they will stand out more. I just find your examples hilarious because they are so different from each other. At least Finnish and Japanese have some similarities, even if it's coincidental
@@PolyglotMouse Finnish and Japanese are even more different than those neighboring countries. I see no similarities at all between Finnish and Japanese.
@@cheerful_crop_circle no
Both languages lack prepositions and definite/indefinite articles, which I believe is one factor what rhythms the Indo-European languages differently. In Indo-European languages, large proportion of the subjects, predicates and objects consist of two separate parts, at least in English this is the case.
Another phonetic feature is that in both Japanese and Finnsih short wovels and elongated vowels are not pronounced as diphthongs, and when we want to make a diphthong, it's more clear. Starting with one properly pronounced vowel and then transforming into another, with the exception of letter "i", which can be sometimes pronounced similar to letter "y" in English (e.g. whey, nay, yet). And since front and back vowels are regarded as completely separate vowels in Finnish, you have to have the mouth already in the right shape when you start pronouncing/voicing each vowel. English is more "lazy" in this aspect, and many of your short vowels sound like diphthongs to Finns. I'm pretty sure it's the same for Japanese because when they try to mimic a foreign accent, beside the pitch pattern and stress, that's what they change on their pronunciation. Good example of this difference is how you pronounced 'tyuuli' instead of 'tuuli' on this video. It's only a short beginning of that elongated vowel but it still sounds wrong to native speaker. How you pronounced that word is easily understandable but it's these kinds of dipthongs that give a strong foreign accent to your Finnish.
Hey thanks for the thoughtful comment! I have never actually studied Finnish, and I only learned the pronunciation through looking at a IPA chart, so that's why it didn't sound correct. I definitely want to study it in the future!
Dont Japanese particles work similarly to prepositions and articles though?
@@cheerful_crop_circlePrepositions? Yes. Articles? No.
@@PolyglotMouse Indian Pale Ale charts?
@@kakahass8845Btw , are the suffixes "tachi" and "gami" something like plural form in Japanese?
You should of used finish words with skoinen and asuwa sounds which does sound more like Japanese than the audio you used
finnish is quite similar to malay
as the number patterns are the same and pronounciation of words as written.
I actually speak one of these languages and even I've noticed that they sound rather similar sometimes
idk about sounding similar but they do have a lot of same words but they just mean different things examples:
Kita
finnish: jaws
japanese: north
Hana
finnish: tap
japanese: flower
Kani
finnish: Bunny
japanese: crab
Kutsu
finnish: invitation
japanese: shoes
Kasa
finnish: pile
japanese: umbrella
tori
finnish: marketplace
japanese: bird
nami
finnish: sweets
japanese: wave
risu
finnish: twig
japanese: squirrel
sora
finnish: gravel
japanese: sky
taru
finnish: myth
japanese: barrel
Thanks for the thought out response, this is very interesting!
Between almost all languages you can find more or less identical words with different meanings. There is nothing surprising here.
All these same words exist, for example, in Russian, but there they also mean something completely different.
kakka
Finnish: poop
Japanese: excellence
@@dmytrosukhov4076 disagree. not true. give me examples what those mean in russian because i couldnt find any translation
kita (кита) - genitive/accusative case of the word whale (kit / кит)
hana (хана) - (slang, impersonal) it is doomed, it is hopeless, it's the end
kani is available in "tkani" version (ткани) - fabrics
kutsu / kutsyi (куцый) -
short (in terms of stature, length, size, clothing size)
0:00 Yes. Yes.
As one of the representatives of the Finno-Ugric peoples, I believe in our kinship with the Japanese
1:04 you can hear the similarities, right? No, I cant. At all. 😅
Wdym?
@@cheerful_crop_circle he implies that we all hear the similarities but I just don't
can you talk about how portuguese sounds like russian to the uninitiated
You mean The portuguese from Portugal
Exactly because Brazilian Portuguese doesn't sound anything like Russian. But sometimes the grammar is a bit similar. The grammar structure.
Put it on my list!
@@alonzoperez2470Correto, o nosso português é "Syllable timed" (Eu sei lá como falar isso em português kkkk) enquanto o te Portugal é "Stress timed" tipo inglês.
Can you please do a full analysis of the slovene language. It would mean a lot to me
I'll put it on my list!
@@PolyglotMouse thank you so much, ill be the first one to watch it
2:36 another mistake. Finnish stress is on first syllable, then every second , but not the last.
You mispronounce "omenan" it is O-me-nan, stress on first syllable
My guess (before watching the video): the low number of consonant phonemes and relatively low amount of consonant clustering. (EDIT: Couple of minutes into the video, I guess I should've mentioned also that both languages have 2 lengths for most phonemes but somehow I forgot that.)
Japanese actually has a lot of consonant phonemes (way more than the Austronesian languages for example)
@@cheerful_crop_circle I'm not sure that's the case. Looking at the Wikipedia pages for the phonologies of these languages I get 13 consonants for Finnish and 18 consonants for both Japanese and Malay/Indonesian. So Japanese doesn't seem to have that much more consonants than Finnish and about the same as the biggest Austronesian language.
Of course, you can get a bit different results depending on the way you count. I didn't count phonemes that are rare and only occur in some loanwords (like [b], [g], and [f] in the case of Finnish) and I didn't count affricates as individual phonemes (but rather as combinations of two consonants).
@@seneca983 Well , then maybe Im dumb
As a Finn learning Japanese, I've always found the language highly intuitive compared to something like Russian or Mandarin. The first thing that immediately popped up at me was how many similar words there are. Just off the top of my head:
Kasa - 'pile' in Finnish, 'umbrella' in Japanese
Aki - masculine first name in Finnish, 'autumn' / feminine first name in Japanese
Kana - 'chicken' in Finnish, feminine first name in Japanese.
If you ignore the pitch accent, the Japanese vowel consonant pairs, the Japanese 'r'/'l' sound being a mix of both, and couple of the more out there Finnish vowels, they're not all that different phonetically. Which is crazy considering there's seemingly no relation between the languages. And don't even get me started on the cultural similarities between the two countries.
Pitch accent actually isnt that much different from stress
Yup, the similarities are too shocking to ignore!
If only they had a sane writing system. Alas, we don't live in that kind of timeline.
This was liked by Altaic language family enthusiasts.
To me, it is the similar looking words. Also, the big case system with variety of suffixes in Finnish can really increase the similarity overlap. No huge consonant clusters. Clear vowels. Vowel harmony also limits the vowels used within a word.
I think that is pretty much it.
Do you need more? 🤪
I mean to me, that sounds already a good cookbook for a phonetic trickery.
My grasp of Finnish as native is that it feels like it is designed by a mathematician. You get a big rule book, have very deeply intertwined vocab with crazy layers of hidden abstraction and so on and then you compose. I'd want to understand Japanese more and see how this compares.
Yes, I agree with what you're saying. In comparison, Japanese grammar is actually not all that difficult! Finnish on the other hand...
"In Japanese vowel length isn't important"
Meanwhile Japanese: 少女 and 処女 differ only by vowel length.
Well , vowel length in Japanese is very important (especially when compared to other East Asian languages like Korean and Chinese that dont even have vowel length)
@@cheerful_crop_circleYes I agree did you not see the quotation marks around the first sentence?
@@kakahass8845 BTW , does the combination of vowel length and consonant length give a certain language a different rhythm/cadence compared to languages that dont make distinctions between short and long vowels, and short and long consonants?
@@cheerful_crop_circleI don't think so but this is too subjective in my opinion.
Vowel and consonant length objectively make a certain language sound different, but in my opinion, rhythm comes down to accent and phonology
non-linguists hearing foreign languages for the first time...
Pretty sure you don't have to be a linguist to hear differences in a foreign language, although you may not be able to pinpoint why that is, thus is the reason I created this video
Hey guys! I'm back with another video regarding Finnish, but this time with Japanese! Make sure to leave a like and subscribe if you enjoyed and let me know what other types of videos I should do next!
(Sorry for the audio btw it bugged and I couldn't fix it. Next video is going to be great...)
Finally someone said it
You pronounced "tuli" as something like "thuli" and "tuuli" as "thuyli". It is very strange how anglos struggle with these things.
EDIT: I want to point out that native Finnish speakers couldn't even pronounce "thuyli" without some training. It violates vowel harmony and worse yet, it does so within a single syllable!
Accent and different phonetic inventory all play a part, but I'll make sure to pronounce it better next time!
I admit that I found the long vowels and double consonants a challenge at the beginning, but it didn't take long to get used to it. I probably still pronounce them wrong sometimes but it's definitely not that hard.
@@corinna007 But.... you already have vowel length distinction in English. That's how you distinguish "ship" from "sheep" and 💩 from "sheet".
I'm always mystified how, when Anglos start learning a new language, they suddenly forget some very normal things that their very own language does. It even happens to Jackson Crawford who's a trained linguist.
@@PolyglotMouse If your background is english, you could pronounce it as "too - ly" as it will make close to exact same sound.
Yes, in English they pronounce hard consonants always with a soft H. T as (Th), K as (Kh) and P as (Ph), and their R is already soft.🤷🏻♂️
Hey, did you know that Japonic language family is isolated language family only exists in Japan unlike Germanic or Romance languages are spoken across many countries???
Yeah , Japanese is only similar to the other Japonic languages. It doesn't have similarities with languages that arent Japonic (except Chinese because of borrowed loanwords and characters)
So ? What does this have to do with this video?👀 Even Finnish has no familiarity with the Germanic or Romance languages, it's not even an Indo-European language for that matter.
That's unlikely to be the case, just looking at how absurdly similar the language is to Korean. It's simply classified as more or less an isolate because we don't have proper evidence of the past history of Japanese and Korean. Us being unable to definitively prove something doesn't mean it isn't the case.
You can just translate sentences between the two languages word for word quite often. eg.
한국인들은 매일 밥이랑 김치를 먹어요.
han-gug-in-deul-eun me-il bap-i-rang kim-chi-reul meog-eo-yo.
kan-koku-jin-wa mai-nichi go-han-to ki-mu-chi-wo ta-be-ma-su
韓国人は毎日ご飯とキムチを食べます。
The only structural difference is that Korean uses 들 _deul_ to note the plural when talking about people - both languages mostly don't distinguish between singular and plural that way. If you remove that:
*han* _gug_ *in* _eun_ *me* _il_ *bap* _irang_ *kimchi* _reul_ *meogeoyo*
*kan* _koku_ *jin* _wa_ *mai* _nichi_ *gohan* _to_ *kimuchi* _wo_ *tabemasu*
*Han* _state_ *people* _topic_ *every* _day_ *rice* _with_ *kimchi* _object_ *eat*
It's that identical down to their grammatical marking particles.
No no, I actually do see the similarities. Never thought two languages so different from eachother would sound similar in some way. Really cool video! Looking forward to your future content.
Thanks a lot!
Finnaly someone hears it not just me /A swedish person.
Swedish sounds more similar to Japanese / A finnish person.
- it really does, pitch tone, aspirated fricatives, no full-vowel diphthongs.
The grammar is similar eg. the simplistic verb conjugation and modal particles are practically identical in Swedish and Japanese
Maybe it has something to do with your Hunnic ancestors,
vowel length is important in japanese tho 😅
also no idea what you mean by "only double kk can appear at the end of a syllable" that makes no sense
It was an example of what could appear at the end of a syllable
Isnt it important in Finnish too?
@@cheerful_crop_circleDefinitely it is. Consonant doubles are as well. I am suomi so I know about it.
Video gave example of tuuli, tuli. But there is more. Tuuli, tuli, tulli. Tiili, tili, tilli. Taakka, taka. Kylä, kyylä, kyllä. Uuni, uni. Tali, talli.
All complete different words. Also different vowels of a ä o ö u y (y is same as ü in Deutsch or Eesti), words: talli, tälli. Hame, Häme. Työ, tuo. Different pronunciation and different meanings unrelated.
Japanese use more consonants and short vowels. It is like more staccato as we have more legato language.
And we have äää ööö.
Japanese doesn't use more consonants
I have been learning Finnish and Japanese at the same time, so sometimes I get confused 🥹🤌
I'm sure if you look hard enough you could say any language sounds like any other language.
Yes. Because they are all human languages
Japanese can create consonant clusters and consonant endings in only 3 ways (and they don't exceed more than 2 consonants next to each other) :
1. With the sound "n" like in the words "riNGo" and "niNGeN"
2. With geminate consonants/consonant length like in the words "Nippon" and "kekkon"
3. With vowel devoicing where the vowels "i" and "u" get devoiced between voiceless consonants or at the end of words like in for example "ichi" being pronounced like "ich" and "yakusoku" being pronounced more like "yaksok"
Yes, this is more or less what I explained, but I didn't fully go in depth, thanks for the comment
I don't think ん quite qualifies as a consonant
it only releases between vowels (全員 "zen'in", everybody), otherwise it's more like a purely nasal sound, kind of like a /m/ with no release
I guess it is sometimes released before fricatives like /z/ (存在 "sonzai", existence) or /ɕ/ (論証 "ronshou", proof) but ehhhh that seems like assimilation more than anything
@@abarette_ Yeah true. It is more specifically a MORAIC nasal consonant because the Japanese language is spelled syllable by syllable or mora by mora because there arent symbols that represent individual consonants and "n" is the only exception
@@abarette_ That is distinct about Japanese writing (specifically Hiragana and Katakana) because there arent symbols/characters that represent a single consonant sound. Everything represents either a consonant + vowel or a single vowel. I dont know if there are other languages that have a similar syllabic/moraic writing system. Maybe there arent
@@cheerful_crop_circle pretty sure Greenlandic languages use a similar syllable-based writing system, though much more artificial
saying finnish sounds like japanese is clickbait, the better wording (which you used in the video) is that they have surprisingly many similarities. I have heard that finnish is much easier for japanese to pronounce.
Turkish secretly sounds like Finnish, every Turkish people know %1 Finnish vocabulary from birth, Sinun(FI) Senin(TR), Unohtaa(FI) Unustama(EE) Unuutuu(Kyrgyz) Unartakh(Mongol) Unutmak(TR), Vero(FI) Vergi(TR) Vermek(Antaminen) Ei ollut(FI) Olmadı(TR) Olla(FI) Olmak(TR) On ollut(FI) Oldu(TR) Alla(FI) Altta(TR) Yllä(FI) Üstte(TR)
In my opinion the two languages are completely different. Completely different sound systems. Only a couple of words can be considered similar to Japanese, that is, for example, jotakuta, jousi, haarukka or jorottaa
Perhaps Japanese sounds more similar to some Austronesian languages like Maori or Hawaiian or maybe some African or indigenous/tribal languages (perhaps Swahili)?
Also maybe Ainu?
@@cheerful_crop_circle Ainu reminds Japanese a lot in sounding but I suppose it is because of the influence that has been lasting for centuries
@@chorronmekhlug2666 Korean also sounds very similar to Japanese
@@cheerful_crop_circle Not at all in my opinion. Completely different sound systems: in Korean aspiration occurs often and closed syllables are more common, there are more vowels (which do not have length difference as in Japanese) and consonant clusters. Both languages have the yo ending (in Korean it occurs especially often because it is the verb ending of the "polite" speaking style), that can make the expression they sound similar
I always make the joke that Japanese and Italian made a baby and their baby's name is Finnish 😊
As an Italian I agree with you👍
Regarding phonetic inventory and your comment "Honestly, for two completely unrelated languages, there's a big bag of similarities", I beg to differ. There are only about ten consonant sounds remaining, with the bulk very common cross-linguistically.
2:20 you mispronounce tuuli with a Swedish "u". Finnish does not have the Swedish/Japanese ウ sound.
Hungaryan
Tokaj -tokyo
Toyota -Toyota
Szuzuki - Suzuki
Baka - baka
Naphon -Nihon, nippon
There is a connection proto Turanoaltaic-sumer-aryan(middle pre-jurassic hungaryan)
We did have an Australian politician refer to Nokia as a Japanese company in a derogatory fashion once but then our politicians are often idiots.
I mean some say that it's a Japanese fishing company and Finland doesn't exist
Finnish sounds like japanese with a scottish accent.
When I first heard of the name Kimi Raikkonnen I thought he was Japanese
That is because of the agglutination. Both are agglutinative languages and have consonant length/geminate consonants
Räikkönen*
Very interesting as someone who knows both :D
That's great! So do you agree? Or because you know both they don't sound similar?
As a Finn I can't see it
No it doesn't but some words like "totta kai" doesn't sound Finnish I think, I feel like I said a Japanese word.
As Estonian I would say there are many similar words and pronunciations. That's also the reason I am learning the language :P
As a Japanese, I can at least say that finnish people are very good at pronouncing Japanese, they speak REALLY well without any weird accent, and actually finnish words are really easy for me to pronounce.
Very similar phoneme inventory is basically what allows this, that's why in my opinion they sound so similar!
The pronounciation is almost identical so for me too, as finnish saying japanese well comes by nature
I have same feeling with Hungarian and Korean.
I'm a Finn and have always secretly hoped that Finnish and Japanese would be related languages. I've always thought there are some similarities. The similarities are more in the singular words than on anything else.
Can you do Norwegian next
I put it on my list, although it may take a while!
Could you make a video to why Turkish and Hungarian sound similar?
I put it on my list!
I think only similar is when they speak a letter or with K its so obvouis same sounds other than that nothing else. Finnish sounds more italian for me.
I'd say your pronunciation of Finnish "talon" sounds more like "tälon", with an /æ/ sound. Otherwise there isn't anything too notable in the pronunciation, at least nothing that I notice.
Thanks for the input!
@@PolyglotMouse Except for the fact that the stress should be on the first syllable if any, as you mentioned previously in the video. Also your vocal length for a is like short and a half there. It's difficult, no hard feelings ;)
Well I have heard a Chinese person speaking Finnish, and thought that she's speaking Japanese.
Really?
I here them
Ok, but why do finnish and greek sound similar to me?
Finnish and japanese don't really sound any similar, japanese sounds like anime, finnish doesn't sound like anime
Irl Japanese doesn't sound like anime
Could be the myriad of words with the /k/ sound. (Also saying Japanese sounds like anime is a hilarious thing to base its sound off of)
Japanese doesn't sound like anime if you know Japanese tbh
Make one with mandarin chinese and vietnamese
Comparing them or a profile on each of them?
@@PolyglotMouse compare them like this video. I live in Taiwan and I'm curious to compare another tonal language to mandarin
@@hayabusa1329 I think there was a theory that tonal languages were an areal feature that originated with mostly unrelated languages being in contact with each other.
Cantonese sounds much closer to Vietnamese than Mandarin does.
Finnish sounds like a Japanese with Italian intonation
Finnish is much more monotone than Italian though
@@pyrylehtonen-caponigro3198 And Japanese is more monotonous than both of them combined
Finnish and Japanese sounding vaguely similar hardly give any credence to the altaic theory as none of the other languages in the group sound similar to either of them
I don't hear similarity...
Suomi mainittu saatana (sorry😭)
lmao, lmao, lmao, lmao, altaic, lmao, lmao
Wdym
I love the Altaic Sprachbund
These two languages sound absolutely different.
I can speak Japanese and they don't sound similar at all to me, have also seen a video saying Russian and Japanese sound similar which is just wrong, but idk it might sound similar to a person that doesn't speak Japanese nor Finish
Yes I feel like once you speak either you can hear the differences more than the similarities, although I've had Finns comment that they think they are similar!
@@PolyglotMouse that's very interesting, i don't know how Japanese sounds similar to Finish for Finns
Russia is the only country that borders Japan so Russian in some ways has more similarities with Japanese than Finnish
@@cheerful_crop_circle Poland and Germany are Very close to each other same as iraq and Iran, do they have similarities in language?
Nope they don't
@@Flowette69 Polish and German are both Indo-European and Arabic has a lot of influence from Persian and the other way around
Finnish and Japanese can sound similar only to people, who know about 2 languages, American and Gibberish.
F.e. Finnish has 8 vowels, and it uses A LOT of diphthongs, while Japanese has only 5 vowels, and it uses NO diphthongs at all.
Russian has only 5 vowels and it barely uses diphthongs too
@@cheerful_crop_circle Actually, Russian has 6 or even 7 vowels. In addition to a, e, i, o and u it has "ы". The 7th one is similar to Finnish ä (ae) and has no sign of its own. It appears very rarely, like in words pyat' (5), and "blyad''" (ho).
@@forgottenmusic1 So the seventh vowel in Russian is actually "y"?
@@cheerful_crop_circle The 6th, "ы" is usually Latinized as "y". Words like ty (you sing.), vy (you plur.). What is confusing, is that if Latinized for English, y can be either that vowel, or the consonant marked j in other languages than English.
@@forgottenmusic1 What about Serbian? I think Serbian has exactly the same 5 vowels like Japanese and doesn't have diphthongs just like Japanese.
I cannot hear it as a finnish person;_;
Basque sounds more like Japanese.
Does Basque have a pitch accent, vowel length and no consonant clusters?
Not really. I've been following Japanese RUclipsrs, artists and bands for many years. Still, I don't have a clue, how to understand and speak even a little. Kanpai = kippis, kawaii = nätti. That's all...
No, no. I didn't mean that you could magically understand the other if you spoke one, but rather they sound the same when spoken. Sorry if I didn't make that clearer
Kawaii=söpö/suloinen
Nätti=kirei
To my ears, Finnish sounds nothing like Japanese at all. Korean, however, totally sounds like Japanese to me (I don't speak either); the accents and the syllable structure sound quite similar, even though the vocabulary is totally different. So my rule of thumb is, if something sounds like Japanese to me but there is no "wa" and no "-masu" anywhere to be heard, then it's probably Korean.
I have always thought that Japanese sounds more similar to Russian (or the other Slavic languages like Serbo-Croatian, Macedonian and Bulgarian) than it does to Korean.
@@cheerful_crop_circle Why? East and South Slavic languages have way more consonants than Japanese.
@@ronin667 The similarity is mostly in the vowels and certain phonetics, because they all have only 5 vowels and certain phonetics are similar
@@cheerful_crop_circle The perception probably depends on what your native language is. When I hear Russians speaking German, I notice they tend to diphtongize a lot, like "ye" instead of "e", "uɐ" instead of "u" and "oa" instead of "o", something that Japanese speakers don't do. Also, slavic speakers tend to pronounce postalveolar fricatives way more in the back of the mouth than Koreans or Japanese.
@@ronin667 So Japanese is very different from the Indo-European language family?
Well, Finnish is a language from Asia, so that makes sense.
Even there were some linguists that claimed Ural-Altaic language family theory in which they said Finnish and Japanese had a common ancestor, although it's completely denied nowadays.
But... They don't sound alike at all
Your profile picture is a Russian from the movie Snatch
@@cheerful_crop_circle yea
They actually both belong to the super mega Altaic family encompassing Uralic, Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, Koreanic, Japonic and Inuit too because why the hell not
I also didn't know where to put Mapudungun so let's put it in there too along Georgian and Basque
🤣
The most similar languages to Japanese outside of Japonic, are Korean and Ainu. No other language is similar to Japanese. Because of the Kanji, it is similar to Chinese
It sounds a bit Japanese and at the same time like Polish/Russian sounds.
Kinda
Finnish sounds spanish
Arabic sounds like Chinese
Finnish doesn't even have [b] and [g], unless you count [p] and [k] which are what English speakers mean when whey write and , but they don't aspirate their written [p] and [k], like in English, so bussi (bus) and pussi (bag) sound the same.
"b" and "g" exist in Spanish
@@cheerful_crop_circle Spanish is not Finnish though.
In most dialects of modern Finnish, if not all bussi and pussi sound different. You'll really only not hear a difference when some old people speak. b and g exist nowadays for loanwords
No, they don't sound similar at all. I only know a few simple words and phrases in Japanese, but I've been learning Finnish for about 9 years. But even as a beginner, it never crossed my mind that the two sound remotely similar.
It doesn’t.
I understand Japanese so they sound nothing alike to me.
Not really, I think if anything it's probably similar sounding to Italian but even that's a stretch
Ok
Suomi sounds like German a bit
Not that much. But I am suomi so I don't see for that reason.
I don’t hear similarities actually. Finnish sounds more like russian and japanese… is japanese.
Well , some people say that Japanese sounds like Russian or Bulgarian
@@cheerful_crop_circle I speak some russian and very very little japanese and i don’t think they are similar. Many russian words to me sound similar to english and italian (the italian one must be because of the latin influence).
@@chiarapavone780 Well , they are either from Latin influence or the common Indo-European connection. Russian itself sounds very different from Japanese but Japanese itself sounds kinda like Russian
@@cheerful_crop_circle I don’t agree.
@@chiarapavone780
Russian - Japanese with a Slavic accent
Japanese - Russian with a samurai/ninja accent
Spanish - Japanese with a Spanish accent
Japanese - Spanish with an East Asian accent
Finno-korean hyperwar
Spanish sounds more similar to Japanese than Finnish to me.
Because both have the same 5 vowels