You have downloaded an image that has mistakes on 8:42. And it is stated in the comments below. On 8:42 the wu is not wu, it is wo/o. But there is n hiragana placed in there and on 10:09, the "ha" kanas are incorrect. They should be "ho" kanas. I appreciate your effort, but please control the images and the videos you are showing in your video.
Hi! Can you do videos about Korean and Vietnamese languages? Korean also used to write in mixed script like Japanese, in a mix of Hangul and Hanja. IMO this is better since Korean has a lot of homophones and homonyms. Vietnamese also used to write in mixed script of Chu Han and Chu Nom.
I am a native Japanese speaker but I learned many new things about our language that were never taught in school (at least in non-language major) from your video. I think what I found interesting is that some of those topics are something that I've never even questioned before. Now it makes more sense why it is confusing for Japanese native to learn English and other languages, and vise versa.
The same happened with me, I'm Brazilian... Although Latin is only spoken in the Vatican, when I studied a little bit of Latin, all words on Portuguese (also Spanish and Italian, which I speak a little) started to make sense, for example, irregular verbs in Portuguese and how even modern things in Brazil got it names haha😅
@@dltn42 adoro encontrar brasileiros em vídeos sobre estudos de japonês :) caso tenha alguma recomendações para um estudante iniciante (indo pro terceiro mês de estudos diários), seria um prazer recebê-las
Having 3 writing systems is really great for reading quickly. It makes the initial learning curve very steep, but once you have got the hang of Japanese, reading it is easy.
I'd like to see an objective test of this. Write the same long sentence in english and japanese, time people for how long it takes to read it, then quiz them afterwards to ensure they didn't skim it.
Interestingly, people in Japan who study strongly inflected languages such as Latin or Russian say similar things. Although the use of these languages may seem overly complex and inefficient, they all agree that once you learn them, it's easy.
It does. It seems hard only for absolute beginners but very quickly you understand how having three different and distinct types of characters makes it easy for your mind to quickly identify what everything is in a phrase.
Not really. Japanese is a pure vowel system with a small number of well-defined syllables unchanged throughout the language. They just happened to be in the Chinese region so they borrowed writing from them. Chinese characters worked so badly with the Japanese language structure they had to create a system to simplify, translate and extend it (hiragana). Of course, nowadays we can claim that kanjis make it easy because they carry meaning by themselves. However in hindsight, Japanese could work with any single system capable of forming well-defined syllables such as Latin letters and hiragana only.
@@riton349 If it was really a problem, then it would be impossible to speak or listen to Japanese. However, people can hold conversations just fine without Kanjis. Also old games where written in full hiragana, they just needed to separete words with spaces to make it work. We can derive meaning easily from the context without visual clues and most languages alive today work like this. Chinese is one of the few that survived the time when the characters had meaning by themselves and it is such an exception that even Japanese had to adapt it with hiragana to be able to use it.
I am Japanese (in my 40s) but spent seven years of my childhood in London. Learning Japanese writing is quite hard, especially when you live outside Japan, but it becomes very easy to understand if you get used to it. This might be slightly off topic but, what really confuses me are people's names. There are usually many ways to read identical kanji, and many kanji could be read in the same way. In fact, when my mother was little, my grandmother actually decided to call my mother by a different name without changing the kanji, which obviously confused her. Also, people can invent their own way of reading their children's names (often called _kira-kira_ name), which makes it almost impossible for others to even guess.
I used to be a homeroom teacher in Japanese middle schools. Over those years, I had some hard time to remember the student's names for the reason above. (And, well, I am not good at remembering to begin with.) But every child's name carries his/her parents' wish, pray and hope for their child, to be a special person, so I try to be careful to call the right names.
I swear beginning learning Japanese was a very tough experience. Not only that you need to learn the three writing systems, but also trying to make sense of the word conjugation and sentence structures are already a pain itself. But trust me once you get the hang of these, Japanese will be much fun and interesting for you to learn, it's all a breeze and all about expanding your vocabularies and train yourself on how to speak the language
勉強 (benkyou) "In Japanese it means to study, however in Chinese it means to force someone to do something against their will" Hmm, sounds like the same thing to me.
I loved this. The things I noted that are usually left out of the discussions of how the different systems are used (that you actually mentioned): 1) all native verbs (godan and ichidan) in Japanese have at least one kanji representation for meaning, but several of these are almost never written with their kanji and only written in hiragana; 2) Katakana is used to write scientific terms, including animals -- and this includes animals with native Japanese names that may also have hiragana or kanji representation. So this video made me incredibly happy.
I studied Japanese in college. Spot on description of the writing systems (there are four if you include Romaji, aka the Latin alphabet) and its uses in modern Japanese writing.
I’m really impressed and grateful for this video and for the fact that RUclips recommended it. Just recently, I searched for “history of Japanese writing systems” because, for me, understanding historical facts about what I’m learning often helps me make sense of things. Unfortunately, I didn’t find anything that caught my attention or answered my doubts. Then your video started with exactly the kind of historical context I was looking for, and in such an engaging way! One thing I especially want to thank you for is your generosity in sharing your curated content. Some people might just summarize it in their own words, but you took a different approach, showcasing the channel names, subscriber counts (which even gives a hint about when you visited them), and including video excerpts from those creators! That’s outstanding work - almost like a truly academically accurate video. Once again, thank you so much for all your effort!
Great video! I already knew most of what Olly said, but it was still very interesting. Where else is all this information explained clearly in 14 minutes? Nowhere, that's where! What a great explainer!
I spent the weekend Mastering katakana and finally starting kanji actually so this came at the perfect time-so fascinating! I also loved how you highlighted other RUclipsrs that go hand in hand with learning from this channel!
Another brilliant video Ollie. Just wanted to thank you for your hard work. I've finished one of your French books and one of your Korean books and they've helped me so so much. Keep it up man, much appreciated!
I can easily distinguish between on'yomi (Sino-Japanese reading) and kun'yomi (native Japanese reading) of kanji because I can speak Chinese. Furthermore, the on'yomi readings in Japanese kanji are mainly derived from Middle Chinese, so by knowing some basic phonetic change from Middle Chinese to Japanese, you can infer the on'yomi readings of kanji in Japanese.
Something I learned somewhere is that if a kanji is by itself it's most often pronounced as the japanese readings (山=yama) and when it's together with another kanji it's most often the "chinese" reading (火山=kazan).
Nice explanation. I learned/studied Japanese for ten years and I still learned something here. BTW, whoever made that last video clip needs to learn Japanese pronunciation..."can-ji" / "catacana" ??
I'm Japanese. I was surprised by this video, because you explained about Manyo Moji(万葉文字). I had never been taught about it when I was in school. Many Japanese people don't pay attention to it because only a few can use it. maybe, professors or enthusiasts of ancient literature can use. by the way, I can't use it.
Vietnamese and Koreans were at one point in a very similar situation. But they use only one set of alphabets now. It is easier to learn but there are other problems associated with using only one set of alphabets.
Reading three writing scripts at once (plus the occasional spice of Roman letters and Arabic numerals) isn't nearly as bad as encountering a giant block of hiragana spaghetti.
What I love about Japanese is that I can immediately picture what’s been conveyed in a sentence, due to its symbolic nature. Often I find myself just looking at a whole sentence all at once like a photo, not reading from left to right.
Honestly, same Ive been learning japanese for 2 months and unlike portuguese or english, my 2 fluent languages, in japanese just by looking at a symbol i can already know about what the sentence is about, thats pretty cool Hayashi
Nobody *_needs_* a writing system, let alone 3. Your entire body of literature can be preserved through memorization and recitation alone, as Sanskrit famously did for thousands of years-before writing was even invented. Even today, there's no one native system of writing for Sanskrit. You can use any compatible writing system, including Devanagari, Latin, Kannada, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam etc. Furthermore, if you choose Latin alphabets, you can further choose from among several different transliteration schemes. It's a different question if the native Japanese speakers today *_want_* to keep all 3 intact. The answer is-obviously-"yes of course." (Who's even suggesting otherwise?) As Tevye said: *_Tradition!_* BTW, for an ESL/EFL student whose own native script is *not* Latin, learning to read and write just the English (Latin) alphabet-let alone English spelling and pronunciation-is much harder than what a native English speaker assumes. You think that UPPERCASE ("capital") and lowercase ("small") letters are mostly the same. But we have to learn them painstakingly, one at a time. We also have to learn handwritten forms ("cursive" or "running hand") separately from the printed forms of letters. And also overcome a bunch of other irritations, such as when a single letter can be written in different ways (a = ɑ, opentail g = looptail g), or when different characters look similar, particularly in some popular sans-serif fonts (0 ≠ O, 1 ≠ I ≠ l). I, for one, would greatly appreciate it if you would kindly reform English orthography, spelling, and grammar, given that English-unlike Japanese-is the _de facto_ international _lingua franca_ and the largest spoken language in the world. And that's still not enough to study science and math books written in English. You have to further learn Greek and Hebrew alphabets, plus a whole extra bunch of symbols that they didn't teach you in K-12.
It's good to keep in mind that the Ministry of Education has broken down the kanji by the grade they're taught in. It only takes 800 or so to be proficient at the middle-school level. Of course, you wouldn't want to stop there, but at that point, you can wander Japan and get by.
It's not so much that it has "three writing systems", but rather that it has one writing system involving a syllabary as well as Chinese characters, and the syllabary has two cases (カタカナ and ひらがな).
I think I would have to agree with you because if you say three writing systems, that would suggest separation and no interaction between systems. In other words, some words are katakana, some words are hiragana, and some words are Chinese characters. You put them into a sentence. But, verbs and adjectives often require both Chinese characters and hiragana. You need the Chinese character to represent the meaning and initial pronunciation of the word but you need the hiragana to do the verb or adjective conjugation. Hiragana and Chinese characters are closely integrated at the word level, not just the sentence level
Hafu Japanese born in Brazil teaching English in Japan here!! There's an irony that katakana was first created from "foreign script" (the original Chinese) and now it's almost anything but lol I think there should be a revision in their ministry of education because in recent year the government's been pushing to improve the English education but it's very difficult because not only one language is high context and the other low context, they have different gramatical structures: SVO vs SOV In my opinion I think they should get rid of katakana and just use "romaji", the roman alphabet, for foreign words, they already change the keyboard to write katakana anyway In the longterm that would also help improve their pronunciation
Yes it does. Its actually so beneficial and fitting for the language. At first you are confused but quickly you never wanna miss those three systems again🙃
Your Japanese pronunciation is very clearly, smooth and comfortable! It made me thought you are not a native american English speaker. The native american English speaker's Japanese sounds sticky like eating chewing gum with your mouth open haha
thinking about learning japanese myeslf but could you do a video on gaeilge or irish because irish also has an old alphabet that was replaced but id be super interested for you to do a video on irish
One of the reasons Japanese people use kanji, katakana, and hiragana is because each character has a different nuance. For example, the word "cat" cam be written with kanji, katakana or hiragana. Kanji"猫" appears formal, neutral, and factual. Hiragana"ネコ" looks like you are talking about biology or something that is not an ordinary cat. Hiragana"ねこ" is used when you emphasize cutness of cats.
So true. It adds another layer on top of the literal meanings, and that's part of the reason I like kanji. Another example is "テキトー" (katakana appeared in the beginning of the video) and "適当" (Kanji equivalent). These originates from the same word but now mean opposite things.
What doesn't make sense is why "katakana" is used in the dictionaries to write "onyomi". When the actual words are written in Japanese, they are written with Kanji and Hiragana. It is therefore hard to look them up in the dictionary. I suppose this is just convention.
I took a shot at trying to learn all off them (at least the basics) as an English speaker, and honestly Chinese was the easiest out of the three Of course Chinese IS difficult, but it’s easier than one would think
That's somewhat true. But even native speakers don't know everything -- they aren't "perfect". Lots of foreigners learn these languages and become "good enough". If you can understand the teacher in a college course, that's "good enough" for anyone.
@@dahltonray5231 Chinese is probably the hardest if the learner doesn't have a good ear, but it's quite simple otherwise. The main difficulty for most people is always the tones (and no matter what a lazy person might say, tones are absolutely essential).
Four systems, actually, counting Romaji (Japanese words written in the Roman alphabet that English uses). I've read that in Japanese texting, the sender types the romaji, the phone shows them their options in native Japanese characters, and the one they choose goes into the text. Sooner or later, young people will likely decide it's cool to text in romaji, which could foreshadow the eventual end of native Japanese characters, at least in common usage.
I doubt many japanese type in romaji on a phone. I suspect most use 'flick' input, which is default available on most phones. It's way faster than typing individual letters.
@@monkut -- I googled flick input (but don't really understand). However it was introduced less than a year ago -- whereas Japanese users have surely been texting far longer. Can you (or someone) tell me, does flick input use katakana directly, or does it somehow use the Roman alphabet?
Flick input has been around a long time. Not sure when it was first introduced, but I think over 5 years ago, maybe 10. All input is in hiragana and you convert to what you want via suggestions. This descrbes it pretty well. ruclips.net/video/Z5UEsHEZWII/видео.html
@OllyRichards. -- If that's addressed to me, sorry, but I have no idea what it means or how to do that. I also got an email, but didn't understand that either. Maybe you could post a link to an explanation?
They're not alphabets but syllabaries. Kanji are original Chinese symbols. Hiragana modify the grammatical inflections of Japanese verbs, pronouns, etc. Katakana are used for foreign loanwords. Telegrams used to be delivered in Katakana, which baffled my neighbors so I had to translate them, since they'd never seen nouns written in katakana.
I am Japanese. I'm all for continuing to use hiragana, katakana, and kanji. I think many Japanese people would have trouble expressing and reading sentences if they could no longer use these tools. It is precisely because Japanese novels and manga have these three types of characters that the authors can express themselves to the fullest and the readers can enjoy them. If we reduced the number of types of characters, all kinds of Japanese content would lose its appeal.
The most amazing thing about Japanese is actually the pronunciation of Chinese characters. Chinese characters in Japanese basically have two pronunciation systems, one is the Japanese pronunciation based on the native pronunciation of Chinese characters, and the other is the meaning of Chinese characters as pictographic characters, and this meaning is pronounced in Japanese. The second pronunciation is unrestrained in some cases, especially in names. In the second case, the pronunciation of Chinese characters can be said to be arbitrary. Let’s use English to give an inappropriate example. It is easier to understand Japanese as English: For example, the word 1 is in Japanese, and the first pronunciation is its original Japanese pronunciation. If we use English instead,. The pronunciation of 1 is “ one”. The second pronunciation is the pronunciation of 1 is evolved from Chinese characters, “yi chi.” However, because the second pronunciation is based on the change of the meaning of the Chinese character itself, various strange pronunciations have been derived, such as 1 can be also pronounced as “under two” or “initial number”. For example, there is a surname in Japanese that can be directly translated into English as "birds fly in the sky（小鸟游）", but the pronunciation is very strange. You can't just pronounce it that way, but should read it as "there are no eagles in the sky.（无鹰）" Because there are no eagles in the sky, the birds can fly freely. Feel it. learners.
I think you're referring to On and Kun readings for kanji. Kun is Japanese derived readings. For example Yama means mountain in Japanese and existed long before the Chinese character arrived. On is Chinese derived readings. They are imitations of how the Chinese pronounced the characters long ago. They may seem arbitrary, but they are actually not for those of us that know Chinese.
On and kun can be approximated with native germanic readings and borrowed readings from Latin or Greek. For example, 水 on its own is always pronounced as "water", just like in Japanese, where it's pronounced mizu, the kun reading. But in compounds like 水rium, you'd instead say "AQUArium". It's actually quite interesting how similar English is to Japanese in the aspect that seperate words are usually kun and compound words are often on. For example, pronounce these words: 四 四lateral 四gon They're four, quadrilateral and tetragon respectively. Of course, there are many exceptions. There are compound words like sea水 which would fit the definition of kun, whilst there are, especially in English, a whole loooot of stand-alone words that are Latin or Greek-derived. Actually, in the last two sentences, "exceptions", "compound", "definition", "especially", "derived" are such words.
@@yuuhemi Interesting observation. We use Greek/Latin roots WITH other Greek/Latin roots to create new words. We would not use Greek/Latin roots on their own. You can't say I have quad friends or I speak poly languages. The Greek/Latin root has to be attached to something. Similarly, you apply Chinese On readings to two-character compounds or other multi-character compounds. Chinese-derived readings of characters are not applied to characters that show up on their own. They are usually paired with another character.
From a purely pragmatic standpoint: Use quotes or something around foreign words. This will get rid of katakana. Then actually start using spaces so that sentences aren't a huge blob. This could help with getting rid of kanji. Korean has basically done this. Japanese would probably have to simplify the basic vowels though. Is it worth getting rid of all the rich culture for this? Dunno. I'd appreciate the ease (I can speak Japanese but can't read kanji) but something would definitely be missing if this actually happened.
I started learning Japanese back in December of 2010. The writing system of Japanese may seem convoluted, but if given the same level of literacy between Japanese or English (my native language), I would actually be able to read the Japanese faster. The way the three writing systems cooperate together make it more "slippery." I find that wonderfully fascinating.
"dont worry you will ONLY need to learn about 1000 kanji" i have been learning hiragana for two weeks and i dont even have that down how do you figure i do that🤣
In theory, you can write any language in any variety of writing scripts, but they'll almost always need to be altered to fit that language. Sometimes the alterations would be minor; other times, very substantial. You could find a way to write Japanese either in Hiragana or Katakana. Phonologically, it would work. However, the grammar of Japanese would no longer be so easily discerned from the page + not before sounding it out. Korean switched to an entirely phenetic syllabary after having a mixed writing system for a few centuries. It's quite a different languages from Japanese, but they both had Chinese characters as the base of their writing for a long while before making the switch. Upsides ... Possibly easier to become fluent for foreign speakers, and faster writing skills development for evil children. Downsides ... kanji would slowly be forgotten, making historical happened literature illegible to future generations. Many of the lawyers of learning and history packed into Kanji would no longer be know, except to scholars. A plus of the ability to communicate with Koreans and Chinese in writing by using simple characters I rather doubt Japanese people would tolerate such a break with their linguistic past
I think the question that you are trying to ask is whether or not Japanese could be entirely written in hiragana. As you have explained, in the past there originally was just one writing system, and that was the Chinese characters. Adding hiragana and katakana makes it easier in that sense. I think that, if Japanese were written entirely using hiragana, and there is a case for this as women have written entirely in hiragana in the past as you had mentioned, there would be more ambiguity between two homophones such as the word for chopsticks and Bridge. In hiragana they would be written the same way, but using Chinese characters, they would have different characters and it's much more clear what you are talkin about. Also, In Japanese, you'll find a lot of 2 character compounds like telephone, which consists of the character for electricity plus the speech. Chinese characters can give you clues as to what a word means. They also provide insight into the etymology and how characters and how Chinese pronunciations of Chinese characters were brought into the Japanese language. In addition, chinese characters can be broken down into associated radicals and components. This sheds light on how Chinese people thought. One can argue whether or not kanji is really needed, but once the cultural clues are lost, they don't come back. Look at Korean and Vietnamese. In these languages, it's sometimes hard to tell which words are related because they got rid of Chinese characters and decided to use writing systems that accurately represented the pronunciation of words. At the end of the day, it's about being able to connect with your culture and with your ancestors and with the traditional past. Chinese characters are invaluable to Japanese civilization. It's important to learn them.
@peter schwarz I suppose you think that Chinese and Japanese should be written in the Roman alphabet just like other colonized languages such as Vietnamese, Indonesian, and Filipino. English has Latin and French words in them because they were ruled by the Romans and the Normans. So, there is enough imperialism to go around. However, China never ruled over Japan. China never imposed their Chinese characters onto the Japanese. They were borrowed willingly by the Japanese out of respect for Chinese language/culture/philosophy and because written literary Chinese was used as a lingua franca to help people that spoke different languages such as various Chinese dialects, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese understand each other. Saying Chinese characters deserve to be respected and used does not make anyone an imperialist.
@peter schwarz i'm not even a chinese national nor am I a fan of Xi Jinping. I happen to be an educated polyglot that knows Chinese and Japanese and can say something intelligent about both languages. You are just a troll.
9:50 Are you planning on making a book to learn ancient greek by storytelling? In high-school I have been studying ancient greek for 2 years and I would like to improve by reading. My latin is good enough for very simple texts and I can use television and online newspapers for French and German if I want to, but I would really like to have something for ancient greek. I always enjoyed the myths and history in class. If it's not in school learning languages is quite interesting. (English, French and German are obligated foreign language classes. 🇳🇱 I chose to do Latin and ancient Greek.🙃) Sometimes it's nice to do something different while doing a technical study.😊
Neither hiragana, nor katakana nor kanji are alphabets. Hiragana and katakana are syllabaries and Kanji is a logography. Alphabets have graphemes represent singular sounds, not syllables or words.
I'm decided with a group of people that think that Katakana is not only repetitive use, it is detrimental to language learning abilities of the Japanese.
Doesn’t really ‘need’ them, just how it is etc. Especially re handwriting- compare writing 機械/きかい、減らす/へらす etc. Also I’ve recently been reading my haafu kids quite advanced kids’ books written entirely in hiragana. Yes, plenty of homonyms, but easily understandable in context. Who’s ever going to encounter: 貴社の記者は汽車で帰社した。？
Do I need Kanji and Katakana?: If "need" means "you cannot write Japanese without them", no. We can write everything with only Hiragana, including sound, meaning, etc... Is it difficult to learn Kanji?: Yes. I'm in my late 20s and I still look up some Kanjis to write. Do I like having three systems?: Yes. Why do I want to keep them?: Why not?
English has Uppercase letters: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ And Lowercase letters: abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz. They work exactly the same, some even look like a simplified version of each other and nobody question it because they have learned both letters mixed up in the childhood. This is exactly what happens in Japanese but it's a sillabary with another script to represent complex stuff in one symbol.
I don’t think that’s how it works… In the Latin script, the majority of capital letters look similar to their lowercase counterparts, so it’s more of writing a slightly altered version of the lowercase letters. They are only used at the start of sentences and proper nouns, so even if you don’t use them, you will still be able to understand the language. Unlike Japanese scripts, each of them having a distinct and unique way of writing them and having a large impact in the meaning of the sentence.
@@not-a-human The uppercase letters were, at the time, the only way to write any latin-based language, it wasn't until people started writting that we got the lowercase letters. And, as I said before, if the lowercase letters were based on the uppercase ones, then it means that they will be simplified versions of them. As you can see in the video, Japanese people did the same over time, starting with Kanji, which was simplified to Katakana, which was once again simplified to Hiragana. In the video you can also see examples of what I mean, Katakana and Hiragana are not Uppercase-Lowercase, but it's not the same the let's called them "Print" vs "Cursive" letters in writting. Ones has more straight lines and simplified forms but the other is faster to write since it's curvy and more elegant. So we have 4 basic alphabets! Print Uppercase, Print Lowercase, Cursive Uppdercase and Print Lowercase. And don't tell me all of them look the same because it's not lol
like english spellling, japanese writing is lumbered with historical barnacles. the transition to a systematic spelling would cut young people off from history, until everything is translated.
Kanji is great. Hiragana alone is a mess and I can barely read it. I just wish the kanji was more logically consistent. But since they were used over a long period of time with only a little bit of authoritative direction, I understand that is impossible. For example 夜 has an obvious lid. Though the main radical is apparently 夕. But there is another radical 夂 that looks closer to what is actually in the kanji. It would be much easier if 夜 was a 亠 on top of 亻 and 夕. Of course, one time isn't a big deal. But stuff like this is common which is what makes it hard.
@@Player-re9mo Because it's impossible to fit Japanese in plain Kanji. Chinese is an almost entirely uninflected language, meaning words aren't modified to change the meaning with the same root on a consistent basis. In times of old most educated people in the countries within the "Sinosphere" used to write in just Kanji because they would write in Classical Chinese rather than their own languages, kind of like how the West used to write everything in Latin (Academia used to be entirely Latin instruction until not too long ago). Of course, in order to do that you basically have to learn an entirely different language.
@@Player-re9mo it is hard to explain, but only Kanji is not enough for Japanese grammar. For example (I'm not a Japanese speaker, so don't laugh please if I'm doing here a mistake): 僕は魚を食べた. You must use は and を according to the grammar rules, and there are words that don't have kanji like あれ and しかし
In my point of view Japanese , Korean, Chinese are so hard languages to learn. My classmates learn korean language.They say that it's easier then Japanese or Chinese. I decided to learn the alphabet of korean just to see if it is really easy or not and after 5 minutes i literally passed out 😂 that was so hard 😂 but still every languages are unique for their own way . Even me for example i learn spanish right now if i will be fluent in spanish i will try my best to learn arabic because i really want to know that language. Of course if you will work hard then nothing is impossible
Korean alphabet is very easy and logical, it was created to be easy. 90min to get the basics down and about a week to master it. The person who created the alphabet made a joke about people who are not able to learn Korean alphabet. 😂🤣🤣
Korean has an easy alphabet, but the language is hard (probably harder than Chinese or Japanese). Sounds change a lot -- sentences are not pronounced the way they're written. Honorifics are mandatory: you can "talk up" to someone above you or "talk down" to someone below you, but you can't "talk equal". It's not in the language. The grammar is similar to Japanese (totally unlike English).
Hangeul is easy, and honestly Chinese is much easier to read and write than Japanese. In terms of reading and writing, Japanese is by far the most challenging.
@@tedc9682 i actually asked it on google by saying what is the most easiest language to learn Chinese,Korean or Japanese? and it was saying that Korean language is easier . But i still think that Japanese is easier and i don't know why 😅 but they sound so cute when they talk .
Japan must start using the Latin alphabet because kanji, hiragana, and katakana are the alphabets based on drawing, which makes them more complicated and hard to learn. Thus, there are some things that you can't describe by drawing, but the kanji is the drawing itself, so that makes it impossible to explain them. To explain, Japanese people put lots of kanji together to explain, which makes it hard to remember. Japan could have lived a century ahead of us if they could use the Latin alphabet.
sorry Japanese languege is don't use alphabet. Because japanese language have pitch accents For example 雨（ame）meaning is rain , 飴（ame）meaning is candy. when written in the alphabet ,both appear to have the same pronunciation but in reality they have different meanings Because of different pitches. Also in English see,sea to distinguish homonyms they have the same pronunciation but are spelled differently
Ahem, I love your videos, but this is “lost in translation” big time. Women were never banned from learning kanji in Japan. Murasakishikibu was a very intelligent woman who learned Chinese literature since very young and she exceeded everyone’s expectations and achieved to gain a very deep knowledge of it. She famously pretended not to know kanji because she believed it was foolish to show off, she stated in her diary. The Emperor hired her as a tutor for his daughter and the daughter (Shoshi) was very keen to learn Chinese literature, which was all written in Kanji obviously, the Emperor then left them to learn those. It is worth noting that Tale of Genji was written in a combination of kanji and hiragana, and many of the “hiragana” was written much closer to the original kanji characters of that sound. Hiragana wasn’t created overnight by a rebellious woman. It was developed over a period of time, based on kanji, believed to be by females and males. It was more of cursive writing, so it required a good understanding of kanji in writing and reading. The stroke order of a character was also very important in the context. Different writing had different roles. Kanji (and kana) was used mainly for governmental official documents in the palace and temples. Hiragana and kanji were used for daily use; diaries, notes and poems. Because Governmental roles were carried out by males, females weren’t encouraged to use kanji. Yet, court ladies were expected to have fluency in cultural intelligence, they naturally learned and practised reading, writing, poems, literature, instruments and so on, and those who excelled in these skills and demonstrated a deeper understanding were greatly celebrated. Just like Seshonagon and murasakishikibu. Kana was not used as a phonetic alphabet like nowadays. kana was initially used to assist in reading Chinese documents and literature. The story of Kukai is not academically supported in recent years, it is believed that monks were most likely the ones to start using “incomplete kanji” to read documents from China. As kana were not whole kanji characters, they could be inserted in between the lines or close to the texts to aid in reading.
You should have mentioned that the usage of kanjis is nowadays inevitable in Japanese, because together with the Chinese writing system they adopted the Chinese worlds too. And as Chinese is a poor language regarding the amount of sounds, in Japanese (which is herein equal poor in other way) the originally Chinese worlds produced an insurmountable mountain of synonyms which, if not written in kanji, would make the reading of a Japanese text either in hiragana or katakana very difficult. Erudite Japanese even know to sign the right kanji with their finger on the palm of the left hand upside down to make their discussion partner clear what is the meaning of the sound coming out of their lips.
japanese (together with cuneiform) has given me some inspiration for my newest script, which is a logography. this is because they use logographic symbols as determiners and have a syllabary with it for particles and conjugation it also has sumerograms to make it complicated, but those can be seen as basically being logographic also due to it allowing words like maerrarrmbnyńrrə (which means "do they not see them?") its not really fit for a syllabary. so they use diacritics and echovowels for syllabic consonants and codas together this means that a word like the one mentioned previously would be written along the lines of [eye]ᵇᵃzaᵐ[3P]ᵇᵒ'ⁿɣaⁿre with the things in brackets being logographic symbols and superscript being diacritics or syllablograms which r put abobe the logographs to get their sound, tho they rnt always accurate due to them often being sumerograms
Maybe it only boils down to that there's simply too many "pseudo" Japanese professionals making videos on the Internet (I'm not claiming Olly is one of them), but I wanted Olly to check the videos he uses in this video more carefully. 2:41 This guy uses a wrong pitch accent, making his pronunciation of 勉強 less natural. The word should be pronounced with 平板 pattern. 4:14 The Japanese sentence here is simply wrong. It's 私は毎日学校に行きます。 4:37 The distinction between Hashi as in Bridge/橋 and Hashi as in Chopsticks/箸 is made not by the context but by the pitch accent. He might have intentionally said it depends on the context though, as he's talking about writing the language in 万葉仮名, not speaking. 10:10 The ほ/ホ character makes not ha sound, but ho. 12:37 Nobody really says 尊敬心. It's just 尊敬.
is duolingo enough for me to learn japaneese to at least read mangas and some texts for example? and maybe write something?😭🙏🏻 (this is a genuine question)
Japanese doesn't have three writing systems. It has one writing system with three different types of characters. Any one of the three could hardly stand on its own (for Japanese).
Of course it is not possible to convince someone who mastered all three scripts well that it is only a cultural convention or tradition. Japanese can easily be written in the Roman alphabet, but then part of your education would go down the drain. Objectively, Honda looks a bit silly if it is written with the character for book (pronounced hon) and followed by a syllable meaning da. Very clever, but for me a bit elitist, pretending that the language is very special.
Better answer: no. Japanese works so differently from Chinese that the Chinese writing system was never even remotely well suited for writing Japanese. It was only adopted - and adapted - for use in writing Japanese because of the geographical accident that Japan was located in the Chinese sphere of influence rather than the European one. If only things had been different! Japanese has roughly the same number of phonemes as Latin, and they are similar not only in number but also in sound. It's almost as if the Latin alphabet was designed specifically to write Japanese. So no, of course Japanese doesn't need three writing systems. It could get by brilliantly with the Latin alphabet.
@@SoulGuitarMetal You've missed the point - alluded to in the video and in my comment above - that Japanese works completely differently from the Sinitic languages. The Sinitic languages are analytic, which means roughly that there is a separate word for every morpheme. So every word can have its own character, and everything works swimmingly. Japanese doesn't work like that at all. Each verb has many inflections. So what do you do? Have dozens of different characters for each of the different forms of every single verb? That would be absurd and unworkable.
@@omp199 Perhaps Japanese before Chinese influence could get by without Kanji, but Japanese as it exists now has far too great a number of homophones to do so. Of course, much of this comes from words imported from Chinese, but they aren't going to get rid of them.
@@mckendrick7672 The number of homophones is irrelevant. Japanese is a spoken language, and writing is a representation of speech. If two words sound the same in speaking, then there is no logical reason why they should not look the same in writing. If spoken Japanese can cope with homophones, then written Japanese can cope with homographs. The latter are nothing more than the written counterpart of the former. To indicate the pitch accent, accent marks could be added to the letters.
@@saathvikbogam i guess it depends on how we interpret OP's emojis. It's true in the beginning, katakana are easy to read and learn, and kanji are hard to read in learn. But later, because you spend so much more time learning and reading kanji, they become easier to read than katakana.
![BLACK BAG - Official Trailer [HD] - Only in Theaters March 14](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Du0Xp8WX_7I/mqdefault.jpg)
Japanese is waiting for you. Are you up for the challenge? 👉🏼bit.ly/learn_japanese_now
You have downloaded an image that has mistakes on 8:42. And it is stated in the comments below. On 8:42 the wu is not wu, it is wo/o. But there is n hiragana placed in there and on 10:09, the "ha" kanas are incorrect. They should be "ho" kanas. I appreciate your effort, but please control the images and the videos you are showing in your video.
I hope you will read my comment, it is about "lost in translation" !!!!
Hi! Can you do videos about Korean and Vietnamese languages? Korean also used to write in mixed script like Japanese, in a mix of Hangul and Hanja. IMO this is better since Korean has a lot of homophones and homonyms. Vietnamese also used to write in mixed script of Chu Han and Chu Nom.
hey, theres a bot going around through the comment section, maybe u could ban him and make an announcement in the next vid?
@@lawrencebautista1 Hi Lawrence. There is a video about Korean - you should find it easily on the channel.
I am a native Japanese speaker but I learned many new things about our language that were never taught in school (at least in non-language major) from your video. I think what I found interesting is that some of those topics are something that I've never even questioned before.
Now it makes more sense why it is confusing for Japanese native to learn English and other languages, and vise versa.
The more I learn katakana loan words, the more I'm convinced that Japanese people shouldn't use katakana to learn English.
The same happened with me, I'm Brazilian... Although Latin is only spoken in the Vatican, when I studied a little bit of Latin, all words on Portuguese (also Spanish and Italian, which I speak a little) started to make sense, for example, irregular verbs in Portuguese and how even modern things in Brazil got it names haha😅
@@dltn42 adoro encontrar brasileiros em vídeos sobre estudos de japonês :) caso tenha alguma recomendações para um estudante iniciante (indo pro terceiro mês de estudos diários), seria um prazer recebê-las
Having 3 writing systems is really great for reading quickly. It makes the initial learning curve very steep, but once you have got the hang of Japanese, reading it is easy.
It makes it easier. Japanese could have been written entirely on Chinese characters as it had been in the past.
I’ve been reading novels etc in Japanese for years. Pretty advanced, and yet my Japanese is waaaaay slower than my English reading speed.
@@haraldodunkirk1432its just theoretical speed, really. No one has solid proof of this.
I'd like to see an objective test of this. Write the same long sentence in english and japanese, time people for how long it takes to read it, then quiz them afterwards to ensure they didn't skim it.
Interestingly, people in Japan who study strongly inflected languages such as Latin or Russian say similar things. Although the use of these languages may seem overly complex and inefficient, they all agree that once you learn them, it's easy.
It does. It seems hard only for absolute beginners but very quickly you understand how having three different and distinct types of characters makes it easy for your mind to quickly identify what everything is in a phrase.
Not really. Japanese is a pure vowel system with a small number of well-defined syllables unchanged throughout the language. They just happened to be in the Chinese region so they borrowed writing from them. Chinese characters worked so badly with the Japanese language structure they had to create a system to simplify, translate and extend it (hiragana). Of course, nowadays we can claim that kanjis make it easy because they carry meaning by themselves. However in hindsight, Japanese could work with any single system capable of forming well-defined syllables such as Latin letters and hiragana only.
@@SoulGuitarMetal But Japanese has a lot of homonyms, so kanji make it easier to tell them apart.
@@SoulGuitarMetal The homonyms are the reason why Kanji is so important there. Korean & Vietmamese ditched it because they don't have this problem.
@@riton349 If it was really a problem, then it would be impossible to speak or listen to Japanese. However, people can hold conversations just fine without Kanjis. Also old games where written in full hiragana, they just needed to separete words with spaces to make it work. We can derive meaning easily from the context without visual clues and most languages alive today work like this. Chinese is one of the few that survived the time when the characters had meaning by themselves and it is such an exception that even Japanese had to adapt it with hiragana to be able to use it.
@@riton349 korean and Vietnamese do have this issue (homonyms)
I am Japanese (in my 40s) but spent seven years of my childhood in London. Learning Japanese writing is quite hard, especially when you live outside Japan, but it becomes very easy to understand if you get used to it.
This might be slightly off topic but, what really confuses me are people's names. There are usually many ways to read identical kanji, and many kanji could be read in the same way. In fact, when my mother was little, my grandmother actually decided to call my mother by a different name without changing the kanji, which obviously confused her.
Also, people can invent their own way of reading their children's names (often called _kira-kira_ name), which makes it almost impossible for others to even guess.
I used to be a homeroom teacher in Japanese middle schools. Over those years, I had some hard time to remember the student's names for the reason above. (And, well, I am not good at remembering to begin with.) But every child's name carries his/her parents' wish, pray and hope for their child, to be a special person, so I try to be careful to call the right names.
That's why introducing yourself is such important part in Japan 🤔 They saying their names and how to read them😲
I swear beginning learning Japanese was a very tough experience. Not only that you need to learn the three writing systems, but also trying to make sense of the word conjugation and sentence structures are already a pain itself. But trust me once you get the hang of these, Japanese will be much fun and interesting for you to learn, it's all a breeze and all about expanding your vocabularies and train yourself on how to speak the language
勉強 (benkyou)
"In Japanese it means to study, however in Chinese it means to force someone to do something against their will"
Hmm, sounds like the same thing to me.
Every student can relate to that 😂
I loved this. The things I noted that are usually left out of the discussions of how the different systems are used (that you actually mentioned):
1) all native verbs (godan and ichidan) in Japanese have at least one kanji representation for meaning, but several of these are almost never written with their kanji and only written in hiragana;
2) Katakana is used to write scientific terms, including animals -- and this includes animals with native Japanese names that may also have hiragana or kanji representation.
So this video made me incredibly happy.
I studied Japanese in college. Spot on description of the writing systems (there are four if you include Romaji, aka the Latin alphabet) and its uses in modern Japanese writing.
I’m really impressed and grateful for this video and for the fact that RUclips recommended it. Just recently, I searched for “history of Japanese writing systems” because, for me, understanding historical facts about what I’m learning often helps me make sense of things. Unfortunately, I didn’t find anything that caught my attention or answered my doubts. Then your video started with exactly the kind of historical context I was looking for, and in such an engaging way!
One thing I especially want to thank you for is your generosity in sharing your curated content. Some people might just summarize it in their own words, but you took a different approach, showcasing the channel names, subscriber counts (which even gives a hint about when you visited them), and including video excerpts from those creators! That’s outstanding work - almost like a truly academically accurate video.
Once again, thank you so much for all your effort!
Great video! I already knew most of what Olly said, but it was still very interesting. Where else is all this information explained clearly in 14 minutes? Nowhere, that's where! What a great explainer!
Thank you, glad you found it useful!
I spent the weekend Mastering katakana and finally starting kanji actually so this came at the perfect time-so fascinating! I also loved how you highlighted other RUclipsrs that go hand in hand with learning from this channel!
Kanji is so beautiful. I feel like picking a random one and hanging a painted version of it on my wall.
Another brilliant video Ollie. Just wanted to thank you for your hard work. I've finished one of your French books and one of your Korean books and they've helped me so so much. Keep it up man, much appreciated!
I can easily distinguish between on'yomi (Sino-Japanese reading) and kun'yomi (native Japanese reading) of kanji because I can speak Chinese. Furthermore, the on'yomi readings in Japanese kanji are mainly derived from Middle Chinese, so by knowing some basic phonetic change from Middle Chinese to Japanese, you can infer the on'yomi readings of kanji in Japanese.
Kanji/hanzi is actually fun learning.
They even give you better perceptions in life.
Great video!! Thanks for sharing! 😁
Something I learned somewhere is that if a kanji is by itself it's most often pronounced as the japanese readings (山=yama) and when it's together with another kanji it's most often the "chinese" reading (火山=kazan).
Nice explanation. I learned/studied Japanese for ten years and I still learned something here. BTW, whoever made that last video clip needs to learn Japanese pronunciation..."can-ji" / "catacana" ??
I'm Japanese. I was surprised by this video, because you explained about Manyo Moji(万葉文字). I had never been taught about it when I was in school. Many Japanese people don't pay attention to it because only a few can use it. maybe, professors or enthusiasts of ancient literature can use. by the way, I can't use it.
This word breaks the rule: くノ一 (kunoichi). It consists of a hiragana, a katakana, and a kanji, in that order.
Oh, you mean 女?
@@danielantony1882 ikea version😂
@@danielantony1882 It's a jargon for female ninjas
@@jentakahama6017 その通り
Vietnamese and Koreans were at one point in a very similar situation. But they use only one set of alphabets now. It is easier to learn but there are other problems associated with using only one set of alphabets.
The characters at 8:42 are a little wrong. There are no wu and wu should be wo/o but n is being shown as wo/o.
Reading with Kanji actually makes it faster to parse the words.
If English speakers can have a spelling system that doesn't make sense, the Japanese can have three writing systems.
Reading three writing scripts at once (plus the occasional spice of Roman letters and Arabic numerals) isn't nearly as bad as encountering a giant block of hiragana spaghetti.
What I love about Japanese is that I can immediately picture what’s been conveyed in a sentence, due to its symbolic nature.
Often I find myself just looking at a whole sentence all at once like a photo, not reading from left to right.
Honestly, same
Ive been learning japanese for 2 months and unlike portuguese or english, my 2 fluent languages, in japanese just by looking at a symbol i can already know about what the sentence is about, thats pretty cool Hayashi
the power of logography
11:05 Neko is supposed to be cat, Uncle, not chat. 😂
I think he confused it with French “chat” (cat)
5:44 What a transition!
Nobody *_needs_* a writing system, let alone 3. Your entire body of literature can be preserved through memorization and recitation alone, as Sanskrit famously did for thousands of years-before writing was even invented. Even today, there's no one native system of writing for Sanskrit. You can use any compatible writing system, including Devanagari, Latin, Kannada, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam etc. Furthermore, if you choose Latin alphabets, you can further choose from among several different transliteration schemes.
It's a different question if the native Japanese speakers today *_want_* to keep all 3 intact. The answer is-obviously-"yes of course." (Who's even suggesting otherwise?) As Tevye said: *_Tradition!_*
BTW, for an ESL/EFL student whose own native script is *not* Latin, learning to read and write just the English (Latin) alphabet-let alone English spelling and pronunciation-is much harder than what a native English speaker assumes. You think that UPPERCASE ("capital") and lowercase ("small") letters are mostly the same. But we have to learn them painstakingly, one at a time. We also have to learn handwritten forms ("cursive" or "running hand") separately from the printed forms of letters. And also overcome a bunch of other irritations, such as when a single letter can be written in different ways (a = ɑ, opentail g = looptail g), or when different characters look similar, particularly in some popular sans-serif fonts (0 ≠ O, 1 ≠ I ≠ l).
I, for one, would greatly appreciate it if you would kindly reform English orthography, spelling, and grammar, given that English-unlike Japanese-is the _de facto_ international _lingua franca_ and the largest spoken language in the world.
And that's still not enough to study science and math books written in English. You have to further learn Greek and Hebrew alphabets, plus a whole extra bunch of symbols that they didn't teach you in K-12.
こんにちは🎵面白いビデオ、ありがとうございました‼️
もちろん 3種類 どれも必要です。 文章をやさしく 優雅に見せたい時はひらがなを選びます。 文章を論理的に 堅固に見せたい時は漢字を選びます。 私はカタカナはあまり好きではないのですが、 この間 英語圏の友達が カタカナのおかげで日本は安心して旅行できる と話しているのを聞いて面白いと思いました😊
私は短歌を詠むのですがその時にも3種類の文字を使い分けて アーティスティックに見せようとします(笑)😊
ところでこの文章を読めた方、素晴らしいです😊 日本語の学習、応援しています。 私も外国語の学習を頑張ります❤ありがとうございました‼️
Are you ever going to add Welsh or Polish to your courses?
It's good to keep in mind that the Ministry of Education has broken down the kanji by the grade they're taught in. It only takes 800 or so to be proficient at the middle-school level. Of course, you wouldn't want to stop there, but at that point, you can wander Japan and get by.
It's not so much that it has "three writing systems", but rather that it has one writing system involving a syllabary as well as Chinese characters, and the syllabary has two cases (カタカナ and ひらがな).
Good summary :)
I think I would have to agree with you because if you say three writing systems, that would suggest separation and no interaction between systems. In other words, some words are katakana, some words are hiragana, and some words are Chinese characters. You put them into a sentence. But, verbs and adjectives often require both Chinese characters and hiragana. You need the Chinese character to represent the meaning and initial pronunciation of the word but you need the hiragana to do the verb or adjective conjugation. Hiragana and Chinese characters are closely integrated at the word level, not just the sentence level
i think japanese is really unique and im proud to be japanese and speak japanese
Hafu Japanese born in Brazil teaching English in Japan here!!
There's an irony that katakana was first created from "foreign script" (the original Chinese) and now it's almost anything but lol
I think there should be a revision in their ministry of education because in recent year the government's been pushing to improve the English education but it's very difficult because not only one language is high context and the other low context, they have different gramatical structures: SVO vs SOV
In my opinion I think they should get rid of katakana and just use "romaji", the roman alphabet, for foreign words, they already change the keyboard to write katakana anyway
In the longterm that would also help improve their pronunciation
Yes it does. Its actually so beneficial and fitting for the language. At first you are confused but quickly you never wanna miss those three systems again🙃
Your Japanese pronunciation is very clearly, smooth and comfortable! It made me thought you are not a native american English speaker. The native american English speaker's Japanese sounds sticky like eating chewing gum with your mouth open haha
He is british
thinking about learning japanese myeslf but could you do a video on gaeilge or irish because irish also has an old alphabet that was replaced but id be super interested for you to do a video on irish
For those who don't have patience it answers all your questions in 8:05 (the green bar)
One of the reasons Japanese people use kanji, katakana, and hiragana is because each character has a different nuance. For example, the word "cat" cam be written with kanji, katakana or hiragana. Kanji"猫" appears formal, neutral, and factual. Hiragana"ネコ" looks like you are talking about biology or something that is not an ordinary cat. Hiragana"ねこ" is used when you emphasize cutness of cats.
So true. It adds another layer on top of the literal meanings, and that's part of the reason I like kanji.
Another example is "テキトー" (katakana appeared in the beginning of the video) and "適当" (Kanji
equivalent). These originates from the same word but now mean opposite things.
What doesn't make sense is why "katakana" is used in the dictionaries to write "onyomi". When the actual words are written in Japanese, they are written with Kanji and Hiragana. It is therefore hard to look them up in the dictionary. I suppose this is just convention.
I insist, in order to learn Chinese, Japanese or Korean perfectly, you just need to be born again in one of those countries and that's it!😆
I took a shot at trying to learn all off them (at least the basics) as an English speaker, and honestly Chinese was the easiest out of the three
Of course Chinese IS difficult, but it’s easier than one would think
@@dahltonray5231 well well,,, good for you to have accepted the challenge... I just pass, I turn on the English closed caption and I'm good 😂
That's somewhat true. But even native speakers don't know everything -- they aren't "perfect". Lots of foreigners learn these languages and become "good enough". If you can understand the teacher in a college course, that's "good enough" for anyone.
@@dahltonray5231 Chinese is probably the hardest if the learner doesn't have a good ear, but it's quite simple otherwise. The main difficulty for most people is always the tones (and no matter what a lazy person might say, tones are absolutely essential).
"there are more than 50000 of them (kanji) but dont let that scare you. Only 2000-3000 are being used" 😂😂😂😂😂
Four systems, actually, counting Romaji (Japanese words written in the Roman alphabet that English uses). I've read that in Japanese texting, the sender types the romaji, the phone shows them their options in native Japanese characters, and the one they choose goes into the text. Sooner or later, young people will likely decide it's cool to text in romaji, which could foreshadow the eventual end of native Japanese characters, at least in common usage.
I doubt many japanese type in romaji on a phone. I suspect most use 'flick' input, which is default available on most phones. It's way faster than typing individual letters.
@@monkut -- I googled flick input (but don't really understand). However it was introduced less than a year ago -- whereas Japanese users have surely been texting far longer. Can you (or someone) tell me, does flick input use katakana directly, or does it somehow use the Roman alphabet?
Flick input has been around a long time. Not sure when it was first introduced, but I think over 5 years ago, maybe 10. All input is in hiragana and you convert to what you want via suggestions.
This descrbes it pretty well.
ruclips.net/video/Z5UEsHEZWII/видео.html
@OllyRichards. -- If that's addressed to me, sorry, but I have no idea what it means or how to do that. I also got an email, but didn't understand that either. Maybe you could post a link to an explanation?
They're not alphabets but syllabaries. Kanji are original Chinese symbols. Hiragana modify the grammatical inflections of Japanese verbs, pronouns, etc. Katakana are used for foreign loanwords. Telegrams used to be delivered in Katakana, which baffled my neighbors so I had to translate them, since they'd never seen nouns written in katakana.
Given the ubiquity of English or Romaji words throughout Japanese, I'd argue there are at least 4 writing systems.
I am Japanese. I'm all for continuing to use hiragana, katakana, and kanji. I think many Japanese people would have trouble expressing and reading sentences if they could no longer use these tools.
It is precisely because Japanese novels and manga have these three types of characters that the authors can express themselves to the fullest and the readers can enjoy them. If we reduced the number of types of characters, all kinds of Japanese content would lose its appeal.
The most amazing thing about Japanese is actually the pronunciation of Chinese characters. Chinese characters in Japanese basically have two pronunciation systems, one is the Japanese pronunciation based on the native pronunciation of Chinese characters, and the other is the meaning of Chinese characters as pictographic characters, and this meaning is pronounced in Japanese. The second pronunciation is unrestrained in some cases, especially in names. In the second case, the pronunciation of Chinese characters can be said to be arbitrary.
Let’s use English to give an inappropriate example. It is easier to understand Japanese as English: For example, the word 1 is in Japanese, and the first pronunciation is its original Japanese pronunciation. If we use English instead,. The pronunciation of 1 is “ one”. The second pronunciation is the pronunciation of 1 is evolved from Chinese characters, “yi chi.” However, because the second pronunciation is based on the change of the meaning of the Chinese character itself, various strange pronunciations have been derived, such as 1 can be also pronounced as “under two” or “initial number”. For example, there is a surname in Japanese that can be directly translated into English as "birds fly in the sky（小鸟游）", but the pronunciation is very strange. You can't just pronounce it that way, but should read it as "there are no eagles in the sky.（无鹰）" Because there are no eagles in the sky, the birds can fly freely.
Feel it. learners.
Interesting observation :)
I think you're referring to On and Kun readings for kanji. Kun is Japanese derived readings. For example Yama means mountain in Japanese and existed long before the Chinese character arrived. On is Chinese derived readings. They are imitations of how the Chinese pronounced the characters long ago. They may seem arbitrary, but they are actually not for those of us that know Chinese.
On and kun can be approximated with native germanic readings and borrowed readings from Latin or Greek. For example, 水 on its own is always pronounced as "water", just like in Japanese, where it's pronounced mizu, the kun reading. But in compounds like 水rium, you'd instead say "AQUArium". It's actually quite interesting how similar English is to Japanese in the aspect that seperate words are usually kun and compound words are often on. For example, pronounce these words:
四
四lateral
四gon
They're four, quadrilateral and tetragon respectively.
Of course, there are many exceptions. There are compound words like sea水 which would fit the definition of kun, whilst there are, especially in English, a whole loooot of stand-alone words that are Latin or Greek-derived. Actually, in the last two sentences, "exceptions", "compound", "definition", "especially", "derived" are such words.
@@yuuhemi Interesting observation. We use Greek/Latin roots WITH other Greek/Latin roots to create new words. We would not use Greek/Latin roots on their own. You can't say I have quad friends or I speak poly languages. The Greek/Latin root has to be attached to something. Similarly, you apply Chinese On readings to two-character compounds or other multi-character compounds. Chinese-derived readings of characters are not applied to characters that show up on their own. They are usually paired with another character.
"you can't put a sentence together without hiragana"
me: "毎日僕珈琲飲"
From a purely pragmatic standpoint:
Use quotes or something around foreign words. This will get rid of katakana.
Then actually start using spaces so that sentences aren't a huge blob. This could help with getting rid of kanji. Korean has basically done this. Japanese would probably have to simplify the basic vowels though.
Is it worth getting rid of all the rich culture for this? Dunno. I'd appreciate the ease (I can speak Japanese but can't read kanji) but something would definitely be missing if this actually happened.
If she can write everything in hiragana it mean kanji doesn't important.
I started learning Japanese back in December of 2010. The writing system of Japanese may seem convoluted, but if given the same level of literacy between Japanese or English (my native language), I would actually be able to read the Japanese faster. The way the three writing systems cooperate together make it more "slippery." I find that wonderfully fascinating.
"dont worry you will ONLY need to learn about 1000 kanji" i have been learning hiragana for two weeks and i dont even have that down how do you figure i do that🤣
*10:09** Those are the 'ho' kanas not the 'ha'. This are the ones for 'ha' hiragana: は and katakana: ハ*
@@yuyoshida2076 *Already did. xP*
@@kalli4231 I bet there’s already tons of the similar criticisms on the original video XD
I might stuggle to remember which number system to use when... But at least the Korean writing system is straightforward 😅
After reading a bit I can say I totally understand why they do have 3
In theory, you can write any language in any variety of writing scripts, but they'll almost always need to be altered to fit that language. Sometimes the alterations would be minor; other times, very substantial.
You could find a way to write Japanese either in Hiragana or Katakana. Phonologically, it would work. However, the grammar of Japanese would no longer be so easily discerned from the page + not before sounding it out.
Korean switched to an entirely phenetic syllabary after having a mixed writing system for a few centuries. It's quite a different languages from Japanese, but they both had Chinese characters as the base of their writing for a long while before making the switch.
Upsides ... Possibly easier to become fluent for foreign speakers, and faster writing skills development for evil children.
Downsides ... kanji would slowly be forgotten, making historical happened literature illegible to future generations. Many of the lawyers of learning and history packed into Kanji would no longer be know, except to scholars. A plus of the ability to communicate with Koreans and Chinese in writing by using simple characters
I rather doubt Japanese people would tolerate such a break with their linguistic past
When you add romanisation that becomes 4 doesn't it?
Is it just me but on the neko part it's translated as CHAT? 11:06
Probablement français.
@@pierreabbat6157oh yeah. Thx
I think the question that you are trying to ask is whether or not Japanese could be entirely written in hiragana. As you have explained, in the past there originally was just one writing system, and that was the Chinese characters. Adding hiragana and katakana makes it easier in that sense. I think that, if Japanese were written entirely using hiragana, and there is a case for this as women have written entirely in hiragana in the past as you had mentioned, there would be more ambiguity between two homophones such as the word for chopsticks and Bridge. In hiragana they would be written the same way, but using Chinese characters, they would have different characters and it's much more clear what you are talkin about.
Also, In Japanese, you'll find a lot of 2 character compounds like telephone, which consists of the character for electricity plus the speech. Chinese characters can give you clues as to what a word means. They also provide insight into the etymology and how characters and how Chinese pronunciations of Chinese characters were brought into the Japanese language.
In addition, chinese characters can be broken down into associated radicals and components. This sheds light on how Chinese people thought.
One can argue whether or not kanji is really needed, but once the cultural clues are lost, they don't come back. Look at Korean and Vietnamese. In these languages, it's sometimes hard to tell which words are related because they got rid of Chinese characters and decided to use writing systems that accurately represented the pronunciation of words.
At the end of the day, it's about being able to connect with your culture and with your ancestors and with the traditional past. Chinese characters are invaluable to Japanese civilization. It's important to learn them.
@peter schwarz I suppose you think that Chinese and Japanese should be written in the Roman alphabet just like other colonized languages such as Vietnamese, Indonesian, and Filipino. English has Latin and French words in them because they were ruled by the Romans and the Normans. So, there is enough imperialism to go around. However, China never ruled over Japan. China never imposed their Chinese characters onto the Japanese. They were borrowed willingly by the Japanese out of respect for Chinese language/culture/philosophy and because written literary Chinese was used as a lingua franca to help people that spoke different languages such as various Chinese dialects, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese understand each other. Saying Chinese characters deserve to be respected and used does not make anyone an imperialist.
@peter schwarz i'm not even a chinese national nor am I a fan of Xi Jinping. I happen to be an educated polyglot that knows Chinese and Japanese and can say something intelligent about both languages. You are just a troll.
9:50 Are you planning on making a book to learn ancient greek by storytelling? In high-school I have been studying ancient greek for 2 years and I would like to improve by reading. My latin is good enough for very simple texts and I can use television and online newspapers for French and German if I want to, but I would really like to have something for ancient greek.
I always enjoyed the myths and history in class.
If it's not in school learning languages is quite interesting. (English, French and German are obligated foreign language classes. 🇳🇱
I chose to do Latin and ancient Greek.🙃)
Sometimes it's nice to do something different while doing a technical study.😊
Aesop's Fables.
Short and simple stories, great teaching material for ancient Greek.
6:23 I guess if you wanted to be technical, you could call it "curvilinear"
Neither hiragana, nor katakana nor kanji are alphabets. Hiragana and katakana are syllabaries and Kanji is a logography.
Alphabets have graphemes represent singular sounds, not syllables or words.
I'm decided with a group of people that think that Katakana is not only repetitive use, it is detrimental to language learning abilities of the Japanese.
Actually, reading Japanese is easy thanks to these three writing systems
I am learning both, while it is fun learning it is hard.
Doesn’t really ‘need’ them, just how it is etc. Especially re handwriting- compare writing 機械/きかい、減らす/へらす etc.
Also I’ve recently been reading my haafu kids quite advanced kids’ books written entirely in hiragana. Yes, plenty of homonyms, but easily understandable in context. Who’s ever going to encounter:
貴社の記者は汽車で帰社した。？
Do I need Kanji and Katakana?: If "need" means "you cannot write Japanese without them", no. We can write everything with only Hiragana, including sound, meaning, etc...
Is it difficult to learn Kanji?: Yes. I'm in my late 20s and I still look up some Kanjis to write.
Do I like having three systems?: Yes.
Why do I want to keep them?: Why not?
English has Uppercase letters: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
And Lowercase letters: abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz.
They work exactly the same, some even look like a simplified version of each other and nobody question it because they have learned both letters mixed up in the childhood.
This is exactly what happens in Japanese but it's a sillabary with another script to represent complex stuff in one symbol.
I don’t think that’s how it works…
In the Latin script, the majority of capital letters look similar to their lowercase counterparts, so it’s more of writing a slightly altered version of the lowercase letters. They are only used at the start of sentences and proper nouns, so even if you don’t use them, you will still be able to understand the language.
Unlike Japanese scripts, each of them having a distinct and unique way of writing them and having a large impact in the meaning of the sentence.
@@not-a-human The uppercase letters were, at the time, the only way to write any latin-based language, it wasn't until people started writting that we got the lowercase letters.
And, as I said before, if the lowercase letters were based on the uppercase ones, then it means that they will be simplified versions of them.
As you can see in the video, Japanese people did the same over time, starting with Kanji, which was simplified to Katakana, which was once again simplified to Hiragana. In the video you can also see examples of what I mean, Katakana and Hiragana are not Uppercase-Lowercase, but it's not the same the let's called them "Print" vs "Cursive" letters in writting. Ones has more straight lines and simplified forms but the other is faster to write since it's curvy and more elegant.
So we have 4 basic alphabets! Print Uppercase, Print Lowercase, Cursive Uppdercase and Print Lowercase.
And don't tell me all of them look the same because it's not lol
@OllyRichards. No, stup.
At 4:22 shouldn’t that be がっこう not がごと
like english spellling, japanese writing is lumbered with historical barnacles. the transition to a systematic spelling would cut young people off from history, until everything is translated.
History? They even not knowing about ww2
Sorry learners, as a Japanese guy I can't imagine we abolish kanji. It's really inconvenient for us.
中国人として漢字の存在にありがたいです
Kanji is great. Hiragana alone is a mess and I can barely read it.
I just wish the kanji was more logically consistent. But since they were used over a long period of time with only a little bit of authoritative direction, I understand that is impossible.
For example 夜 has an obvious lid.
Though the main radical is apparently 夕.
But there is another radical 夂 that looks closer to what is actually in the kanji.
It would be much easier if 夜 was a 亠 on top of 亻 and 夕.
Of course, one time isn't a big deal. But stuff like this is common which is what makes it hard.
Why doesn't Japanese use just kanji like Chinese? Wouldn't that be even more convenient?
@@Player-re9mo Because it's impossible to fit Japanese in plain Kanji. Chinese is an almost entirely uninflected language, meaning words aren't modified to change the meaning with the same root on a consistent basis.
In times of old most educated people in the countries within the "Sinosphere" used to write in just Kanji because they would write in Classical Chinese rather than their own languages, kind of like how the West used to write everything in Latin (Academia used to be entirely Latin instruction until not too long ago). Of course, in order to do that you basically have to learn an entirely different language.
@@Player-re9mo it is hard to explain, but only Kanji is not enough for Japanese grammar. For example (I'm not a Japanese speaker, so don't laugh please if I'm doing here a mistake): 僕は魚を食べた. You must use は and を according to the grammar rules, and there are words that don't have kanji like あれ and しかし
4:07 NativLang x Olly Richards: heck yea!
In my point of view Japanese , Korean, Chinese are so hard languages to learn. My classmates learn korean language.They say that it's easier then Japanese or Chinese. I decided to learn the alphabet of korean just to see if it is really easy or not and after 5 minutes i literally passed out 😂 that was so hard 😂 but still every languages are unique for their own way . Even me for example i learn spanish right now if i will be fluent in spanish i will try my best to learn arabic because i really want to know that language. Of course if you will work hard then nothing is impossible
Korean alphabet is very easy and logical, it was created to be easy. 90min to get the basics down and about a week to master it. The person who created the alphabet made a joke about people who are not able to learn Korean alphabet. 😂🤣🤣
Korean has an easy alphabet, but the language is hard (probably harder than Chinese or Japanese). Sounds change a lot -- sentences are not pronounced the way they're written. Honorifics are mandatory: you can "talk up" to someone above you or "talk down" to someone below you, but you can't "talk equal". It's not in the language. The grammar is similar to Japanese (totally unlike English).
Hangeul is easy, and honestly Chinese is much easier to read and write than Japanese. In terms of reading and writing, Japanese is by far the most challenging.
@@tedc9682 i actually asked it on google by saying what is the most easiest language to learn Chinese,Korean or Japanese? and it was saying that Korean language is easier . But i still think that Japanese is easier and i don't know why 😅 but they sound so cute when they talk .
Japan must start using the Latin alphabet because kanji, hiragana, and katakana are the alphabets based on drawing, which makes them more complicated and hard to learn. Thus, there are some things that you can't describe by drawing, but the kanji is the drawing itself, so that makes it impossible to explain them. To explain, Japanese people put lots of kanji together to explain, which makes it hard to remember. Japan could have lived a century ahead of us if they could use the Latin alphabet.
sorry Japanese languege is don't use alphabet.
Because japanese language have pitch accents
For example 雨（ame）meaning is rain , 飴（ame）meaning is candy.
when written in the alphabet ,both appear to have the same pronunciation but in reality they have different meanings
Because of different pitches.
Also in English see,sea to distinguish homonyms they have the same pronunciation but are spelled differently
@@どじゃーん-u9zso you people speak without context?
@@LunaR34 we speak with pitch accent
Makudonarudo (katakana)
@@yuyoshida2076 Arigatou gosaimasu 🙏
Ahem, I love your videos, but this is “lost in translation” big time. Women were never banned from learning kanji in Japan.
Murasakishikibu was a very intelligent woman who learned Chinese literature since very young and she exceeded everyone’s expectations and achieved to gain a very deep knowledge of it. She famously pretended not to know kanji because she believed it was foolish to show off, she stated in her diary. The Emperor hired her as a tutor for his daughter and the daughter (Shoshi) was very keen to learn Chinese literature, which was all written in Kanji obviously, the Emperor then left them to learn those. It is worth noting that Tale of Genji was written in a combination of kanji and hiragana, and many of the “hiragana” was written much closer to the original kanji characters of that sound.
Hiragana wasn’t created overnight by a rebellious woman. It was developed over a period of time, based on kanji, believed to be by females and males. It was more of cursive writing, so it required a good understanding of kanji in writing and reading. The stroke order of a character was also very important in the context.
Different writing had different roles.
Kanji (and kana) was used mainly for governmental official documents in the palace and temples. Hiragana and kanji were used for daily use; diaries, notes and poems. Because Governmental roles were carried out by males, females weren’t encouraged to use kanji. Yet, court ladies were expected to have fluency in cultural intelligence, they naturally learned and practised reading, writing, poems, literature, instruments and so on, and those who excelled in these skills and demonstrated a deeper understanding were greatly celebrated. Just like Seshonagon and murasakishikibu.
Kana was not used as a phonetic alphabet like nowadays. kana was initially used to assist in reading Chinese documents and literature. The story of Kukai is not academically supported in recent years, it is believed that monks were most likely the ones to start using “incomplete kanji” to read documents from China. As kana were not whole kanji characters, they could be inserted in between the lines or close to the texts to aid in reading.
You should have mentioned that the usage of kanjis is nowadays inevitable in Japanese, because together with the Chinese writing system they adopted the Chinese worlds too. And as Chinese is a poor language regarding the amount of sounds, in Japanese (which is herein equal poor in other way) the originally Chinese worlds produced an insurmountable mountain of synonyms which, if not written in kanji, would make the reading of a Japanese text either in hiragana or katakana very difficult. Erudite Japanese even know to sign the right kanji with their finger on the palm of the left hand upside down to make their discussion partner clear what is the meaning of the sound coming out of their lips.
0:09 NOOOOOO!!! MY HEART WEEPS! O, THE TRAGEDY! 😫😫😩😩
7:35 😌😌
5:43 You mean ン here, right?
4:20 毎日学校に行きます がことって何？
しごとの打ち間違いじゃないかな
japanese (together with cuneiform) has given me some inspiration for my newest script, which is a logography. this is because they use logographic symbols as determiners and have a syllabary with it for particles and conjugation
it also has sumerograms to make it complicated, but those can be seen as basically being logographic
also due to it allowing words like maerrarrmbnyńrrə (which means "do they not see them?") its not really fit for a syllabary. so they use diacritics and echovowels for syllabic consonants and codas
together this means that a word like the one mentioned previously would be written along the lines of [eye]ᵇᵃzaᵐ[3P]ᵇᵒ'ⁿɣaⁿre
with the things in brackets being logographic symbols and superscript being diacritics or syllablograms which r put abobe the logographs to get their sound, tho they rnt always accurate due to them often being sumerograms
Another Reason Why I read Light Novel with English Translate 😂
Maybe it only boils down to that there's simply too many "pseudo" Japanese professionals making videos on the Internet (I'm not claiming Olly is one of them), but I wanted Olly to check the videos he uses in this video more carefully.
2:41 This guy uses a wrong pitch accent, making his pronunciation of 勉強 less natural. The word should be pronounced with 平板 pattern.
4:14 The Japanese sentence here is simply wrong. It's 私は毎日学校に行きます。
4:37 The distinction between Hashi as in Bridge/橋 and Hashi as in Chopsticks/箸 is made not by the context but by the pitch accent. He might have intentionally said it depends on the context though, as he's talking about writing the language in 万葉仮名, not speaking.
10:10 The ほ/ホ character makes not ha sound, but ho.
12:37 Nobody really says 尊敬心. It's just 尊敬.
Okay
One of those on the thumbnail is not 'a' and its driving my ocd nuts
Hiragana hits different
Itano Tomomi(AKB48)
板野友美 vs いたのともみ
Kanji looks masculine
is duolingo enough for me to learn japaneese to at least read mangas and some texts for example? and maybe write something?😭🙏🏻 (this is a genuine question)
I think it might be if you use it as a guide and supplement it with lessons from youtube, blogs and so on.
Japanese doesn't have three writing systems. It has one writing system with three different types of characters. Any one of the three could hardly stand on its own (for Japanese).
We don’t have kanji in English 😢, but at least we have emoji 😂
Of course it is not possible to convince someone who mastered all three scripts well that it is only a cultural convention or tradition. Japanese can easily be written in the Roman alphabet, but then part of your education would go down the drain. Objectively, Honda looks a bit silly if it is written with the character for book (pronounced hon) and followed by a syllable meaning da. Very clever, but for me a bit elitist, pretending that the language is very special.
To answer your question, yes. We can't get by without kanji. We can't get by without hiragana. Katakana is for clarity.
Better answer: no. Japanese works so differently from Chinese that the Chinese writing system was never even remotely well suited for writing Japanese. It was only adopted - and adapted - for use in writing Japanese because of the geographical accident that Japan was located in the Chinese sphere of influence rather than the European one. If only things had been different! Japanese has roughly the same number of phonemes as Latin, and they are similar not only in number but also in sound. It's almost as if the Latin alphabet was designed specifically to write Japanese. So no, of course Japanese doesn't need three writing systems. It could get by brilliantly with the Latin alphabet.
We sure can get by without hiragana. Chinese has been doing it for thousands of years.
@@SoulGuitarMetal You've missed the point - alluded to in the video and in my comment above - that Japanese works completely differently from the Sinitic languages. The Sinitic languages are analytic, which means roughly that there is a separate word for every morpheme. So every word can have its own character, and everything works swimmingly. Japanese doesn't work like that at all. Each verb has many inflections. So what do you do? Have dozens of different characters for each of the different forms of every single verb? That would be absurd and unworkable.
@@omp199 Perhaps Japanese before Chinese influence could get by without Kanji, but Japanese as it exists now has far too great a number of homophones to do so. Of course, much of this comes from words imported from Chinese, but they aren't going to get rid of them.
@@mckendrick7672 The number of homophones is irrelevant. Japanese is a spoken language, and writing is a representation of speech. If two words sound the same in speaking, then there is no logical reason why they should not look the same in writing. If spoken Japanese can cope with homophones, then written Japanese can cope with homographs. The latter are nothing more than the written counterpart of the former.
To indicate the pitch accent, accent marks could be added to the letters.
「鼻」 is 「はな」「花」is also はな
No wonder they was good at code cracking in ww2 they have a code language
Yes, it does.
Hiragana 😄
Kanji 😅
Katakana 💀
Switch kanji and katakana and you'd be correct.
@@saathvikbogam but you get way more practice reading kanji than katakana
@@FunnyAnimatorJimTV yeah, but there are thousands of different kanji, and only like 50 katakana. Learning the kanji would take much longer.
@@saathvikbogam i guess it depends on how we interpret OP's emojis. It's true in the beginning, katakana are easy to read and learn, and kanji are hard to read in learn. But later, because you spend so much more time learning and reading kanji, they become easier to read than katakana.
i guess what i just said also depends on how many kanji words you know and how much katakana practice you do.
10:12 ホ This is ho
12:09 someone tell him the Nasal Vowel and the ん pronounciation(-s) thing.
When your ancient kingdom wasn’t visited by the Phoenicians