@tokyoscrambledesigns I learned Katakana by accident. Well, you know, enough to get by. From the Hatsune Miku rythm game. A person can only see ミク for Miku so many times without accidentally learning Mi and Ku. I didn't know Japanese or any other writing at the time. Now I know some Japanese. I don't know why I'm learning Japanese I don't imagine ever using it but I love Japanese culture.
I really appreciate how you put all the theories in one video, it feels so comprehensive without being boring and over-edited. I also liked how you didn't make like definitive statements about things that were not known but rather explained all the perspectives on each theory, I thought that was quite unbiased. You could include in the youtube description some links of where you found all of this, I think that would be interesting so other people can go down their own rabbit holes.
Looking back I should have left more references. There is actually some english stuff I found recently, maybe I can link it in the description...let me get back with you! Thank you so much for stopping by!
The theory that makes the most sense to me is that the Yamato people migrated from the Korean penninsula to the Japanese archipelago during the Yayoi period and there was a language shift due to the mixing of the two cultures. The Joumon language probably was related to Ainu. The resulting language, Old Japanese, was a pidgin. Pidgins are universally noted to have the syntax of one language and the vocabulary of another. This is the major reason why Korean and Japanese have nearly identical grammar, but they have very different vocabulary. Whatever writing system they had, it was limited to the elite, and it was replaced by Chinese, and modern writing systems are based on Chinese.
You're missing another explanation, one that historolinguistics discovered a long time ago: Languages that are in close & constant contact actually begin to swap grammatical features, especially when parts of grammar encode parts of culture. For example, in Europe, Finnish, Hungarian, and Basque have all developed grammar features that come right out of the Indo-European languages spoken by their neighbors. [Basque, BTW, is unrelated to any other language. It seems to have just … fallen out of the sky and landed in the Pyrenees Mountains.] Another example is India. Despite having languages from 2 completely different language families - Dravidian and Indo-European - the phonology and phonotactics of _all_ of them have converged. ["Phonology" == the consonants & vowels used by a language. Phonotactics == the rules specifying which combinations of consonants and vowels are legal in a language, and which aren't. Example: "sb" is an illegal combination in English, but perfectly fine in Italian.] So yes, languages in close contact for centuries or millennia will swap features. They _will not,_ however, swap core vocabulary.
@@John_Weiss That makes sense for the languages you've given, but what about Japan and Korea? The cultures of Japan and Korea weren't surely that intertwined, were they? There are next to no loanwords (forget core vocabulary, even a single handful of words with obvious shared roots are hard to find; there are some like 如し that might relate) from Korean in Japanese, which would at least happen a little if there were significant cultural exchange between the nations. Moreover, the countries are separated by water. It was a while before any teachers from Korea came to impart Chinese learning to the Japanese, which to me suggests there wasn't extensive contact at that time before Chinese first spread there (ostensibly via the kingdom of Paekche). In the same vein, you would expect Japanese to converge in the direction of Chinese grammar, becoming much more analytic and isolating, but this is not really seen, despite undoubted contact between those two nations. It retains the same topic-comment, SOV structure, and its agglutinative morphology patterns - and this is despite the innumerable vocabulary loans from Chinese. So, I'm kind of more willing to buy the original commenter's theory, but do you have any conter-points to these objections?
@@spaghettiking653 Here's the thing: 50 years ago, there was this proposed Language Family called, "Altaic," which was the proposed parent family of the Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic Language Families. But Altaic is no longer believed to be a valid language family, even though there are major grammar similarities between the Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic Language Families. The current explanation for the similarities? What I described: they were all in close contact [or, more specifically, the "original" protolanguages of each family were in closer contact] and ended up trading grammatical features. This sort of thing is known linguistically as a "Sprachbund." All of the Indian subcontinent forms a "Sprachbund." So does the European subcontinent. Proto-Japonic and Proto-Koreanic were most likely in a Sprachbund - not only with each other, but possibly also with Proto-Turkic, Proto-Mongolic, and Proto-Tungisic. Because the early proposers of the Altaic family would sometimes include Korean, and sometimes include both Korean and Japanese. Besides, who says that the ancient Yamato people and the ancestral Koreans _had to_ interact with China if they were interacting with each other? They could've been interacting with each other out in Siberia, then wandered together into the Korean peninsula. Then the ancestral Koreans stayed put while the Yamato crossed over to Honshu. Seem unlikely? Ask a historian who studies the Hunnic invasion of Europe. Atilla wasn't trying over a uniform ethnolinguistic nation called "The Huns." Apparently, the Huns were a coalition of multiple nomadic ethnic groups that were bilingual and wandered northern Asia together.
@@John_Weiss My specific point about interaction with China was that both nations have had a marked and sustained exchange with China, but neither has acquired significantly Chinese-like grammatical structures, but what you say makes sense as the most likely explanation. That is, if the similarities cannot just be explained by mere coincidence :) who said a few languages with very similar syntax can't emerge independently? In the case of Japanese and Korean, I can see the odd comparison that makes them seem quite close, but comparisons with Turkish have been in my opinion superficial. I guess I can understand the perspective of Yamato and Koreans exchanging their grammar, though, the Turkic and Tungusic languages aside.
@@spaghettiking653 I agree! Coincidence is always an overlooked possibility. If you think about it, Japanese _has_ had some grammar exchange! Japanese has both a CV pitch-accent, imitating tones in Chinese, and makes heavy heart of particles despite being classified as an agglutinative language!
I still tend to consider Katakana to be derived from Kanji characters. They are kanji fragments, hence substantially different from any kanji characters. As a Chinese speaker, I agree that many Katakana characters seem "out of place", but it could just be the Japanese way of interpretation, including their understanding of calligraphy. The more I learn the language, the more "random" use of kanji characters I've found.
Thank you for the comment! Its hard to guess what others will like, so Im just making videos that interest me. And then Im extra happy to find out there are others that are interested in the same thing!
I know this is a old video but I'd love to see more Japanese language history (especially the Ainu language) videos from you if you ever decide to do more. This was interesting!
Thanks for the video, it was super interesting and I learned some new things. Tamil is actually an abugida script. Hindi, a completely different language, is a devanagari script. Tamil is much older also. The Katakana - Hebrew theory is interesting. I'm currently learning Hebrew because I find it super interesting that the language died and then was revived and is now a living language again... growing and changing, unlike say Latin or Sanskrit which are only used for legal or religious purposes and aren't developing new words.
Thank you for the comment! Sounds like I need to look into things a LOT deeper when it comes to Tamil. The Hebrew theory gets crazier and crazier the further I go with it. I think it might be worth its own video. I would love input and help from people who actually speak the language though!
Tamil and Hindi scripts both derive from the Brahmi script! And we aren't really sure where Brahmi originated either, but most agree that it came from Phoenician.
Huh, clicked on this video in hopes for tips on how to better remember Katakana letters, but ended up on this fun rabbit hole. Not disappointed at all. What's more is that I speak Hebrew, and as part of my attempts to memorize the Japanese letters, I indeed compared them to Hebrew- Katakana looks somewhat like the normal block font of Hebrew, while Hiragana looks a bit like the cursive letters. Discovering it was one of the theories for the origins of Katakana was a pleasant surprise. Great video, the way you explain things is very intriguing!
AMAZING VIDEO. I started it when I was in the middle of a busy day, and I really thought it was going to be a good boring video.. but hell man I was so wrong. It was amazing.. try to keep this kind of videos, like with you talking! No matter which storytelling you go with, just do it. It's enjoyable the way you tell the story. Amazing work, again!
For what it's worth, 川 in most modern Sinitic languages starts with a ts or ch sound (ch is t+sh). In particular, in southern accents of Modern Mandarin it begins with a tsu sound. As it does in Shanghainese, presumably other Wu languages, Taishanese, Jin, Teochew. It begins with tso sound in a few more languages. Anyway that doesn't necessarily make it make more sense, because Japanese and the Chinese languages have been undergoing their own distinct sound changes for at least a thousand years since katakana were developed. So correspondences between sounds in the modern languages don't necessarily tell us that the sounds corresponded when borrowed, particularly since we know the onyomi is せん. I still think it's pretty interesting that there is such a correspondence though. Also 州 and 川 are both candidates for the original man'yogana of つ.
Thanks for the comment! If I was to be totally fair, I have not studied Chinese so I should probably be the last person looking for phonological arguments against the Chinese-origin theory of katakana (which is by far the most widely accepted) How do you personally feel about the derivation of katakana from kanji? When only small parts of a radical is borrowed, or a radical that is found in a hundred different kanji is used I personally am left with some big question marks hanging over my head. Anyways, I hope it was a fun video for you. I would be interested to hear your thoughts!
@@tokyoscrambledesigns Personally I do not find it too strange. Radical simplification happened loads in creating simplified characters, so I think it is reasonable to assume the same could have happened for katakana. Maybe originally, the full radical was used, and it became simplified to less strokes over time. In terms of only part of a character being used.. could be the same. that sort of simplification happened loads throughout Chinese history as well.
Wow!! Thank you so much this is great, I just loved hearing all about the origins, fantastic theory…like you first said, you hated Katakana, me too, but now I understand I will have a lot more respect for it…🤗👍🏻
i still can’t write in katakana, so hiragana is a much easier system for me as i can easily remember the symbols. i will try to improve and commit to as many lessons as i can.
Since I have trouble memorizing katakana I used to joke that it was invented by a grumpy 8th Century scribe who was having a bad day. Finding out there are so many fascinating theories as to it's origin, makes it more interesting and less of a chore to learn.
That was my goal! Im glad to hear you found it interesting :) Thank you for leaving a comment. Im trying to put out a new series aimed at teaching Japanese verb conjugations (really doesnt sound very exciting does it? Haha) I hope you come back and check it out.
My mother language is hebrew and I recentely started studying japanese. the letters being similiar is kind of intresting but the words are extrimely not the same: to listen in hebrew is something like li-shMO-a which (לשמוע) doesnt even come close to kiku in japanese but the video is still cool and intrestig.
The history of the other writing systems is very interesting, and I didn't know of any of those besides the jindai moji, but to me the derivation of katakana from those systems seems to be a heterodoxical perspective, looking scientifically. I can't see why there should be who knows how much issue with the proposed derivation from kanji. This is basically declared as fact on the Wikipedia page, and I'm personally not finding many (or any) kanji that I think make no sense. Like, yeah, taking random parts from them is weird, but the point was abbreviation of the character. If they didn't take a simple part, it would be hard to write. Examples like ツ do make sense if you look at the Middle Chinese pronunciation, like you mentioned, which is in that case tsyhwen (IPA /t͡ɕʰiuᴇn/). Bearing also in mind that つ was still pronounced as /tu/ at the time and not /tsu/, and the Old Chinese (from the later form of which the earlier Japanese interpretation of on'yomi was derived) for it was /t.l̥u[n]/, much more like /tu/, it explains why 川 was used as a man'yōgana character for つ. Then, the man'yōgana gets adapted to ツ. Are there any katakana derivations that you think don't make sense overall? Any that seem like a stretch? To me, they seem quite valid, but indeed I haven't researched just how certain the orthodox derivations are.
@@tokyoscrambledesigns Haha, I really don't know much - this is stuff which I mostly passively osmosed from reading Wiktionary :) I would highly recommend seeing the Chinese entries on Wiktionary for kanji if the origins of kanji readings interests you. I find seeing the original meanings, pronunciations, and glyph origins and stuff makes it make a lot more sense! By the way, thank you for making your videos. These are really interesting and super underrated.
there were indian spies in that room, finding kanji fragments that look like their hindu characters and associating them with the same sounds, its amazing how the indians managed to sneak in their whole culture.
@Tokyo Scramble I'm reaching out in regards to the sumo theory. I tried looking into the origins of sumo wrestling and didn't find much, am I missing something? Anyways I'd figure I'd ask if there are any socials you might have, I really want to research more on the topic and that would be wonderful if I could reach out and discuss it
I'm looking for a reason to help me understand WHY katakana script exist when Japanese already have a script that covers all the sounds they make, .... this video is not it. What I learned from you is: in the past I just had to learn one of the two scripting systems based on my gender, ... now I have to learn both for no reason. I'm now more convinced than ever that it's some form of gatekeeping to make it even harder to acquire the language, like kanji isn't hard enough😐 I read a comment from someone saying that it's "intentionally" hard because if "easy come easy go" is true, then making it unnecessarily hard is to "beat it" into the people, to preserve the culture and protect it from being lost, ... I'm paraphrasing what that comment said but it's true. There are games that aren't in English and I WILL play them despite the gatekeeping.
Thats kind of what I was saying. The writing system was a gatekeeper. But it wasnt intended to gatekeep foreigners in 2024 it was to gatekeep women and commoners over 1000years ago. kanji and katakana was for men, and the educated (monks, royalty and the elite. ) Hiragana was for high class, educated women of the court. The writing systems were built around social lines.
@@tokyoscrambledesigns I'm sorry, you made an excellent video, very informative and it was really helpful. What I meant when I said "why" is "WHaaaa~aaaYYYY?? WHYYY is it still in use when hiragana is more than enough?" ... just complaining about the reason why I have to learn two *phonetically exact* transcription systems. .... there is no answer except: "because I said so".
So, the Hotsuma Tsutae is effectively the Veles Book if it were as authentic as the Tale of Igor? And katakana might indeed be the "moon runes" of the Russian memes... Regarding females - not too sure how it's relevant considering how Japan is the most based of all Sinospheric lands in this regard. - Adûnâi
@@tokyoscrambledesigns but the katakana readings sound much closer to cantonese than it does mandarin so that is why you couldnt hear the similarities. it comes from older chinese.
@@tokyoscrambledesigns thanks for the reply. I’ve been studying for two years. I’ve definitely made progress, but… it’s frustrating how far I have to go. Lol
@@DD-vu7ir Im always open to taking requests, let me know if you ever get stuck on something specific! I think pretty soon you will hit a point where you can stop traditional studying and just consume content and learn as you go :)
@@tokyoscrambledesigns Honestly, I do videos on Common slang, contractions, and filler words. I feel like the most annoying thing learning Japanese was that I'd hit sentences where either the beginning or what came after the verb would leave me no knowing what was going on. lol
Glad you don't need to know any other alphabets to read Japanese three bad enough interesting history. My suggestion is not spending to much time on pitch accent since that is more end stage Japanese. Look forward to your next video 頑張って
Thank you for all the comments! I am trying to put out another video in the next couple of days. Pitch accent was a request from another subscriber but basically, yes I think you are 100% right, pitch accent doesnt matter too much at the beginning. The next couple videos will be focused on specific study methods. I hope you find them useful! Please let me know what you think, and how I can improve.
Yep, thats what the textbooks say, haha. Or was it katakana, kanji, hiragana? Alternative history is something I like to have fun with! Hope you enjoyed it too!
I actually speak Hebrew! As soon as I learned katakana I knew it looked familiar. To be honest there ARE Japanese words that sound like Hebrew words. I really wanna know more now lol
Yes! Finally! I was hoping I would find someone that spoke Hebrew after putting this up! Try looking into the origins of Sumo. There are some pretty convincing arguments that Sumo is based on the idea of Israel "wrestling with God". Might be far fetched but it is really fun to learn about! Please stay in touch! Maybe someday we could do a collab video :)
@@tokyoscrambledesigns Hmm, that doesn't seem right, because we need to remember who created us and who we have to be grateful for. We aren't trying to fight God, he stands with us in our hard times and always keeps our heart and soul alive. One of the biggest morales of the Jews is accept God's decisions, he loves us and wants to help us but have to deserve this in order for him to do so. So there goes that
@@izmike I was just referring to the story of Jacob being renamed Israel. Meaning “one who wrestles with God” A lot of the the non-sensical words used in sumo during the matches dont mean anything in Japanese but have meaning in Hebrew (allegedly) Anyways, in the future maybe I will do another video! Its pretty interesting!
Holy cow! I had no idea there were so many theories as to the origin of katakana. Your historical research on this is really interesting. Great video!
Thank you for the comment! Im having fun sharing with you, so I hope I can keep the content coming!
@tokyoscrambledesigns I learned Katakana by accident. Well, you know, enough to get by. From the Hatsune Miku rythm game. A person can only see ミク for Miku so many times without accidentally learning Mi and Ku.
I didn't know Japanese or any other writing at the time. Now I know some Japanese. I don't know why I'm learning Japanese I don't imagine ever using it but I love Japanese culture.
I really appreciate how you put all the theories in one video, it feels so comprehensive without being boring and over-edited. I also liked how you didn't make like definitive statements about things that were not known but rather explained all the perspectives on each theory, I thought that was quite unbiased.
You could include in the youtube description some links of where you found all of this, I think that would be interesting so other people can go down their own rabbit holes.
Looking back I should have left more references. There is actually some english stuff I found recently, maybe I can link it in the description...let me get back with you!
Thank you so much for stopping by!
Great content and well delivered. I follow several Japanese language channels, yours is developing into something I will enjoy. Thanks.
Im so happy to find others are interested in what I am! Thank you for the comment! 引き続きよろしくお願いします！
Incredible video. Inspires the imagination 😅 ありがと
This was an eye-opener! This has given me a newfound appreciation for kakana.
mission accomplished! Thank you for the comment!
Thank you for sharing your research. That was really interesting!
Wow thank you for such an informative video!! ❤
Thanks for stopping by!
great overview and so interesting. Thank you for your effort
Thank you for stopping by!
The theory that makes the most sense to me is that the Yamato people migrated from the Korean penninsula to the Japanese archipelago during the Yayoi period and there was a language shift due to the mixing of the two cultures. The Joumon language probably was related to Ainu. The resulting language, Old Japanese, was a pidgin. Pidgins are universally noted to have the syntax of one language and the vocabulary of another. This is the major reason why Korean and Japanese have nearly identical grammar, but they have very different vocabulary. Whatever writing system they had, it was limited to the elite, and it was replaced by Chinese, and modern writing systems are based on Chinese.
You're missing another explanation, one that historolinguistics discovered a long time ago: Languages that are in close & constant contact actually begin to swap grammatical features, especially when parts of grammar encode parts of culture.
For example, in Europe, Finnish, Hungarian, and Basque have all developed grammar features that come right out of the Indo-European languages spoken by their neighbors. [Basque, BTW, is unrelated to any other language. It seems to have just … fallen out of the sky and landed in the Pyrenees Mountains.]
Another example is India. Despite having languages from 2 completely different language families - Dravidian and Indo-European - the phonology and phonotactics of _all_ of them have converged. ["Phonology" == the consonants & vowels used by a language. Phonotactics == the rules specifying which combinations of consonants and vowels are legal in a language, and which aren't. Example: "sb" is an illegal combination in English, but perfectly fine in Italian.]
So yes, languages in close contact for centuries or millennia will swap features. They _will not,_ however, swap core vocabulary.
@@John_Weiss That makes sense for the languages you've given, but what about Japan and Korea? The cultures of Japan and Korea weren't surely that intertwined, were they? There are next to no loanwords (forget core vocabulary, even a single handful of words with obvious shared roots are hard to find; there are some like 如し that might relate) from Korean in Japanese, which would at least happen a little if there were significant cultural exchange between the nations. Moreover, the countries are separated by water. It was a while before any teachers from Korea came to impart Chinese learning to the Japanese, which to me suggests there wasn't extensive contact at that time before Chinese first spread there (ostensibly via the kingdom of Paekche).
In the same vein, you would expect Japanese to converge in the direction of Chinese grammar, becoming much more analytic and isolating, but this is not really seen, despite undoubted contact between those two nations. It retains the same topic-comment, SOV structure, and its agglutinative morphology patterns - and this is despite the innumerable vocabulary loans from Chinese. So, I'm kind of more willing to buy the original commenter's theory, but do you have any conter-points to these objections?
@@spaghettiking653 Here's the thing: 50 years ago, there was this proposed Language Family called, "Altaic," which was the proposed parent family of the Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic Language Families. But Altaic is no longer believed to be a valid language family, even though there are major grammar similarities between the Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic Language Families.
The current explanation for the similarities? What I described: they were all in close contact [or, more specifically, the "original" protolanguages of each family were in closer contact] and ended up trading grammatical features. This sort of thing is known linguistically as a "Sprachbund." All of the Indian subcontinent forms a "Sprachbund." So does the European subcontinent.
Proto-Japonic and Proto-Koreanic were most likely in a Sprachbund - not only with each other, but possibly also with Proto-Turkic, Proto-Mongolic, and Proto-Tungisic. Because the early proposers of the Altaic family would sometimes include Korean, and sometimes include both Korean and Japanese.
Besides, who says that the ancient Yamato people and the ancestral Koreans _had to_ interact with China if they were interacting with each other? They could've been interacting with each other out in Siberia, then wandered together into the Korean peninsula. Then the ancestral Koreans stayed put while the Yamato crossed over to Honshu.
Seem unlikely? Ask a historian who studies the Hunnic invasion of Europe. Atilla wasn't trying over a uniform ethnolinguistic nation called "The Huns." Apparently, the Huns were a coalition of multiple nomadic ethnic groups that were bilingual and wandered northern Asia together.
@@John_Weiss My specific point about interaction with China was that both nations have had a marked and sustained exchange with China, but neither has acquired significantly Chinese-like grammatical structures, but what you say makes sense as the most likely explanation. That is, if the similarities cannot just be explained by mere coincidence :) who said a few languages with very similar syntax can't emerge independently?
In the case of Japanese and Korean, I can see the odd comparison that makes them seem quite close, but comparisons with Turkish have been in my opinion superficial.
I guess I can understand the perspective of Yamato and Koreans exchanging their grammar, though, the Turkic and Tungusic languages aside.
@@spaghettiking653 I agree! Coincidence is always an overlooked possibility.
If you think about it, Japanese _has_ had some grammar exchange! Japanese has both a CV pitch-accent, imitating tones in Chinese, and makes heavy heart of particles despite being classified as an agglutinative language!
4:30 "ru" is an archaic reading for 流, meaning "exile", so it makes sense why it's thought of as a potential origin for ル
I just cant figure out why they would only use part of a radical...
I still tend to consider Katakana to be derived from Kanji characters. They are kanji fragments, hence substantially different from any kanji characters. As a Chinese speaker, I agree that many Katakana characters seem "out of place", but it could just be the Japanese way of interpretation, including their understanding of calligraphy. The more I learn the language, the more "random" use of kanji characters I've found.
I wouldve loved to have been a fly on the wall when they were coming up with this stuff!
You're making great stuff. Got yourself a subscriber.
Great Video! I love learning more about the history of the language and I can't wait for the next videos. Thanks for the content ! :)
Thank you for the comment! Its hard to guess what others will like, so Im just making videos that interest me. And then Im extra happy to find out there are others that are interested in the same thing!
I hate...hated Katakana until watching your video. Loved the trip down history! The more you know! Subscribed!
Totally understand! Im glad Ive been able to win a couple hearts over to katakanas side!
I know this is a old video but I'd love to see more Japanese language history (especially the Ainu language) videos from you if you ever decide to do more. This was interesting!
Ainu! That could be good! Thank you for the comment😊
Thanks for the video, it was super interesting and I learned some new things.
Tamil is actually an abugida script. Hindi, a completely different language, is a devanagari script. Tamil is much older also.
The Katakana - Hebrew theory is interesting. I'm currently learning Hebrew because I find it super interesting that the language died and then was revived and is now a living language again... growing and changing, unlike say Latin or Sanskrit which are only used for legal or religious purposes and aren't developing new words.
Thank you for the comment! Sounds like I need to look into things a LOT deeper when it comes to Tamil. The Hebrew theory gets crazier and crazier the further I go with it. I think it might be worth its own video. I would love input and help from people who actually speak the language though!
Tamil and Hindi scripts both derive from the Brahmi script! And we aren't really sure where Brahmi originated either, but most agree that it came from Phoenician.
@@katakana1 Thanks for the clarification and information!
Huh, clicked on this video in hopes for tips on how to better remember Katakana letters, but ended up on this fun rabbit hole. Not disappointed at all.
What's more is that I speak Hebrew, and as part of my attempts to memorize the Japanese letters, I indeed compared them to Hebrew- Katakana looks somewhat like the normal block font of Hebrew, while Hiragana looks a bit like the cursive letters. Discovering it was one of the theories for the origins of Katakana was a pleasant surprise. Great video, the way you explain things is very intriguing!
Wow great! I would love to learn about any words youve found that match up!
AMAZING VIDEO. I started it when I was in the middle of a busy day, and I really thought it was going to be a good boring video.. but hell man I was so wrong. It was amazing.. try to keep this kind of videos, like with you talking! No matter which storytelling you go with, just do it. It's enjoyable the way you tell the story. Amazing work, again!
wow, thank you so much! I think I just got the motivation to work on the next video, haha
For what it's worth, 川 in most modern Sinitic languages starts with a ts or ch sound (ch is t+sh). In particular, in southern accents of Modern Mandarin it begins with a tsu sound. As it does in Shanghainese, presumably other Wu languages, Taishanese, Jin, Teochew. It begins with tso sound in a few more languages.
Anyway that doesn't necessarily make it make more sense, because Japanese and the Chinese languages have been undergoing their own distinct sound changes for at least a thousand years since katakana were developed. So correspondences between sounds in the modern languages don't necessarily tell us that the sounds corresponded when borrowed, particularly since we know the onyomi is せん.
I still think it's pretty interesting that there is such a correspondence though.
Also 州 and 川 are both candidates for the original man'yogana of つ.
Thanks for the comment! If I was to be totally fair, I have not studied Chinese so I should probably be the last person looking for phonological arguments against the Chinese-origin theory of katakana (which is by far the most widely accepted)
How do you personally feel about the derivation of katakana from kanji? When only small parts of a radical is borrowed, or a radical that is found in a hundred different kanji is used I personally am left with some big question marks hanging over my head.
Anyways, I hope it was a fun video for you. I would be interested to hear your thoughts!
@@tokyoscrambledesigns Personally I do not find it too strange. Radical simplification happened loads in creating simplified characters, so I think it is reasonable to assume the same could have happened for katakana. Maybe originally, the full radical was used, and it became simplified to less strokes over time. In terms of only part of a character being used.. could be the same. that sort of simplification happened loads throughout Chinese history as well.
Thanks for this video! Fascinating, esp. the part about Hebrew!
Ive been contemplating going deeper into this one...
Thanks for stopping by!
Wow!! Thank you so much this is great, I just loved hearing all about the origins, fantastic theory…like you first said, you hated Katakana, me too, but now I understand I will have a lot more respect for it…🤗👍🏻
Interesting.
i still can’t write in katakana, so hiragana is a much easier system for me as i can easily remember the symbols. i will try to improve and commit to as many lessons as i can.
For whatever reason, its very hard to get the motivation to study katakana, haha.
I was hoping this video would help...
Since I have trouble memorizing katakana I used to joke that it was invented by a grumpy 8th Century scribe who was having a bad day. Finding out there are so many fascinating theories as to it's origin, makes it more interesting and less of a chore to learn.
That was my goal! Im glad to hear you found it interesting :) Thank you for leaving a comment. Im trying to put out a new series aimed at teaching Japanese verb conjugations (really doesnt sound very exciting does it? Haha) I hope you come back and check it out.
My mother language is hebrew and I recentely started studying japanese. the letters being similiar is kind of intresting but the words are extrimely not the same: to listen in hebrew is something like li-shMO-a which (לשמוע) doesnt even come close to kiku in japanese but the video is still cool and intrestig.
Mmm, maybe להקשיב (lehakshiv)? still not very similar but at least it has the K in it I guess
Oh cool! Did any of the other words match up? The hebrew similarities are extra interesting to me!
Hehe calling tamil a Dravidian language can cause some sparks if it reachs Indian audiance
yeah Ive had some comment already, I need to update heh😅
The history of the other writing systems is very interesting, and I didn't know of any of those besides the jindai moji, but to me the derivation of katakana from those systems seems to be a heterodoxical perspective, looking scientifically. I can't see why there should be who knows how much issue with the proposed derivation from kanji. This is basically declared as fact on the Wikipedia page, and I'm personally not finding many (or any) kanji that I think make no sense. Like, yeah, taking random parts from them is weird, but the point was abbreviation of the character. If they didn't take a simple part, it would be hard to write.
Examples like ツ do make sense if you look at the Middle Chinese pronunciation, like you mentioned, which is in that case tsyhwen (IPA /t͡ɕʰiuᴇn/). Bearing also in mind that つ was still pronounced as /tu/ at the time and not /tsu/, and the Old Chinese (from the later form of which the earlier Japanese interpretation of on'yomi was derived) for it was /t.l̥u[n]/, much more like /tu/, it explains why 川 was used as a man'yōgana character for つ. Then, the man'yōgana gets adapted to ツ.
Are there any katakana derivations that you think don't make sense overall? Any that seem like a stretch? To me, they seem quite valid, but indeed I haven't researched just how certain the orthodox derivations are.
I am admittedly very much in need of further study of Chinese! I envy your perspective on the language!
@@tokyoscrambledesigns Haha, I really don't know much - this is stuff which I mostly passively osmosed from reading Wiktionary :) I would highly recommend seeing the Chinese entries on Wiktionary for kanji if the origins of kanji readings interests you. I find seeing the original meanings, pronunciations, and glyph origins and stuff makes it make a lot more sense!
By the way, thank you for making your videos. These are really interesting and super underrated.
cool
there were indian spies in that room, finding kanji fragments that look like their hindu characters and associating them with the same sounds, its amazing how the indians managed to sneak in their whole culture.
That was so fascinating! Are there any books on Japanese history you can recommend?
Yes and no. Let me find something worth your time!
@Tokyo Scramble I'm reaching out in regards to the sumo theory. I tried looking into the origins of sumo wrestling and didn't find much, am I missing something? Anyways I'd figure I'd ask if there are any socials you might have, I really want to research more on the topic and that would be wonderful if I could reach out and discuss it
Let me look around and send you some links! heres an article sposuru.com/contents/sports-trivia/sumo-words/
@@tokyoscrambledesigns Thank you!
@@tokyoscrambledesigns Do you have any other social media I can follow?
I'm looking for a reason to help me understand WHY katakana script exist when Japanese already have a script that covers all the sounds they make, .... this video is not it.
What I learned from you is: in the past I just had to learn one of the two scripting systems based on my gender, ... now I have to learn both for no reason.
I'm now more convinced than ever that it's some form of gatekeeping to make it even harder to acquire the language, like kanji isn't hard enough😐
I read a comment from someone saying that it's "intentionally" hard because if "easy come easy go" is true, then making it unnecessarily hard is to "beat it" into the people, to preserve the culture and protect it from being lost, ... I'm paraphrasing what that comment said but it's true.
There are games that aren't in English and I WILL play them despite the gatekeeping.
Thats kind of what I was saying. The writing system was a gatekeeper. But it wasnt intended to gatekeep foreigners in 2024 it was to gatekeep women and commoners over 1000years ago. kanji and katakana was for men, and the educated (monks, royalty and the elite. ) Hiragana was for high class, educated women of the court. The writing systems were built around social lines.
@@tokyoscrambledesigns I'm sorry, you made an excellent video, very informative and it was really helpful.
What I meant when I said "why" is "WHaaaa~aaaYYYY?? WHYYY is it still in use when hiragana is more than enough?" ... just complaining about the reason why I have to learn two *phonetically exact* transcription systems. .... there is no answer except: "because I said so".
So, the Hotsuma Tsutae is effectively the Veles Book if it were as authentic as the Tale of Igor? And katakana might indeed be the "moon runes" of the Russian memes... Regarding females - not too sure how it's relevant considering how Japan is the most based of all Sinospheric lands in this regard. - Adûnâi
the older chinese pronunciation is closer to current cantonese than it is to mandarin.
I need to do an episode with a Chinese and Japanese speaker! haha...or maybe I need to just start studying Chinese myself! Thanks for the comment!
@@tokyoscrambledesigns
but the katakana readings sound much closer to cantonese than it does mandarin so that is why you couldnt hear the similarities. it comes from older chinese.
Hey...i just found your channel...but you kinda look like Hideaki Anno...
you are the second viewer to tell me that, 😂 I will take it as a compliment, haha
Curious how long you’ve been studying.
Studied intensely for about two years when I first moved here 16 years ago, but still learning new things all the time!
@@tokyoscrambledesigns thanks for the reply. I’ve been studying for two years. I’ve definitely made progress, but… it’s frustrating how far I have to go. Lol
@@DD-vu7ir Im always open to taking requests, let me know if you ever get stuck on something specific! I think pretty soon you will hit a point where you can stop traditional studying and just consume content and learn as you go :)
@@tokyoscrambledesigns Honestly, I do videos on Common slang, contractions, and filler words. I feel like the most annoying thing learning Japanese was that I'd hit sentences where either the beginning or what came after the verb would leave me no knowing what was going on. lol
@@DD-vu7ir sounds good! Let me see what I can do! Thanks for the input!
Glad you don't need to know any other alphabets to read Japanese three bad enough interesting history. My suggestion is not spending to much time on pitch accent since that is more end stage Japanese. Look forward to your next video 頑張って
Thank you for all the comments! I am trying to put out another video in the next couple of days. Pitch accent was a request from another subscriber but basically, yes I think you are 100% right, pitch accent doesnt matter too much at the beginning. The next couple videos will be focused on specific study methods. I hope you find them useful! Please let me know what you think, and how I can improve.
Why not both? Some of the katakana came from Kanji, and others were invented from scratch?
If only I could get this stupid time machine working...
uhm
Yes, uhm. You too?
@@tokyoscrambledesigns yes thanks for noticing, very considerate of you
Kanji, katakana, then hiragana. Hiragana is the youngest
Yep, thats what the textbooks say, haha. Or was it katakana, kanji, hiragana? Alternative history is something I like to have fun with! Hope you enjoyed it too!
@Tokyo Scramble like Hentaigana. wu missing Yi &Ye.
@Tokyo Scramble ng & L sounds missing or Obsolete to Modern speakers
@@lawrenceandrews4367 sounds like you like looking into this stuff as much as me!
... nope, still hate them.
hahaha, well I tried.
I actually speak Hebrew! As soon as I learned katakana I knew it looked familiar. To be honest there ARE Japanese words that sound like Hebrew words. I really wanna know more now lol
Yes! Finally! I was hoping I would find someone that spoke Hebrew after putting this up! Try looking into the origins of Sumo. There are some pretty convincing arguments that Sumo is based on the idea of Israel "wrestling with God". Might be far fetched but it is really fun to learn about! Please stay in touch! Maybe someday we could do a collab video :)
@@tokyoscrambledesigns Hmm, that doesn't seem right, because we need to remember who created us and who we have to be grateful for. We aren't trying to fight God, he stands with us in our hard times and always keeps our heart and soul alive. One of the biggest morales of the Jews is accept God's decisions, he loves us and wants to help us but have to deserve this in order for him to do so. So there goes that
@@izmike I was just referring to the story of Jacob being renamed Israel. Meaning “one who wrestles with God”
A lot of the the non-sensical words used in sumo during the matches dont mean anything in Japanese but have meaning in Hebrew (allegedly)
Anyways, in the future maybe I will do another video! Its pretty interesting!
@@tokyoscrambledesigns I see. Well, I can look if these words actually mean anything in Hebrew. I'll be waiting for that video though
nikkan-spa.jp/1530027 this made the news a couple years back!
Hi,
The video is great and I wanna send you a message. Could you kindly let me know which platforms you use so that I can contact you besides RUclips?
Just incase you are fishing, could you let me know a little bit about what you want to talk about here first?
I wanna discuss with you some collaboration@@tokyoscrambledesigns
👁🤯👁