Can Japanese People Read Chinese? (Kanji)
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- čas přidán 10. 09. 2019
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People often ask me if I speak Chinese because they think Japanese and Chinese are similar (or the same language). But in fact, Japanese and Chinese are completely different languages.
Having said that, Japanese uses a lot of borrowed words from Chinese as well as Chinese letters. Some we sometimes understand something when we see Chinese texts.
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We understand some Chinese texts sometimes. But only sometimes. Having said that, since we use a lot of Chinese words and letters, some words a pretty obvious. For example, if I go to the airport in China, I can easily figure out where the exit is without reading the English translation. I don't understand every sign, but I do understand a lot of them. But when it comes to complex sentences, it's very difficult to understand.
So if you are a Chinese speaker and know how to read Chinese (especially traditional Chinese) learning Japanese will be a bit easier. But you still have to learn Japanese because it's a very different language. So if you want to learn Japanese with me, I will teach you "real" Japanese we speak today. Click here and subscribe bit.ly/3brfGIR
i dont really know japanese, but from watching anime i've noticed that there are some japanese words that sound pretty similar to cantonese words with the same meaning (i speak cantonese)
anyone else can confirm this?
Kanji = Chinese characters, so "Japanese kanji" isn't even a thing. No one is trying to hide the fact that the characters are loaned from Chinese.
And it's not just the west which refers to them as "characters" because they are literally characters which represent words. The same kanji could be used to represent a few different words, so it would be inaccurate to say that each kanji is a word by itself.
That's pretty much like being able to kinda understand some things in Dutch as a German.
Next time ask Chaozhounese or Fujianese speakers to read those words. AFAIK, those two dialects preserve more Old Chinese pronunciation and syntax.
Well... I'm Chinese (American) and I can understand Japanese characters?, or at least by looking at the words, mostly. Also because I watched some anime. XD But... nope, no romanji/kanji or whatever for me...
I was initially looking for a Mandarin speaker because I thought Mandarin pronunciation would be closer. But I couldn't find a Mandarin speaker who would volunteer.
But then some Cantonese speakers from Hong Kong told me that Cantonese pronunciation could be similar too (and it was. Some words pronounce very similar way as in 太陽) so I decided to try a Cantonese speaker.
But I'd like to try this again with a Mandarin speaker, so if you want to help me, please contact here: forms.gle/bdYU798AfpXxYx287
Truth be told, Cantonese has much closer ties to the middle/Ancient Chinese language than Mandarin does so more words in Cantonese sound more similar to Japanese overall. Granted, it would be older words and loan-words borrowed from both countries.
Yes, please do one with Chinese mandarin too. This was fun. I know a couple of words in Chinese from songs so when they came up i was confident i knew the pronunciation but when i heard how she said them i was kinda lost for a few seconds but realized you already said Cantonese speaker at the beginning xD
I just commented about finding a Mandarin or Wu Chinese speaker instead, but you explained it in this comment, so I have deleted mine.
You took someone from HK, that's why I saw traditional characters instead of simplified, as far as I know the second ones are more similar to Kanji.
Japanese borrowed word from the Tang era, at the time, Middle Chinese was spoken and it has a completely different pronounciation from Mandarin.
Cantonese on the other hand is closer to Middle Chinese than Mandarin is.
Hi is the speaker volunteer supposed to be in Japan? Thx
The Cantonese pronunciations caught me off guard lol I was expecting Mandarin.
Same, I was starting to question everything I knew 😂
Fuck mandarin anyways...香港加油🇭🇰☂️
@@kschell286 nah, mandarin's dope. Still the official language of Taiwan
themighty axe 香港加油 keep burning people alive！
@@kylez3394 Pooh bear is sending his butthurt minions out in droves eh?
I used to teach Japanese online. I remember one time my Chinese student and I communicated only in Chinese characters and we could understand 80-90% of what we wanted to say lol
偽中国語？
@@monopalisa619 Stuff like 君中国語本当上手？
絶対皆日本人
fake
I noticed some weird combination of pronunciation and writing for Cantonese. For example: The word for 'today' is 今天, but only mandarin speaking people use this word. Cantonese speaking people normally use '今日' which I think will be much easier to be understood by the Japanese people... Also the word '穿' is only used in Mandarin. In Cantonese we use ‘著' which will be simplified to '着' for 'wear', and the Japanese people will definitely have no problem understanding that.
So true, but also consider in Mandarin 穿 is usually combined with 着 😊
It's the unfortunate fact that, in all countries and areas where Cantonese speakers live, the government uses mandarin for writing.
Through the influence of the chinese government, people are told that this is "written cantonese", which is just nonsense.
We can write cantonese exactly as it is spoken. Like you said 今日, not 今天.
Other people say writing in mandarin is "formal cantonese". That's also nonsense, because no matter how formal the occasion you don't start using mandarin terminology with cantonese pronunciation.
The only applicable times you find such writing needing to be pronounced with cantonese is for poetry (often written in other languages and dialects) or for songs (where artists use lots for different terminology for poetic effect).
It has to do with linguistics development. Cantonese and other southern lects are a lot more conservative in terms of divergence from Classical Chinese due to history and geography. Mandarin Chinese has a lot more influence from the nomadic steppe civilizations which is why Mandarin has a lot of multi-character vocabulary. The geography meant traveling across northern China was relatively easy and so you have a lot of people moving around, which results in a faster divergence from classical Chinese since new vocabulary is adopted at a faster pace. Southern China on the other hand was mountainous so the populations were more isolated especially from the Steppe nomads which is why they retain a lot more elements from classical Chinese. However. The isolation means a divergence in direction of linguistics development, which is why they are also not mutually intelligible.
Technically you can say 著衣 in mandarin and it could be understood, but nobody talks like that, at least not in the Beijing Standard.
著 is used in mandarin too
Aleksandra M but you will not say 著衣服 in Mandarin
I am a Cantonese speaker myself and I don't really speak Japanese. But the fact that I read Kanji gives me a huge advantage when I visit Japan. When I want to ask for directions or want to get a shinkansen ticket with my JR Pass, I can just write something like " 名古屋 → 新大阪 13:30 窓側" on a paper and show it to the staff so I don't have to deal with the language problem.
The problem is that the Shinkansen only goes to 新大阪 ! Badumm-tss
Writing on paper ?are you living in 90s. 😂..we're living in internet era so language barrier is no more 😂
@@vegetaismydad5382 Well, you English speakers don't know the Chinese-Japanese translation doesn't work as good as English-Japanese translation since Google is from the US and they put English language in their first priority when it comes to these software development. So I just don't bother using it as a native Chinese/Cantonese speaker and just write on a good old paper.
@@suhdude69 The only real problem there is having enough paper on hand and having a working pen to write with. On the flip side using Google translate makes people become lazy with being able to write what you want when you want a lost skill.
@UltimatePisman The most confusing part of learning kanji is remember when to apply each of the different readings for those kanji.
I find the conclusions of the interviewed Japanese people rather interesting. They actually guessed at least half of the words/meanings correctly, yet at the end, they were all saying "It's too hard", "It's completely different", etc. If I were in their shoes I would have got really excited and felt like I saw a new world opening up to me, and I already know the basics.
As a speaker of Dutch/English/German/Japanese and a little bit of French, I discovered Romanian was actually surprisingly readable!
Maybe they're trying to be really humble about it?
yeah i wonder why...
意味は分かるけど発音を聞くと全然違うから
@@NiekNooijens nice job bro, if you speak jap you gonna learn cantonese.
Whenever I see a Japanese sentence, I would always use Chinese pinyin to read the kanji XD. For example: 中国は大きい国です。
I’d read it as “Zhōng guó wa dà kii guó de su”.
Great Jävän hahaha same with me, I have learned chinese hanzi and now I am learning japanese.. sometimes when I read japanese sentence I know the kanji meaning in chinese but I dont know how to pronounce in japanese (onyomi or kunyomi) and I got lucky that has same meaning 🤣🤣🤣
I’m chinese trying to learn japanese and that’s a real struggle lmao
I have the same problem. I can read Hiragana and a lot of Kanji in Chinese so I can either understand or pronounce a word but almost never both.
Same HAHAHAHA I can also read, but only in Chinese Hanzi haha
Oh lol I just don't read it as Chinese cos it's weird
I just try to guess how to read, not that I can read thou
Everyone: but the lady in the video speaks Cantonese, not Mandarin!
Yuta in the first 15 seconds: I brought a Cantonese speaker with me
the subtitle when the lady speaks is "Chinese" not "Cantonese". it's misleading.
Yann Yú Cantonese IS Chinese, and Chinese is a set of dialects and not an individual language but most of the people refer it to Madarin, not misleading at all but it didn’t clarify which dialect was used, it’s completely fine.
@@bubbythejones When you discuss this concept with Chinese people, of course Cantonese is one dialect of Chinese. But for most western people, Chinese is just Mandarin unless you do a lot of definition. For instance, if the lady speaks Southwestern Mandarin or Southern Min, while the subtitle is still Chinese without any note, don't you think it is misleading and completely not fine?
And, for a video like this, the CZcamsr talks a lot about Chinese and Japanese, but he brought a Cantonese speaker here at last and mentioned it only once. I don't think it is what a responsible CZcamsr should do.
Yann Yú but wouldn’t that just be the misunderstanding of people in the West? In the end, it’s not misleading if what he’s saying is the truth. Cantonese is Chinese.
Yann Yú Chinese is one language with many dialects. Yuta is not to blame. How can it be misleading if it is true? The lack of knowledge in chinese culture for foreigners doesn’t this “misleading”. The writing and meaning is the same for the dialects.
日本：What's your name?
漢: Han.
日本: Nice to meet you Kan.
漢: No, Han!
日本: That's what I said. Kan.
I don't understand sry
Ayyyy Nativlang reference
For those who don't understand, it is a Nativlang (a youtube channel) reference
Japanese read the names in Chinese in their own language.
Like Sun Wukong/Son Gokū.
越南: Sup, Hán ?
I studied Mandarin until the HSK 3 level, and now I'm starting to study Japanese. It's bizarre! While the kanji can sometimes give some clue to the meaning, most of time has nothing to do with the pronunciation! Looking to a character, the brain automatically attaches the character to a corresponding chinese sound, but in Japanese it works completely different!
@@echelon2k8 thanks, fixed.
Great talent learning Mandarin ,cause many westerners consider it difficult.Yep,Japanese Chinese character writting mostly have similar meaning with the Chinese but totally different pronuciation.Like mountain, shan in mandarin, yama in japanese.
@@QODHardasiandickBAC I can tell you that I'm a nerd of linguistics. Portuguese is my native language; then I could learn English, Spanish, German, French, Italian and some Latin. In 2017 I started my adventures into the eastern languages and I didn't find Mandarin difficult at all if we are ready to face the challenge of a completely new writting system, and a new way of understanding the world. Japanese in comparison is tricky, but while kanji scares the western studies, I can actually grasp some of the meaning of a word *because* of the kanji, even if I still don't know how to say that in Japanese.
@@fsolda I've been telling people that speaking Cantonese and reading/writing in Standard Chinese is akin to speaking Portuguese and reading/writing in Spanish.
@@RaymondHng I have no knowledge of Cantonese, but it could be a fair comparison. As a native Portuguese speaker (and also proficient in Spanish), I still read Spanish translating it automatically into Portuguese inside my brain.
Guy: *speaks Cantonese*
Japanese schoolgirl: I can't understand.
Me: me too kid
XD same
how about privet comrade!
Chinese who don't speak Cantonese relatable
@@baqikenny that is much more understandable XD
Is it similar to how us English speakers might be able to decipher a French/Spanish word based on its root word?
Like we know "delicioso" would mean delicious in English
Korean and Japanese both have influence from ancient Chinese, even though Korean kanji looks completely different
I think spoken you wouldn't understand a word of Chinese, but the written is kinda doable because the characters are the same for some words, they are just read differently.
As a mexican, delicioso means sex.
Normans invading England 900~ years ago is a major factor.
That's why Old English isn't similar at all with nowadays English.
English right now is just 50% of French/Latin vocabulary mispronounced, only the grammar is unique.
So you can go to England,Belgium, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy and understand stuff thanks to context and by how close the words sounds like once you've learned one of those language.
ps: delicioso,delicious, délicieux.
@@astrotoaster5555 No mames
You should redo this video with Japanese teachers or Kanji experts
Not a bad idea!
That would be interesting!
シャゼエブShahzaib uP
Great idea. And also ask Fujianese or Chaozhounese people to read the kanji in their language. See how many words sound similar to each other.
That would be cool!
I'm a native Chinese (Mandarin) speaker and this was fun to watch! It's the same thing the other way around too... I had no idea what 次回 or 元気 meant in Japanese before I started learning it, but I knew other things like 銀行、現在、中国、日本、etc
Kanji phrases invented by the Japanese which have been included into the Chinese vocabulary.
和制漢語
白夜、半徑、飽和、保險、保障、備品、背景、編制、班級。采光、參觀、常識、場合、場所、成分、成員、承認、乘客、出口、出庭、儲藏、儲蓄、傳染病、創作、代表、代言人、德育、登記、登載、敵視、抵抗、發明、法律、法人、法庭、反動、反對、分配、分析、封鎖、否定、否決、服務、服用、、概括、概略、概念、概算、固定、固體、故障、關系、廣告、廣義、歸納、幹部、化石、化學、化妝品、集團、集中、、機關、機械、積極、基地、計劃、記號、記錄、建築、鑒定、講師、講壇、講習、講演、講座、教養、教育學、階級、接吻、節約、結核、解放、緊張、進度、進化、進化論、進展、經費、經濟、經濟學、經驗、精神、景氣、警察、劇場、決算、絕對、介紹。科目、科學、可決、客觀、客體、課程、肯定、空間、會計、擴散、勞動、勞動者、勞作、累減、類型、理論、理念、理事、理想、理性、理智、力學、立場、臨床、領海、、領空、領土、論理學、論壇、論戰、落選、脈動、漫筆、漫畫、漫談、盲從、媒質、美感、美化、美術、民主、敏感、明確、、命題、母體、母校、目標、目的、內閣、內幕、內勤、內容、內在、能動、能力、、偶然、派遣、判決、陪審、批評、平面、評價、騎士、企業、氣體、氣質、前線、強制、侵犯、侵略、勤務、、清算、情報、權威、權限、權益、權利、人格、人權、人文主義、人選、日程、商業、社會、社會學、社會主義、社交、社團、身分、失效、時間、時事、時效、、思想、死角、所得稅、、探險、探照燈、特長、特務、同情、同計、體操、體育、、唯心論、唯物論、衛生、文化、文庫、文明、文學、無產者、舞臺、物理、物理學、憲法、相對、想象、象征、消防、消費、消化、宣傳、宣戰、選舉、學府、學會、學歷、學士、學位、演出、演說、演習、義務、議決、議會、、藝術、意識、意義、銀行、銀幕、、元素、園藝、原動力、原理、願意、原則、運動、運動場、原子、雜誌、展覽會、戰線、哲學、政策、政黨、支部、支配、支線、知識、直觀、直接、直徑、直覺、直流、制約、質量、終點、仲裁、主動、主觀、主人公、主食、主體、主義、資本、資本家、資料、自律、自然淘汰、自由、宗教、綜合、總動員、總理、總領事、組成、組閣、組合、組織、最惠國、左翼、作品、作物、作者、座談, 無產階級、社會主義、共產主義、共產黨，無線電、發電機、蓄電池、幹電池、電壓、電流,/常識，法律，人權，衛生，文化，科學，自由，留學生，唯物論，亁電池
。。。
Recent entrances into the Chinese vocabulary
人氣，素人，達人，萌，宅男，物語，正太，壽司，天婦羅，優聲，中二病，彈幕 ... ... ...
@@goodgood6688 the kanji is chiense tradioanl words.. The japanese learned the chiense words, and then invented there own language but the characters are inspired by chinese.
@@goodgood6688 这些词真的很好用，不过现在日本不再翻译新的概念而是直接用片假名了
我日本人故、我可能読中国語。多中国人在日本。日本人中国人顔同故、我達家族。日中友好！
君 中国语本当上手
Loved the video :) I am always fascinated by how the languages evolved in relations to each other. I only wish there were less hatred towards each other in the comments (or the real world). All languages and dialects feel equally awesome to me. If only we can look past our differences and conflicts.. this is a video about languages after all. Great job there Yuta for making this vid :D
That is Cantonese. If you read these words in Wu Dialect, it might be more similar to Japanese pronunciation.
Such as Shanghainese
Li Yang 你如果觉得吴语和日语相似的话，说明你日语和吴语都不过关
如果你是闽南语系人，你会发现日语发音和闽南音惊人地相似！
Definitely! I think a lot of languages and dialect rub off each other over the years. There are many similarity in terms of pronunciation and words used. Taiwanese for example, they used to be occupied by Japan in early 1900s. My Grandma still speak and count in Japanese.
As an overseas-born cantonese-hokkien mix chinese, i regretted not learning cantonese by trying to speak it with my father or my relatives on his side. I also regretted not learning hokkien by speaking it with my mother and relatives on her side. Now i can only speak mandarin for chinese, though i can only understand some cantonese and abit of hokkien.
FYI: In this video, they are using...
- *Traditional* Chinese characters, not *Simplified* ones
- *Cantonese,* not *Mandarin* in pronunciation
from the viewpoint of Japanese people like me...
- Most of us can not understand both Mandarin and Cantonese, and can not even distinguish between them.
- We use *Shinjitai* characters which are simplified and based on Traditional Chinese characters, and Traditional ones are relatively understandable for us compared to Simplified ones which are used in most areas of China.
- If they used Simplified Chinese characters for this experiment, we might not be able to even read most of them.
But the word 国（くに）is the same as the simplified Chinese? （国）
@@hugoskl3317 It is but in general, I believe shinjitai characters are not too extreme in their simplifications. Comparing 马 (ma3) to 馬 (うま) or 乐 (yue4) to 楽 (らく) shows how the extent of the simplifications go. But still, about 30% of the simplified Chinese characters match Japanese's Shinjitai characters.
And also, we (the Japanese) used to use traditional Chinese characters until WW2 ended. So we are kind of familiar with traditional ones. For example we know 国 used to be 國, 楽 used to be 樂, 円 used to be 圓, 学 used to be 學 etc. And as a Japanese person, what this Japanese person said is 100% true. We wouldn't have no idea many of the simplified Chinese characters used in mainland China.
"- If they use Simplified Chinese characters for this experiment, we might not be able to even read most of them."
that's right, for example there are some hanzis that have the 目 as a particle, but in simplified chinese....is just a stick with a little spike, i don't think that a japanese person could see that weird looking stick to be related to "see", or "eye"
Daniel Ramos Don’t forget 楽 itself is a simplification of Traditional 樂 (le4/yue4).
Exactly like what you said in the video! Chinese people can guess the meaning or the place name like at the railway station or in a restaurant reading the menu by looking at Japanese text because some kanji are just as traditional Chinese characteristics but the pronunciation is totally different in most of the cases. It's simply two different languages.
Everyone: focused on the language and characters
Me: The guy in the camouflage shirt is so cute
@Rico Ten I totally agree LOL, his friend is hilarious
Both these guys are super cute .
There are other Chinese Dialect such as Hakka, Minnan and etc, that are more closer to Japanese than just Cantonese and Mandarin
That's actually very interesting
Yeah, I speak Taishanese but I understand Cantonese and Mandarin. That’s pretty cool though!
@@ThatJapaneseManYuta I speak Hakka and I can help you if you needed recordings for it. 🙂
I can't verify but that's what I've heard. The Min languages diverged from the other Chinese languages much earlier and is historically located close-ish to Japan on the coast (basically across the strait from Taiwan). It also depends on whether it's 呉音(Go-on)、漢音(Kan-on) or 唐音(Tou-on) tho, as Japanese kanji took influence from China in different eras and from different locations.
@@user-ed9qu5im2y Yes, that is more or less the summary. But despite that, Min languages was also heavily influenced by Middle Chinese at a later period despite diverging earlier. That's why the language have quite a number of words having multiple pronunciations. Some pronunciation is remnants of Old Chinese (白读）, while the other(s) is influenced by Middle Chinese pronunciation （文读）。
Japanese saying Chinese words is funny as hell. 😂😂
I'm speaker of a Latin language, and many sounds of japanese does exist in my language too, so I can easily hear them,it doesn't sound like from another world at all, but Chinese sounds completely different and funny because it has almost indescribably sounds for me, so I think I understand this xD
@@davimag2071 I always said Japanese sounded like a jerky version of Spanish. You kind of proved me right. lol
Its Cantonese to be in fact
@@flonoiisana4647 Actually I'm a Portuguese speaker :) And EVERY sound in japanese (excluding TSU, N, DZU) exist in my language, I think the same is applied for the Spanish.
@@user-ti6ix5tn2o No it's written in Standard Chinese, which is basically Mandarin. The woman is speaking Cantonese.
thank you yuta for bringing this on youtube! More people will find the connections and expand new friendships, we shouldn't be hostile and arguing to each other all the time as neighbors...
I personally find this video really interesting since while I know Mandarin, I don't understand Cantonese. I learned something here today :D
I am Chinese and sometimes I can recognise Japanese characters as well you should try it vice versa
I doubt he'll be going to China to conduct such an experiment and Chinese he'll find in Japan are almost certainly going to be up for the challenge. Unless he gets really lucky and somehow stumbles upon one that has just arrived within a week or so and hadn't studied Japanese before coming over. :)
But interesting idea, yeah. Maybe Asian Boss could do something like this.
@7 Melt Well... Yeah. ...Just FYI - "A lot" is still below 1% of Japan's population. But that's beyond the point anyway. The point is that they're most likely going to be able to guess most kanji because they live there.
How are you using CZcams ?
Chang I heard that CZcams is not available in China so I asked her how she is using it..why are you talking about India in the middle @Chang
@@ManojKumar-id8gj Not all Chinese come from China
Interesting choice to use Cantonese for this, Mandarin has some characters that sound similar to the Japanese characters, but in Cantonese they sound completely different.
toki119 exactly
Vice versa actually
Cantonese is a way older dialect than Mandarin, and when Japan first had contact with China and started importing things like kanji from China the dominant spoken language in China was closer to Cantonese than Mandarin. Likewise it's the influence in similar sounds would go from Cantonese > Mandarin.
Yeah I was expecting Mandarin to but when I heard Cantonese I just completely lost track and had no idea what she was saying
@@user-pm7me3xc2c I mean none of that really matters because mandarin and Cantonese are both gonna sound way different than Japanese besides some loan words from Cantonese to Japanese and Japanese to mandarin. The point of the video is the writing, the pronunciation is just something on the side. He himself wanted to use a mandarin speaker most likely due to it being the most spoken and well known, especially in mainland China. However, if Cantonese sounds closer than I thought then that'd be interesting. The historic you went over is also cool to learn about.
Thanks a lot for this video, it helps me a lot...Now I know the major differences between the two languages...thanks again and Greetings from Italy
I always find it fascinating when people from two different countries in East Asia use English to communicate. I worked in an ESL office in college and the English conversations between Japanese and Korean students were really interesting to listen to.
My fav one is 大丈夫 which means "big husband" or "a real man" in Chinese 😂
At first I was baffled at this. (Am Chinese)
@@mr.kenway4554 哈哈 还有“米国”也好搞笑 意思是美国
@@vladandriyenko2715 The punchline was that Americans don't eat rice.
Oh.
@@mr.kenway4554 yeah, what a pure irony from Japanese side
In Japanese it means "that's okay"
When I first started to learn Japanese, I was able to guess the pronunciations of the Kanji characters most of the time, by just doing a slight change in the tones from the pronunciations in Mandarin or Cantonese to feed into the 五十音.
That was a very amusing video! :)
Very interesting video showing the comparisons.
This is actually something I wondered about good job on the video
Fun fact: words like 時間 (time) and 簡単 (simple) are read in almost exactly the same way in Taiwanese/Hokkien dialect.
Of course, because Japanese borrowed the word from Chinese. It must mean Taiwanese and Japanese preserved the older pronunciation.
Ye, I made that same comment before reading yours ^^
The word 時間 is a Japanese invented word(和製漢語) thats also been exported to China
probably related to how Taiwan was Japanese occupied in 1895
@@fridayimp7784 In fact, because most of the Han people in Taiwan are descendants of Fujian immigrants, the pronunciation of Minnan dialect has been retained.
This reminds me of an interesting experience I had when I went to Japan for an exchange during undergrad. In the beginning I couldn't really speak Japanese or understand Japanese by hearing, but I could understand the general meaning of academic texts because there is a lot of Kanji and the wording used is very similar to formal Chinese. Two of my friends are half Japanese people who grew up in Europe, so they are fluent in speaking but they have a lot of trouble reading Kanji, so I helped them translate the their class readings.
NICE VIDEO 👌🏼 ... I HOPE ONE DAY U WOULD MAKE A PART 2
Interesting topic, thumbs up! I've been wondering this for a long time. FWIW, China mainlanders who speak Mandarin don't understand Cantonese either when it comes to speaking.
I am from Hong Kong and I am delighted to see you used Cantonese!
伊沢翔一 I think Mandarin sounds much better.
@@gahphoo514 Cantonese sounds much better to me as there's linguistically a lot more to it than Mandarin.
@@echelon2k8 But in here should not be using Cantonese pronunciation when you talking two languages' difference. The standardized pronunciation should be used in here. Cuz if not this will make no sense two both language's speakers. Foreigners cant understand or even recognized what you are saying, native speakers will also cant get what did you just said.
@@oliviathescots7770 I don't know exactly what you are trying to say. Standardized pronunciation? You mean Standard Cantonese (標準粵語)?
@@echelon2k8 Standard Chinese. When you only mentioned Chinese, Mandarin pronunciation is the only common representative, if you want not to use mainland Mandarin pronunciation. That's fine, You can even use (中华民国国语）Standard Republic of China (Taiwan)-Chinese even （标准华语） Standard Malay-Singaporean Chinese, they all the same, acceptable Modern Chinese Pronunciation Standards. But Cantonese, no, its a dialect. Or another language that belongs to Sinitic languages if you prefer to think ( For me I prefer this). Cantonese cannot represent Standard Chinese Pronunciation at anytime especially when Cantonese already become an independent concept in Linguistics. That is inappropriate at anytime.
Was nice to see that the general gist of the sentences can be identified, even if the structure is confusing.
Reminds me of when Li Shaoran in Cardcaptors had to look at a Kanji Dictionary in one of the episodes to explain that the Japanese use Kanji differently than people in China.
Yuta San, thank you for the interesting videos, I find that Chinese dialects Hokkien or Taiwanese are the closer to the Japanese, Mandarin and Cantonese are both very far from the sound of japanese, perhaps you can try to use Taiwanese to compare to the sounds of Japanese words.
This would be interesting to watch.
I've always noticed how Japanese seems to have pronunciations/tones that are more similar to Cantonese than Mandarin. Maybe it's just because I know more Canto though. Here are some I can think of off the top of my head: 散歩 (walk/stroll), 握手 (shake hands), 歷史 (history), and things like 中国's "国" (goku vs gok) and 六 (roku vs luk), where there is a distinct 'k' sound that doesn't exist in the Mandarin pronunciations. I'm sure there other better examples out there.
Jp/Can
Apple: Ringo/Pingou,
Suicide: Ji Satsu/Jie Saat,
Death: Shi/Sei,
Sun: Taiyo/Taiyuang,
World: Sekkai/Seigai,
Knife: Nihon(to)/Dao pronounced do
Telephone: Denwa/ Dien Wa
electric car: Densha/Dien chay
There's probably more.
That's because Mandarin has morphed and been diluted a lot by languages related to Mongolian more from middle Chinese than Cantonese has, and Japanese borrows older pronunciations, which is why they sound more similar!
Llyrana Mandarin hasn’t been influenced by Mongolian at all, the variations among Mandarin and other Chinese dialects are natural phonetic shifts that happens when you have a geographically segregated areas in a country as big as China over thousands of years. Japanese Onyomi actually retained a lot of 呉音（吳語區） and 唐宋音（南方官話區）, so it’s most similar to Wu dialects, not Cantonese. Cantonese and Japanese are similar to the untrained ear because they both kept the checked tones, which a lot of other Chinese dialects does too, like Min and Wu, the features which 古官話 up till 19th century and branches like 江淮官話 retained until today, so it has nothing to do with Mongolians at all.
@@TheLivetunercanto is more similar to việt , Thai and taishanese but however the ancient word are more similar to Japanese than mandarin. Canto is much older and usually the word in hokkien that are similar to Japanese will also be alike in canto.
I Want to go home...
我要回家is mandarin. While Cantonese is 我想返屋企。
But 我要回家 is more like I need to go home rather than i want to go home.
@@JLiangYolo it's the same😒
@@kaiven5963 broadly the same but in internet cherry-picking, we concur and compromise to no minor holes lol
@@kaiven5963 It wasn't supposed to be offensive or anything. I just wanted to point out that "want" and "need" are 2 different things. If someone said they "need" to go home, it doesn't mean they want to. Just saying.
@@JLiangYolo返咗屋企
It was quite similar. Please do more!
I'm kinda surprised that none of them recognized 裡 as just another way to write 裏, which is used in japanese and means the same thing
Good call on having a Cantonese person with you. The Chinese that the Japanese borrowed dates back to the time when Middle Chinese is being spoken, which is closest to the languages of modern southern china (especially Cantonese). Modern Mandarin has diverged so much from Middle Chinese in terms of pronunciation.
If you read one of his replies somewhere, he said he initially tried for a Mandarin speaker lol but in a stroke of luck he ended up with a Cantonese speaking volunteer.
Although there are many other comments from Mandarin speakers who are dissatisfied with Cantonese as the Chinese representative, despite the fact that it makes much more sense to use it for comparison here. Not to get too political (they started it first), but Mao's indoctrination seems to be overwhelming effective for the Mandarin speakers to believe that their dialect is somehow superior despite the fact that it existed for way shorter of a time compared to Cantonese.
しゅーおーくらけらん . I’m not sure where you found salty mandarin speakers. All I see in the comments are people saying they were initially surprised he used cantonese since they were expecting mandarin, but that’s not being dissatisfied or anything.
Yuta also wrote in that comment that he would like to try this again but with a mandarin speaker.
Oh there were many. They went further than simply expressing surprise, saying things like "Cantonese is not Chinese" when that's clearly false.
Yuta may want to see what results he gets with a Mandarin speaker as well since 70% of all Chinese now speak it and I understand that.
I think Japanese onyomi sounded closer to Hakka than Cantonese.
@@user-pm7me3xc2c Mandarin dominance didn't start with Mao. It goes way back due to its importance as the official court language. It's been this way for at least 500 years, which is why there are so many variants of Mandarin found throughout the plains. I think someone has been selling you anti-Mao hogwash. There are many things to criticize about him, but this is easily not one of them.
He would have been way more arrogant had he made something other than Mandarin the official language.
日本語字幕が「ふぇふぇふぇ」で笑った
it funny how the japanese for 牛杂拉面 sounds more close with mandarin than Cantonese with mandarin. lol
Not that funny though. Cantonese was never meant to be similar to Japanese from the start. Japanese should sounds most similar to Min Chinese, because that's (some sister or ancestor language of Min Chinese) where the Kanji pronunciation came from.
@@dan339dan um i said it just simply because the video used cantonese, i dont want to offend anyone XD
@@tonyhou1832 I wasn't offended. I was just providing extra facts in case anyone wants to know.
@@dan339dan it's because you started your comment with "not that funny though" which sounds a bit aggressive, like he offended you in some way.
@@dan339dan He's say that the madarin pronunciation is closer to japanese than it is to cantonese.
He's not highlighting japanese similarity to mandarin over cantonese.
More that mandarin is closer to japanese than cantonese, an interesting fact, because the CCP wants to claim Cantonese as just some regional dialect than it's own language.
Nice video. What interesting is, many Chinese people can totally understand Japanese in Kanji form, even for longer sentences. Since we learn ancient Chinese in school as well, to which Japanese has very similar characters and grammar.
Keep making this kind of video, it's very interesting for us east asians.
As a Chinese, it's fairly easy for me to learn Japanese Kanji, although I kept accidentally pronouncing the words in Mandarin in my head! Even as a Chinese, I do think that Chinese characters are really difficult and complicated, so I have great respect for non-Chinese people who are learning Kanji/Mandarin!
@Jacky Phantom i never said japanese is easier
This was very interesting to watch & listen to because several years ago I conducted a similar Chinese to Japanese language test for myself, and it was a big fail. I have a close friend who is an elderly Chinese lady who was originally from Hong Kong who also writes & speaks English very well. I incorrectly assumed that she could be my 1/2 way person to translate letters from Japan & write them to Japan. It was almost a complete fail, similar to the people in this video but coming at it from the other way.
And Yuta, because of my bad language experience I am once again (after 40 years) starting to study Japanese. Can you guess who my teacher is? It's you. And I am enjoying the lessons very much. Thank you Yuta Sensei.
I am Chinese, and this was very interesting to watch! Thank you
When I first time knew that 勉强 is Chinese words 学习 in Japanese, it’s quite interesting, and that kinda make sense to me, since when I study at school, for me 学习 is always a 勉强 thingy to do hahaha . 勉强 in Chinese is to do something force by others or society not something you willing to do
Interesting. 勉强 "benkyou" means study, learning, for school. And as school is mandatory, it is in Japanese too, to do something forced by others or society, not something you willing to do =) Most children hate 勉强
勉強 学習
xué xí
@@user-fl1dc9ju3ghok chap. Not xue xi
The Kanji used in Japanese, since they were borrowed such a long time ago, will be decently recognizable if you’re familiar with more formal chinese. There’s also the issue of words that sort of lost their etymology and are now written with characters for the sound, like 都 meaning “all”. I was actually kind of surprised when I saw an example of this in Japanese, the borrowed Chinese word 歲 being written 才, in Japanese it works because the sounds have merged into “sai” but in Chinese they still sound different.
Would've been nice to try to explain the differences in the meaning of the kanji between the languages and maybe introduce more dialects of Chinese to see how the pronunciations evolved, maybe with Hokkien and Mandarin in addition to the Cantonese 😄
Malaysian Chinese here with Hokkien ancestry learning elementary Japanese 😆
Especially like the Cantonese pronunciation, interesting video
Hope you get to meet a Hokkien/Minnan speaker soon. It is a Chinese dialect and has very very many words similar to Japanese. Most of the older generation from Taiwan or Singapore can surely help you out with that. As a Hokkien speaker it was easy for me to learn Japanese since even most of the hiragana characters had the same pronunciation if you learn about the original kanji they came from.
Also Taiwanese Hokkein took a lot of loan words from Japanese during the colonial era, kinda went both ways in a roundabout way.
Yes
Kenn Tong wah
I think minnan dialect is closer to korean than japanese
It seems similar to English and many European languages too. English uses a few words exactly as Italian or German or French. But sometimes the words are not the same, and I can still tell what the word means by being similar to English.
Same here. I can easily understand most of the kanji Japanese texts when i travel to Japan (I learned Simplified Chinese) . But actually when it’s come to complex sentences, it’s quite difficult to understand😰
Mandarin simplified characters differently from japanese, which also simplified. Some overlap, like country 国 and school 学. I remember a while back seeing the old timey hanja in korean. It kept the original (well, not the original original as that would be round pictographs 😽) 國 국 and 學 각, respectively.
We use both traditional (國 for example is still common in names, calligraphy, and other contexts) and simplified. And don't forget Taiwan, where people speak Mandarin and only uses traditional characters.
That was really fun to watch. When I was in China for the first time and I didnt speak any Chinese I used Japanese characters on a piece of paper to express my thoughts to a stranger on the train. I was able to understand most of the sentences although my Chinese speaking ability is not very good. It's so benri to know Japanese if you want to learn Chinese or Korean ;-D
こういうのは面白いからもっとやって欲しい
4:50 The guy almost tripped himself, LMAO
Actually the case of “I want to go home=I want to return home ” or “我想回家” or “(私わ)家に帰りたい” is very interesting. The interviewees tend to guess 回=turn or around , which it actually have the meaning (which you may also tell from how it looks like, a square inside another square) and in this case the Chinese use the meaning of return. The Japanese “家に帰” is actually equal to Chinese “归家” and归is the simplified version of 帰. 归家makes sense to Chinese people, but seldom used. And it is worth noticing 归and 回 usually use together as 回归 and also means return 😂
that was an easy one they should have gotten. It's literally "I / think / turn around / home". I want to go back home.
plus, we say 귀가(歸家) in Korean. It's also different lol
This is Cantonese not Mandarin/Chinese (the woman voice who pronounce)
He says that in the video that she speaks Cantonese
@@user-jy1cw5gy1x 你又出来丢人了
@Yung Viet it is defined as a language by the un
WangIwan gnmlgb
@@user-jy1cw5gy1x are u civilized？
I remember once when I was in college I was in the computer lab waiting for the latest One Piece translation to be released, and I spotted one of my Chinese friends on another computer reading the non-translated version which was already out. He said he can somewhat understand what's going on even though he didn't know Japanese. lol
I learn Japanese and Mandarin and it was so much fun guessing along with the people in this video, and then comparing the words I could read in Mandarin with how the Cantonese speaker pronounced them.
Learning the 2 languages at the same time is confusing. Better if you focus on one first than learn the other. I suggest you learn Japanese first. Both will need lots efforts. Good luck.
@@kobayashibadger6438 Oh, don't worry, I started Japanese several years before Mandarin and I'm much better at Japanese than Mandarin! But you never stop learning a foreign language and it would feel weird to say "I can speak Japanese" when there's still so much I have to learn. Thank you!
so basically i can speak and read mandarin and while trying to learn japanese, whenever i see kanji my brain instinctively reads it as chinese, how do i overcome this?
The best way I can think of describing this is the fact that I can kinda read Chinese, and if I were to go to Japan again, I'll be able to navigate around using the signs without much trouble. I'm sure it's kinda similar if a Japanese person were to go to Taiwan or something. We can get the gist, but not the meaning.
I think it’s easier for Chinese to understand kanji than Japanese To understand Chinese idk tho
as a Chinese i can say whether you know mandarin or cantonese you can easily travel in Japan and there are too many similar words and even some words are different but you can guess it from Hanzi
Yup. But i still learn japanese to communicate hahhaha
That Japanese dude on the left's voice is deeper than my depression
He's soooo handsome
That's like almost every japanese man Lmao, but that's not true for me... But his voice/him was close
His voice was so sexy. @_@
@@lucasguo9299 yes
At 0:50 I don't think that second Hanzi exists?
I tried to find it by writing 九木隹 and couldn't find anything. Also intestines is written 肠/腸 and pronounced cháng (Mandarin) or co̖eng (Cantonese)
Edit: After further research I found out that 雑 is a Japanese variant of
杂 (simplified) =
雜/襍 (traditional)
and isn't really used in China
文字の羅列見れば意味はなんとなく分かるってすごいな。
発音は違うのに。文字は偉大。
I speak Cantonese and am learning Japanese and thought this was really interesting. Always wondered what Japanese people think when they try to read Chinese haha.
Ever since I started studying Japanese, I've always felt Cantonese and Japanese has similar pronounciations, as a lot of onyomi was taken from Middle Chinese, which Cantonese is related closer to pronounciation wise compared to Mandarin for instance. Like 太陽 (taiyou vs taiyeung) 簡単 (kantan vs gandan) 国旗 (kokki vs gokkei) and 出発 (shuppatsu vs chutfat)
I've always found it easy and fun to learn Japanese vocab because I can relate to the Cantonese pronounciations.
You should do a part 2!!
Exactly! It's so interesting learning Japanese and Korean as a Cantonese speaker because a lot of the vocab just instantly clicks.
Definitely! I'm pretty sure this is because the pronunciation of many Cantonese words are similar to ancient Chinese pronunciations which is where the Japanese people took inspiration from. I live in Hong Kong but I only speak a bit of Cantonese (but can completely understand it) so it's also fun to practice my Cantonese on the way
Yeah! I noticed like manzoku and mun5 zuk1, muteki and mou4 dik6, zettai and zyut6 deoi3
@@jmeslau Munfivezukone?
Korean is even more similar to Cantonese with these words you mentioned
I'm learning Japanese as a chinese but some kanji are confusing to me that I will read it into chinese instead of japanese
I want to see one episode where you read it in "shanghai dialect" in the end. I feel like the pronunciation would be much closer.
広東語は大方発音が違うので、日本語の音読みと比較したときに日本語vs北京語プラスで北京語vs広東語の差異のダブルのズレでいまいちピンとこない実験になってしまってますね。
@@user-ls1bv4pi9w 「多謝」は北京語(Mandarin)でも正しい用法ですよ
The way they look when the speaker talks in Cantonese is sending me
Love this kind of street survey about different langauges that at least look similar.
i can learn korean hangul because the alphabet it’s easy to write, but japanese, chinese and others like thai are too hard for me 😔 props to people who can write that
Nice hearing Cantonese :)
I think Japanese words of Chinese origin in general sound closer to their equivalents in Wu Chinese compared to either Cantonese or Mandarin due to how a lot of cultural exchanges between the two countries took place around the Wu region of China which makes sense geographically-speaking. It would have been more interesting if this was done with a Wu Chinese speaker instead, although the use of simplified Chinese would make it less decipherable (of course there are a few exceptions like the character for "country" which is similarly written in both Japanese and simplified Chinese while the one in traditional Chinese is more "conservative" which is the one that was actually shown in the video).
No dialect is close enough. Wu lost many finals, even more than Mandarin, eg 商店 is pronounced saanti, even if some words are closer to modern Japanese, eg Japan is formally pronounced Nyi’pon (informally Ze’pon).
1:46
"The House Returns"
Sounds like a bad 70 horror film
They said "the house turns."
@@mirzaahmed6589 still sounds like a bad 70s horror film
1:38 how is that chinese lul? it's jia1 not ga2, I'm so confused with this and it's repeated later too :F
I am a Cantonese native speaker and I can also speak Mandarin/English fluently. I can write traditional Chinese letters, but I can only read simplified Chinese letters. I am learning Japanese right now, the most difficult parts to me (of learning Japanese)are hiragana and katakana, I wish there are more Kanji in Japanese one day, coz it is quite easy for me to recognise Kanji ^^
不要勉强 means ‘don’t force it’ in Mandarin Chinese as opposed to ‘no need to work so hard’.
"Don't force it" means virtually the same as "no need to work(try) so hard", doesn't it? just different wording.
Not really. I don’t think they are synonymous
broto de feijão it’s the same characters except that the characters in the clip are in traditional Chinese characters. Actually they are same in both simplified and traditional characters
@@jort93z actually when someone tells you 不要勉强, you probably don't even need to have a try.
It is more like you don't need to force yourself which is kinda different to "no need to work so hard". No need to work so hard would mean you should still work but can take it easy. Meanwhile,不要勉強 is more like you can just drop or abandon the thing you are forcing yourself to do. Not even taking it easy. Just leave it
Very interesting experiment ! I can tell you that, if you do the same experiment with Chinese speakers reading Japanese writing (in Kanji), the result will be the same. Through your experiment, I can see that the Japanese understand Kanji just as good as the Chinese do. But Kanji is just a writing system, Kanji is not the Chinese language itself. And it is because the Japanese language is so different from the Chinese language, that is why we cannot always understand each others writing, although we use the same writing system. I did not realize this before I studied Japanese language.
Thank you for the video. It's something I've been curious about. As a Chinese person, I've noticed that we often have the ability to guess the content of Japanese news articles by looking at the Kanji characters in the headlines. After watching your video, I speculate that Chinese people might find it somewhat easier to infer the meaning of an article by reading the Chinese characters in Japanese texts, compared to Japanese individuals understanding articles written in Chinese.
This reminds me of when my Japanese friend and I would write sentences in Chinese and Japanese, then trying to figure out what the sentence meant by reading the kanji
I love this! The relationship between Chinese and Japanese is complicated. The languages are in completely different families so syntax and grammar is completely different. In vocabulary however, there are similarities, but its not straight forward. Japanese adopted Kanji for words which they already have sounds for like water for example 水 = shui (chinese) = mizu (Japanese)....on the other they also adopted vocabulary with the sounds which changed over time: sun 太陽 = taiyang (Chinese) = taiyo (Japanese). The use of cantonese is interesting because in some respects, it is closer. Cantonese is closer to middle Chinese, which is the language that influenced Japanese. On top of that, Cantonese uses the traditional script which is closer to Kanji (but not always!) i.e. 太阳 (Chinese simplified)
Those 2 guys were so funny😂
Traditional Chinese with Cantonese💪
I know Japanese and Mandarin so it was really funny to watch. I can mostly read it (it was in traditional) but the Cantonese sounded completely different to Mandarin. Actually I watched this video because the thumbnail had Chinese but I was trying to read it in Japanese because I know Yuta is Japanese , 勉强 is a more common word in Japanese and I didn't notice the slight difference in the character at first, and I was really confused because my mind kept reading it in Chinese, then I saw the title and was thinking 'oooh I get it!' :D
Just wanna clarify a thing. There's no language called Chinese, since China has hundreds of dialects and languages. Neither Cantonese nor Mandarin can represent the linguistic diversity of China.
yes but I think Chinese actually refers to the words, Chinese sure have different language and way of pronouciation across China but use same vocabulary and grammar structure, accept Cantonese which have a bigger difference
@@ML-mx4tv Grammar and vocabulary wise Cantonese doesn't have the biggest difference with Mandarin. Certain Hokkien dialects are probably more different. But my point is there's no unified language called "Chinese", as these dialects are different enough to be considered as their respective languages. Mandarin is just the official language.
no your giving false statements, chinese is the offical language in china, and the offical language in china is mandarian which is chinese, however, in the video, they are using cantonese. 所以你是从哪儿找的错误观点？别用错误的知识误导人好不好？
@@SixtySixVideo The officially spoken dialect in PRC, ROC and Singapore is Mandarin. But in terms of Chinese linguistics, there's no official dialect. Please respect regional differences and do not mess up linguistics with politics.
@Jacky Phantom Japanese is a language isolate, and that means it's neither Austronesian nor Chinese.
I think the Kanji writing system can be comparable to the Roman alphabet used by many European languages. The British have also borrowed the Roman writing system (as well as many Latin words) into their English language just like the Japanese did with Kanji. The English speakers may understand some of the Latin writing, but not always. When it comes to complex sentences in Latin, it is very difficult for English speakers to understand without knowing the Latin language itself.
wow cantonese! rare af! thx 4 noticing yuta lol
This was very interesting! My Chinese is very poor and I don't remember that many characters from Chinese class when I was a kid, but when I started learning Japanese I found it helpful that I already knew some kanji. For example, I already knew 大 (dà) means large in Chinese so I just had to remember a new pronunciation (dai) in Japanese. And I already know the rules for stroke order from Chinese so I didn't have to learn them from scratch. Whereas people who don't have prior knowledge of Chinese characters have to remember the meaning, the pronunciation, and the stroke order.
I also noticed that the cards were written with traditional characters (e.g. 國 instead of 囯), which makes sense since that's how they were for a long time, and simplified characters were only introduced relatively recently in Mainland China. So it makes sense that kanji use the traditional forms. But I'm wondering - are there any Japanese kanji that have adopted the simplified form?
Actually sometimes Japan use 国 instead of 國.
The Japanese have simplified Kanji on their own in 1946 and are called 新字体 (shinjitai). The Kanji for kuni or koku is usually written 国 instead of 國, other examples are 学 instead of 學. I suppose he used the non-simplified Chinese characters because modern simplified Chinese characters often differ much more from the shinjitai used in Japan than traditional Chinese ones.
Here's one example. 机 is a simplified form of 機. They mean the same thing in Mandarin, but mean different things in Japanese. I don't really know if 机 was adopted, though.
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/機
@@MMSCBF In traditional Chinese, 机 & 機 were separate characters. 机 was used interchangeably with 几 （which meant Small Table). But after they simplified, they merged both different meanings into a single word, 机。This situation is similar to the 後 and 后。
@@simonlow0210 Ah interesting! Would make sense that Japanese would import before-simplification-era characters for their use and retain their meanings.
Like italians reading latin. Some words are right, but meaning is lost.
Exactly.
Arena for example is sand (sabbia) but we use it to indicate the fighting ring because Latins had gladiators fighting on the sand.
I really like your t-shirt! One Piece is amazing!!!
Is the woman with you from Hongkong or Guangdong？ She's not speaking a standard Chinese but Cantonese which is totallay different from standard Chinese