Why Does Finnish Sound Like Japanese? đ«đź đŻđ”
VloĆŸit
- Äas pĆidĂĄn 10. 05. 2024
- Hey guys! Welcome to another video where today we will be talking about the Finnish and Japanese language, more specifically, how they sound similar. Obviously the languages of Finnish and Japanese aren't related, however they share a lot of linguistic features that make Finnish and Japanese sound related. Make sure to leave a like and subscribe if you enjoyed and watch my Finnish video all about the Finnish language! Let me know what other type of content you'd like to see, specifically a Japanese video! (Also sorry for the audio it got bugged and I couldn't fix it)
Socials:
/ polyglotmouse (Coming soon...)
/ polyglotmouse (Also coming soon...)
Shoutout to @LingoLizard for direct inspiration for this video!
0:00 - Intro
1:03 - Phonetic Inventory
2:34 - Vowels
3:16 - Syllable Structures
4:33 - Typology
5:00 - Ural-Altaic Languages
6:02 - Outro
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This video contains material that is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (CC BY-SA 3.0).
The original audio clip was created by Vassilik.
To view a copy of this license, visit creativecommons.org/licenses/...
No modifications were made to the original video
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This video contains material that is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 Generic License (CC BY-SA 2.5).
The original audio clip was created by marsian.
To view a copy of this license, visit creativecommons.org/licenses/...
No modifications were made to the original video
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use. No copyright infringement intended. ALL RIGHTS BELONG TO THEIR RESPECTIVE OWNERS
#language #viral #comparison #linguistics #japanese #finnish #finland #japan #languageanalysis
No. It doesn't
Yup, it's definitely subjective. Hope you enjoyed regardless!
@@PolyglotMouseur mom
*Mongolian throat singing*
@@PolyglotMouse I did. Your channel is great. đ
@@PolyglotMouse cope
We actually have popular jokes making fun of how japanese sounds like:
What do you call a japanese car repair shop?
Hajosikotoyotasi = hajosiko toyotasi = did your toyota break down
(Edit: I had no idea this kind of jokes were so universal)
Lol that's hilarious!
The Hungarian variant of the joke:
How do you call the Japanese car mechanic?
Cheregumi Hamaroda = csere gumi hamar oda = replacement tire [put] fast there
We have many of these too :D
My favorite is the Japanese bachelor: Maradoka Magamura (I remain independent)
@@Csibe_Hapsi does gumi mean tire by any chance? Because kumi means rubber in Finnish
@@romeolz Yes, like gummy. It's the same word, we use it for tires as well.
@@Csibe_Hapsi huh, i only knew of the cognates mez=mesi and kez=kÀsi but cool to see that there's more
The only way it sounds similar to me is the rhythm of it, but tbf, I do speak Japanese, so I'm hyper aware of all the very non Japanese characteristics of Finnish.
They actually do sound similar, but the accents definetely give it away, if one was to speak in others language it would probably be hard to tell they are
I've seen a CZcams video with the audience trying to guess which languages an American polyglot was speaking. Although spoken correctly, there was an American accent to all the presentations, which made the exercise quite a bit harder.
Vowel length does matter in Japanese in the exact same way as the Finnish example you gave. This comes up all the time but one common example is ăă« (building) ăăŒă« (beer).
Yup, completely missed that. Thanks for letting me know!
But what about pitch accent? Finnish doesn't have pitch accent
even in native words
äžç ("sekai", world) vs æŁè§Ł ("seikai", correct)
@@abarette_ I don't think ăă is the same as ăăŒ even if the sound is identical (which is also debatable). But also, äžç is a æŒąèȘ, a native word would be like äž(ă).
@@abarette_ These aren't native words, but Chinese loanwords. A better example would be something like ăć©ăă (obaasan, or grandmother) and ćæŻăă (obasan, or aunt).
Sentence structure can also be surprisingly similar at times.
I definitely should've included that!
Japanese: SOV
Finnish: SVO
Yeah, they're so similar
My friends hear Karelian singing for the first time and ask me, what (Chinese) dialect is this
They are not Chinese, right?
I dont think your friends know what chinese sounds like
@@turkoositerapsidi They are Chinese. I think the reason is that Karelian runo chants stress all syllables equally. They sound like garbled Cantonese
@@Qiyunwu I see. But shouldn't they understand something, or they just thought it was too unclearly said? Thanks for info tho.
@@turkoositerapsidi The mutual intelligibility between Chinese languages is poor enough that (sung) Karelian becomes Chinese-passing
Finnish according to me: monotone
Japanese according to me: âïžâïžâïžâïž
But isnt Japanese monotone too?
@@cheerful_crop_circle please read the ACCORDING TO ME part
I have been thinking the same and i actually live in finland đ
Glad to see I'm not the only one lol
I really liked the comparison between Finnish and Japanese, they have a lot of phonology in common, the intonation is similar. They are Asian Altaic languages. The sounds "in,on, en, an, un" the sounds "ka, Ke, ki, ko, ki,ku" "ta, te, ti, to, tu". I'm just talking about phonology and phonetics, there are even more interesting ones that build bridges between the 2 languages. I'm not surprised at all that Japanese passed through Siberia before reaching the Japanese islands, and the Finnish language left Siberia for the Scandinavian peninsula and never stopped being an Asian language. Cool video, I really enjoyed it.
đđđđđđđđ
Thanks, this means a lot!
@@PolyglotMouse You are affectionate and loving, welcoming, I liked your way, preserve it all the time, it is beautiful, very humanđ€đđ«đżđđ„
@@Hrng270 Thanks, I have no words... This is genuinely an amazing comment! Keep being yourself and doing good in the world!
@@PolyglotMouse thanks Bro blessings for us all.
idk about sounding similar but they do have a lot of same words but they just mean different things examples:
Kita
finnish: jaws
japanese: north
Hana
finnish: tap
japanese: flower
Kani
finnish: Bunny
japanese: crab
Kutsu
finnish: invitation
japanese: shoes
Kasa
finnish: pile
japanese: umbrella
tori
finnish: marketplace
japanese: bird
nami
finnish: sweets
japanese: wave
risu
finnish: twig
japanese: squirrel
sora
finnish: gravel
japanese: sky
taru
finnish: myth
japanese: barrel
Thanks for the thought out response, this is very interesting!
Between almost all languages you can find more or less identical words with different meanings. There is nothing surprising here.
All these same words exist, for example, in Russian, but there they also mean something completely different.
kakka
Finnish: poop
Japanese: excellence
@@dmytrosukhov4076 disagree. not true. give me examples what those mean in russian because i couldnt find any translation
kita (ĐșĐžŃĐ°) - genitive/accusative case of the word whale (kit / ĐșĐžŃ)
hana (Ń Đ°ĐœĐ°) - (slang, impersonal) it is doomed, it is hopeless, it's the end
kani is available in "tkani" version (ŃĐșĐ°ĐœĐž) - fabrics
kutsu / kutsyi (ĐșŃŃŃĐč) -
short (in terms of stature, length, size, clothing size)
I've learnt Japanese when I was younger and am learning Finnish now! It does surprise me when I listen to Finnish words and question if it is actually Japanese instead, thanks for solving my question which I've been overthinking for months!
Glad to have helped and I'm happy you enjoyed!
Metsuri
I haven't learned Japanese but I've been learning Finnish for 9 years, and I've never thought they sound even close.
You pronounced "tuli" as something like "thuli" and "tuuli" as "thuyli". It is very strange how anglos struggle with these things.
Accent and different phonetic inventory all play a part, but I'll make sure to pronounce it better next time!
I admit that I found the long vowels and double consonants a challenge at the beginning, but it didn't take long to get used to it. I probably still pronounce them wrong sometimes but it's definitely not that hard.
@@corinna007 But.... you already have vowel length distinction in English. That's how you distinguish "ship" from "sheep" and đ© from "sheet".
I'm always mystified how, when Anglos start learning a new language, they suddenly forget some very normal things that their very own language does. It even happens to Jackson Crawford who's a trained linguist.
@@PolyglotMouse If your background is english, you could pronounce it as "too - ly" as it will make close to exact same sound.
Yes, in English they pronounce hard consonants always with a soft H. T as (Th), K as (Kh) and P as (Ph), and their R is already soft.đ€·đ»ââïž
stops are plosives are interchangeble. It's not because plosives have a puff of air and stops don't. In fact, Japanese stops /p t k/ have more aspiratition than finnish stops /p t k/.
Really?
One thing about Japanese is that it used to have vowel harmony just like Finnish, but then it dropped its front vowels and hence it no longer needs it.
As a Finn learning Japanese, I've always found the language highly intuitive compared to something like Russian or Mandarin. The first thing that immediately popped up at me was how many similar words there are. Just off the top of my head:
Kasa - 'pile' in Finnish, 'umbrella' in Japanese
Aki - masculine first name in Finnish, 'autumn' / feminine first name in Japanese
Kana - 'chicken' in Finnish, feminine first name in Japanese.
If you ignore the pitch accent, the Japanese vowel consonant pairs, the Japanese 'r'/'l' sound being a mix of both, and couple of the more out there Finnish vowels, they're not all that different phonetically. Which is crazy considering there's seemingly no relation between the languages. And don't even get me started on the cultural similarities between the two countries.
Pitch accent actually isnt that much different from stress
Yup, the similarities are too shocking to ignore!
I always make the joke that Japanese and Italian made a baby and their baby's name is Finnish đ
As an Italian I agree with youđ
its obviously a stretch to say they sound the same but some words do sound pretty japanese
the spoken version of katsoa is katoa which sounds especially japanese when you conjugate it in the te imperative form (katokaa)
the imperative forms of odottaa sound pretty japanese too (odota, odotakaa, etc) although in spoken finnish its usually shortened to oota
The pitch accent of Japanese makes it sound slightly distinct as opposed to Finnish which doesn't have a pitch accent
The colloquial version of "katsoa" is "kattoa". "Katoa" is the imperative form of the verb "kadota" (to disappear).
Likewise "kattokaa", "odottakaa".
â@@tis9531 since you mentioned "disappear", the informal imperative version of that in Japanese is æ¶ăă
or "kiero" which also means "crooked" in Finnish and is pronounced the same minus the pitch accent
There's actually a word in Japanese that is pronounced "Odotta" (èžăŁă) it's the past form of "To dance".
@@tis9531 Then there are different ways different dialects can say those like "katsoa" being said "kahtoa".
Example from my life of local variations: When I was on like 7th or 8th grade in school, the Finnish homework had word "Sanko" in it and I had absolutely no idea what that meant so I went to ask my mother what that word meant and she didn't know it either. My little brother that is 2 years younger also got curious and he had never heard of that word ever before either.
After we had been trying to figure it out for maybe 15 minutes, my mothers new partner came in and asked what we were talking about and then he was like "Are you joking?" and my mother got annoyed at him that we are not. He then said that it is "ĂmpĂ€ri" on other name and then we figured it out. None of us had ever heard that they call "Sankko" "Sanko" in the southern Finland.
We were even thinking that could it be typo that it was supposed to be "Sinko" = "Rocket launcher" or "Sanka = "the frame/earpiece of eyeglasses/handle".
Both languages lack prepositions and definite/indefinite articles, which I believe is one factor what rhythms the Indo-European languages differently. In Indo-European languages, large proportion of the subjects, predicates and objects consist of two separate parts, at least in English this is the case.
Another phonetic feature is that in both Japanese and Finnsih short wovels and elongated vowels are not pronounced as diphthongs, and when we want to make a diphthong, it's more clear. Starting with one properly pronounced vowel and then transforming into another, with the exception of letter "i", which can be sometimes pronounced similar to letter "y" in English (e.g. whey, nay, yet). And since front and back vowels are regarded as completely separate vowels in Finnish, you have to have the mouth already in the right shape when you start pronouncing/voicing each vowel. English is more "lazy" in this aspect, and many of your short vowels sound like diphthongs to Finns. I'm pretty sure it's the same for Japanese because when they try to mimic a foreign accent, beside the pitch pattern and stress, that's what they change on their pronunciation. Good example of this difference is how you pronounced 'tyuuli' instead of 'tuuli' on this video. It's only a short beginning of that elongated vowel but it still sounds wrong to native speaker. How you pronounced that word is easily understandable but it's these kinds of dipthongs that give a strong foreign accent to your Finnish.
Hey thanks for the thoughtful comment! I have never actually studied Finnish, and I only learned the pronunciation through looking at a IPA chart, so that's why it didn't sound correct. I definitely want to study it in the future!
Dont Japanese particles work similarly to prepositions and articles though?
@@cheerful_crop_circlePrepositions? Yes. Articles? No.
@@PolyglotMouse Indian Pale Ale charts?
can you talk about how portuguese sounds like russian to the uninitiated
You mean The portuguese from Portugal
Exactly because Brazilian Portuguese doesn't sound anything like Russian. But sometimes the grammar is a bit similar. The grammar structure.
Put it on my list!
@@alonzoperez2470Correto, o nosso portuguĂȘs Ă© "Syllable timed" (Eu sei lĂĄ como falar isso em portuguĂȘs kkkk) enquanto o te Portugal Ă© "Stress timed" tipo inglĂȘs.
Ural-Altaic is not abandoned as a convergence zone however. There was real contact between these in the old days, even if they weren't related.
I'm a Finn and have always secretly hoped that Finnish and Japanese would be related languages. I've always thought there are some similarities. The similarities are more in the singular words than on anything else.
There are so many Finnish-sounding words in Japanese as a consequence of how the syllables in the latter are always formed with either a single vowel (a, i, u, e, o) or a consonant followed by a vowel (ka, ki, ku, ke, ko etc.), plus the abundance of double consonants.
I studied the language up to a conversational level a few years ago and discovered a few words that (purely coincidentally) sounded a lot like their Finnish counterparts:
ăă sei = syy (fault, with some imagination you can probably hear the similarity here)
éăă kasaneru = kasaantua (pile up, add up)
èŠăăż kurushimi = kĂ€rsimys (suffering, again a bit of a stretch but yeah)
ăăŁă· kippu = lippu (a train ticket)
Plus the way the "no" particle is sometimes in casual speech shortened to a "-n" suffix that's identical to the genitive suffix used in Finnish. An example of this could be äżșă柶 oren chi = mun koti
And let's not forget the really common, casual-ish interjection ăăŒ nee~ which reminds me of how Finnish people also tend to insert "Nii!" or "Nii-i!"' into casual conversations.
In the end those are still just funny coincidences, and while the grammar and sound of both languages is very similar at times, there's really nothing more to it IMO. Finnish and Japanese are vastly different and unrelated languages in the big picture.
Thanks for the interesting comment! I love learning more about these two languages
The ă thing is used and almost pronounced exactly like the Portuguese word "NĂ©" (Contraction of "NĂŁo Ă©").
@@kakahass8845 oh yeah definitely! I'm actually living in Portugal atm due to exchange studies and I hear people using né in conversations almost every day
You should of used finish words with skoinen and asuwa sounds which does sound more like Japanese than the audio you used
Japanese can create consonant clusters and consonant endings in only 3 ways (and they don't exceed more than 2 consonants next to each) :
1. With the sound "n" like in the words "riNGo" and "niNGeN"
2. With geminate consonants/consonant length like in the word "Nippon" and "kekkon"
3. With vowel devoicing where the vowels "i" and "u" get devoiced between voiceless consonants or at the end of words like in for example "ichi" being pronounced like "ich" and "yakusoku" being pronounced more like "yaksok"
Yes, this is more or less what I explained, but I didn't fully go in depth, thanks for the comment
I don't think ă quite qualifies as a consonant
it only releases between vowels (ć šćĄ "zen'in", everybody), otherwise it's more like a purely nasal sound, kind of like a /m/ with no release
I guess it is sometimes released before fricatives like /z/ (ććš "sonzai", existence) or /É/ (è«èšŒ "ronshou", proof) but ehhhh that seems like assimilation more than anything
â@@abarette_ Yeah true. It is more specifically a MORAIC nasal consonant because the Japanese language is spelled syllable by syllable or mora by mora because there arent symbols that represent individual consonants and "n" is the only exception
â@@abarette_ That is distinct about Japanese writing (specifically Hiragana and Katakana) because there arent symbols/characters that represent a single consonant sound. Everything represents either a consonant + vowel or a single vowel. I dont know if there are other languages that have a similar syllabic/moraic writing system. Maybe there arent
@@cheerful_crop_circle pretty sure Greenlandic languages use a similar syllable-based writing system, though much more artificial
0:00 Yes. Yes.
Hey guys! I'm back with another video regarding Finnish, but this time with Japanese! Make sure to leave a like and subscribe if you enjoyed and let me know what other types of videos I should do next!
(Sorry for the audio btw it bugged and I couldn't fix it. Next video is going to be great...)
As a Finn I can't see it
Finally someone said it
I'd say your pronunciation of Finnish "talon" sounds more like "tÀlon", with an /Ê/ sound. Otherwise there isn't anything too notable in the pronunciation, at least nothing that I notice.
Thanks for the input!
@@PolyglotMouse Except for the fact that the stress should be on the first syllable if any, as you mentioned previously in the video. Also your vocal length for a is like short and a half there. It's difficult, no hard feelings ;)
Can you please do a full analysis of the slovene language. It would mean a lot to me
I'll put it on my list!
@@PolyglotMouse thank you so much, ill be the first one to watch it
saying finnish sounds like japanese is clickbait, the better wording (which you used in the video) is that they have surprisingly many similarities. I have heard that finnish is much easier for japanese to pronounce.
I love the Altaic Sprachbund
My guess (before watching the video): the low number of consonant phonemes and relatively low amount of consonant clustering. (EDIT: Couple of minutes into the video, I guess I should've mentioned also that both languages have 2 lengths for most phonemes but somehow I forgot that.)
Japanese actually has a lot of consonant phonemes (way more than the Austronesian languages for example)
@@cheerful_crop_circle I'm not sure that's the case. Looking at the Wikipedia pages for the phonologies of these languages I get 13 consonants for Finnish and 18 consonants for both Japanese and Malay/Indonesian. So Japanese doesn't seem to have that much more consonants than Finnish and about the same as the biggest Austronesian language.
Of course, you can get a bit different results depending on the way you count. I didn't count phonemes that are rare and only occur in some loanwords (like [b], [g], and [f] in the case of Finnish) and I didn't count affricates as individual phonemes (but rather as combinations of two consonants).
@@seneca983 Well , then maybe Im dumb
Altaic moment
I have been learning Finnish and Japanese at the same time, so sometimes I get confused đ„čđ€
vowel length is important in japanese tho đ
also no idea what you mean by "only double kk can appear at the end of a syllable" that makes no sense
It was an example of what could appear at the end of a syllable
Isnt it important in Finnish too?
â@@cheerful_crop_circleDefinitely it is. Consonant doubles are as well. I am suomi so I know about it.
Video gave example of tuuli, tuli. But there is more. Tuuli, tuli, tulli. Tiili, tili, tilli. Taakka, taka. KylÀ, kyylÀ, kyllÀ. Uuni, uni. Tali, talli.
All complete different words. Also different vowels of a Ă€ o ö u y (y is same as ĂŒ in Deutsch or Eesti), words: talli, tĂ€lli. Hame, HĂ€me. Työ, tuo. Different pronunciation and different meanings unrelated.
Finno-korean hyperwar
Hey, did you know that Japonic language family is isolated language family only exists in Japan unlike Germanic or Romance languages are spoken across many countries???
Yeah , Japanese is only similar to the other Japonic languages. It doesn't have similarities with languages that arent Japonic (except Chinese because of borrowed loanwords and characters)
So ? What does this have to do with this video?đ Even Finnish has no familiarity with the Germanic or Romance languages, it's not even an Indo-European language for that matter.
We did have an Australian politician refer to Nokia as a Japanese company in a derogatory fashion once but then our politicians are often idiots.
As Estonian I would say there are many similar words and pronunciations. That's also the reason I am learning the language :P
This was liked by Altaic language family enthusiasts.
I here them
Can you do Norwegian next
I put it on my list, although it may take a while!
I think you should make a video comparing Serbo-Croatian and Japanese , because they kinda sound similar too
No no, I actually do see the similarities. Never thought two languages so different from eachother would sound similar in some way. Really cool video! Looking forward to your future content.
Thanks a lot!
I have same feeling with Hungarian and Korean.
Regarding phonetic inventory and your comment "Honestly, for two completely unrelated languages, there's a big bag of similarities", I beg to differ. There are only about ten consonant sounds remaining, with the bulk very common cross-linguistically.
When I first heard of the name Kimi Raikkonnen I thought he was Japanese
That is because of the agglutination. Both are agglutinative languages and have consonant length/geminate consonants
RÀikkönen*
Every time I hear this comparison I shake my head. I have heard Finnish since I was a child since I had many Finnish friends here in Sweden. I was also a fan of anime. Those who think they sound similar would most likely not hear difference between turkish, hebrew, arabic and farsi. Or any African languages for that matter.
So overall, do you think they sound similar?
It could honestly be subjective. A lot of Finns say that they think they sound similar and that there are jokes about the similarities. Linguistically, they have a lot of similarities, but when you know the differences, then they will stand out more. I just find your examples hilarious because they are so different from each other. At least Finnish and Japanese have some similarities, even if it's coincidental
@@PolyglotMouse Finnish and Japanese are even more different than those neighboring countries. I see no similarities at all between Finnish and Japanese.
@@cheerful_crop_circle no
I'm sure if you look hard enough you could say any language sounds like any other language.
Yes. Because they are all human languages
Hungaryan
Tokaj -tokyo
Toyota -Toyota
Szuzuki - Suzuki
Baka - baka
Naphon -Nihon, nippon
There is a connection proto Turanoaltaic-sumer-aryan(middle pre-jurassic hungaryan)
I think only similar is when they speak a letter or with K its so obvouis same sounds other than that nothing else. Finnish sounds more italian for me.
In my opinion the two languages are completely different. Completely different sound systems. Only a couple of words can be considered similar to Japanese, that is, for example, jotakuta, jousi, haarukka or jorottaa
Perhaps Japanese sounds more similar to some Austronesian languages like Maori or Hawaiian or maybe some African or indigenous/tribal languages (perhaps Swahili)?
Also maybe Ainu?
@@cheerful_crop_circle Ainu reminds Japanese a lot in sounding but I suppose it is because of the influence that has been lasting for centuries
@@chorronmekhlug2666 Korean also sounds very similar to Japanese
@@cheerful_crop_circle Not at all in my opinion. Completely different sound systems: in Korean aspiration occurs often and closed syllables are more common, there are more vowels (which do not have length difference as in Japanese) and consonant clusters. Both languages have the yo ending (in Korean it occurs especially often because it is the verb ending of the "polite" speaking style), that can make the expression they sound similar
Finnaly someone hears it not just me /A swedish person.
Finnish sounds like a Japanese with Italian intonation
Make one with mandarin chinese and vietnamese
Comparing them or a profile on each of them?
@@PolyglotMouse compare them like this video. I live in Taiwan and I'm curious to compare another tonal language to mandarin
@@hayabusa1329 I think there was a theory that tonal languages were an areal feature that originated with mostly unrelated languages being in contact with each other.
Cantonese sounds much closer to Vietnamese than Mandarin does.
non-linguists hearing foreign languages for the first time...
Pretty sure you don't have to be a linguist to hear differences in a foreign language, although you may not be able to pinpoint why that is, thus is the reason I created this video
This channels gonna blow up, itâs too high quality to not have a high chance of being dragged into the algorithm.
That honestly means a lot to me! Thanks so much đ
"In Japanese vowel length isn't important"
Meanwhile Japanese: ć°ć„ł and ćŠć„ł differ only by vowel length.
Well , vowel length in Japanese is very important (especially when compared to other East Asian languages like Korean and Chinese that dont even have vowel length)
@@cheerful_crop_circleYes I agree did you not see the quotation marks around the first sentence?
@@kakahass8845 BTW , does the combination of vowel length and consonant length give a certain language a different rhythm/cadence compared to languages that dont make distinctions between short and long vowels, and short and long consonants?
@@cheerful_crop_circleI don't think so but this is too subjective in my opinion.
Vowel and consonant length objectively make a certain language sound different, but in my opinion, rhythm comes down to accent and phonology
1:04 you can hear the similarities, right? No, I cant. At all. đ
Wdym?
it doesn't sound alike at all what do you mean? well i guess that's because i speaK NIHONGO. well finnish sound like ancient chinese
No, they don't sound similar at all. I only know a few simple words and phrases in Japanese, but I've been learning Finnish for about 9 years. But even as a beginner, it never crossed my mind that the two sound remotely similar.
Could you make a video to why Turkish and Hungarian sound similar?
I put it on my list!
I don't hear similarity...
To my ears, Finnish sounds nothing like Japanese at all. Korean, however, totally sounds like Japanese to me (I don't speak either); the accents and the syllable structure sound quite similar, even though the vocabulary is totally different. So my rule of thumb is, if something sounds like Japanese to me but there is no "wa" and no "-masu" anywhere to be heard, then it's probably Korean.
I have always thought that Japanese sounds more similar to Russian (or the other Slavic languages like Serbo-Croatian, Macedonian and Bulgarian) than it does to Korean.
@@cheerful_crop_circle Why? East and South Slavic languages have way more consonants than Japanese.
@@ronin667 The similarity is mostly in the vowels and certain phonetics, because they all have only 5 vowels and certain phonetics are similar
â@@cheerful_crop_circle The perception probably depends on what your native language is. When I hear Russians speaking German, I notice they tend to diphtongize a lot, like "ye" instead of "e", "uÉ" instead of "u" and "oa" instead of "o", something that Japanese speakers don't do. Also, slavic speakers tend to pronounce postalveolar fricatives way more in the back of the mouth than Koreans or Japanese.
@@ronin667 Russian people pronounce "e" like normal "e" without palatalization/sounding like "ye" or "i" like normal "i" without sounding like "yi". Russian speakers mostly palatalize and soften in their own language. When it comes to Russians speaking other languages, they dont palatalize and dont use mitigation at all. I dont know where you got that impression (it also depends on the individual accent). As for the the other thing you said , yes , you are right that Slavic speakers pronounce sounds more from the back of the throat/mouth compared to Korean and Japanese speakers
Finnish and Japanese sounding vaguely similar hardly give any credence to the altaic theory as none of the other languages in the group sound similar to either of them
Cheese
They actually both belong to the super mega Altaic family encompassing Uralic, Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, Koreanic, Japonic and Inuit too because why the hell not
I also didn't know where to put Mapudungun so let's put it in there too along Georgian and Basque
đ€Ł
The most similar languages to Japanese outside of Japonic, are Korean and Ainu. No other language is similar to Japanese. Because of the Kanji, it is similar to Chinese
Well I have heard a Chinese person speaking Finnish, and thought that she's speaking Japanese.
Really?
lmao, lmao, lmao, lmao, altaic, lmao, lmao
I can speak Japanese and they don't sound similar at all to me, have also seen a video saying Russian and Japanese sound similar which is just wrong, but idk it might sound similar to a person that doesn't speak Japanese nor Finish
Yes I feel like once you speak either you can hear the differences more than the similarities, although I've had Finns comment that they think they are similar!
@@PolyglotMouse that's very interesting, i don't know how Japanese sounds similar to Finish for Finns
Russia is the only country that borders Japan so Russian in some ways has more similarities with Japanese than Finnish
@@cheerful_crop_circle Poland and Germany are Very close to each other same as iraq and Iran, do they have similarities in language?
Nope they don't
@@Abu_theaf Polish and German are both Indo-European and Arabic has a lot of influence from Persian and the other way around
TURANâŒïžâŒïžâŒïž
/jk
I think Finnish sounds more like Chinese
Ok
Not enough sibilant affricates.
It doesnât.
Not really. I've been following Japanese CZcamsrs, artists and bands for many years. Still, I don't have a clue, how to understand and speak even a little. Kanpai = kippis, kawaii = nÀtti. That's all...
No, no. I didn't mean that you could magically understand the other if you spoke one, but rather they sound the same when spoken. Sorry if I didn't make that clearer
But... They don't sound alike at all
Your profile picture is a Russian from the movie Snatch
@@cheerful_crop_circle yea
Well, Finnish is a language from Asia, so that makes sense.
Even there were some linguists that claimed Ural-Altaic language family theory in which they said Finnish and Japanese had a common ancestor, although it's completely denied nowadays.
Finnish and Japanese can sound similar only to people, who know about 2 languages, American and Gibberish.
F.e. Finnish has 8 vowels, and it uses A LOT of diphthongs, while Japanese has only 5 vowels, and it uses NO diphthongs at all.
Russian has only 5 vowels and it barely uses diphthongs too
@@cheerful_crop_circle Actually, Russian has 6 or even 7 vowels. In addition to a, e, i, o and u it has "Ń". The 7th one is similar to Finnish Ă€ (ae) and has no sign of its own. It appears very rarely, like in words pyat' (5), and "blyad''" (ho).
@@forgottenmusic1 So the seventh vowel in Russian is actually "y"?
@@cheerful_crop_circle The 6th, "Ń" is usually Latinized as "y". Words like ty (you sing.), vy (you plur.). What is confusing, is that if Latinized for English, y can be either that vowel, or the consonant marked j in other languages than English.
@@forgottenmusic1 What about Serbian? I think Serbian has exactly the same 5 vowels like Japanese and doesn't have diphthongs just like Japanese.
Finnish doesn't even have [b] and [g], unless you count [p] and [k] which are what English speakers mean when whey write and , but they don't aspirate their written [p] and [k], like in English, so bussi (bus) and pussi (bag) sound the same.
"b" and "g" exist in Spanish
@@cheerful_crop_circle Spanish is not Finnish though.
It sounds a bit Japanese and at the same time like Polish/Russian sounds.
Not really, I think if anything it's probably similar sounding to Italian but even that's a stretch
I understand Japanese so they sound nothing alike to me.
tÀmÀ on jumalanpilkka! huono video!
I donât hear similarities actually. Finnish sounds more like russian and japanese⊠is japanese.
Well , some people say that Japanese sounds like Russian or Bulgarian
@@cheerful_crop_circle I speak some russian and very very little japanese and i donât think they are similar. Many russian words to me sound similar to english and italian (the italian one must be because of the latin influence).
@@chiarapavone780 Well , they are either from Latin influence or the common Indo-European connection. Russian itself sounds very different from Japanese but Japanese itself sounds kinda like Russian
@@cheerful_crop_circle I donât agree.
â@@chiarapavone780
Russian - Japanese with a Slavic accent
Japanese - Russian with a samurai/ninja accent
Spanish - Japanese with a Spanish accent
Japanese - Spanish with an East Asian accent
Suomi sounds like German a bit
Not that much. But I am suomi so I don't see for that reason.
These two languages sound absolutely different.
barely even similar what
No, these languages do not sound alike.
So they sound very different just as they are very different when they are written?
Spanish sounds more similar to Japanese than Finnish to me.
Because both have the same 5 vowels
Interesting. But Finnish was supposed to be a viking language
as a Finn, WTF are you talking about
@@Madippadibabas Finnish was supposed to be a viking language if the vikings had conquered Finland.
@@alonzoperez2470 What do you mean by supposed? The language developed in the Ural mountains around 5000 years ago, far from any Viking influence. Even in an alternate history timeline where the Vikings had conquered Finland, it would still be a Finno-Ugric language, not Indo-European like Old Norse or Swedish.
@@Madippadibabas wait I thought Swedish was a Germanic language. Meh.
@@alonzoperez2470 it is, Germanic is a subgroup of the IE language family.
as japanese i agree sound like similar but also like similar austronesian bantu italian greek language but not related Cuz swadesh list
wiktionary/wiki/Appendix:Finnish_Swadesh_list
wiktionary/wiki/Appendix:Greek_Swadesh_list
wiktionary/wiki/Appendix:Italian_Swadesh_list wiktionary/wiki/Appendix:Japanese_Swadesh_list wiktionary/wiki/Appendix:Korean_Swadesh_list wiktionary/wiki/Appendix:Standard_Mandarin_Swadesh_list wiktionary/wiki/Appendix:Swahili_Swadesh_list
wikipedia/wiki/Liste_Swadesh_du_kikongo
wiktionary/wiki/Appendix:Maori_Swadesh_list
I canât put URLs on CZcams