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What Chinese looks, feels and sounds like when you're from Korea or Japan (2009)

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Re: What Chinese looks, feels and sounds like when you're from Korea or Japan (2009)

#71

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

kazinator wrote: post #53
Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m afraid that you misunderstand the chronology. The development of the writing system in Japan postdates the Yayoi immigration by several centuries at least. The original immigrants from mainland Asia brought no writing system with them. Japanese writing is the result of later adoption of Chinese writing by Japan’s learned elites. Any introduction to Old Japanese orthography will explain how this happened.

I'm afraid you're fishing for assertions in my comment which are not actually there. For one thing, I make no remarks about any writing system at all, let alone any specific timeline regarding the development of literacy.

Even without attributing the Chinese writing system to the immigrants from China, your post above does not contribute to the discussion. Japanese is genetically unrelated to Chinese and typologically different from it. What the Yayoi immigrants from the mainland originally brought with them bore no resemblance to the Chinese language. That the Japanese were able to use Chinese words and Chinese characters for their own purposes and some similarities between the two languages arose as the OP mentions, has absolutely nothing to do with pre-Proto-Japonic speakers coming from the mainland. All that meaningful Chinese–Japanese interaction happened many centuries later.

Re: What Chinese looks, feels and sounds like when you're from Korea or Japan (2009)

#72

Post by lifthrasiir »

throwaway66554 wrote: post #68
AlchemistCamp wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd say the best way to learn would be Japanese, Korean, then Chinese (what I did). Why? I speak Chinese and used to be fluent in Japanese. I find my Chinese (and English + katakana) a huge help when visiting Japan in recent years. What's your rationale for this ordering?

Because when you learn Japanese, you have to learn kanji, the more traditional strokes (non-simplified), both Japanese and Chinese sounds, and the grammar is closer to Korean (and closer pronunciation for a lot of words). So, it's better to learn Japanese, quickly pick up Korean, then learn Chinese. Chinese last since you have to learn simplified characters, the grammar is different, tonality is quite different, etc.

> kanji, the traditional strokes (non-simplified)

Uh, both Japan and Chinese use different simplified glyphs. And they overlap a lot because they are different standardizations of handwritten glyphs in the bigger Sinosphere. I would be surprised if you indeed learned the traditional characters while learning Japanese.

Re: What Chinese looks, feels and sounds like when you're from Korea or Japan (2009)

#73

Post by danans »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #70
danans wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the latest thinking is that all people of Japan to varying degrees are descended from the Jomon people along with other populations migrating from mainland Asia over millennia. This pattern - early hunter gatherer populations forming the substratum that later mixed with larger migrations of agricultural populations - is not unique to Japan. It's quite similar to what you find in the paleogenetics and history…

My understanding of more recent European population studies is that the genetic signature of the pre-agrarian hunter gatherers is actually quite low. In general they were displaced rather than merged. Or their numbers were so low and diffuse that their contribution was little. Which makes sense when you consider population densities possible/typical in a hunter gatherer vs agrarian lifestyles. We're back to populatio…

10% of the average Briton's ancestry (for those without recently migrated ancestors) is attributable to West European Mesolithic hunter gathers. That's a pretty significant chunk, suggesting both migration and mixture happened, and not diffusion or replacement.

From https://www.nhm.ac.uk/our-science/our-work/origins-evolution...

"When we look at genetic variation in modern British people today, we find that – for those who do not have a recent history of migration – around 10% of their ancestry can be attributed to the ancient European population to which Cheddar Man belonged. This group is referred to as the western European Mesolithic hunter-gatherers. However, this ancestry does not relate specifically to Cheddar Man or the Mesolithic population of Britain. Well after Cheddar Man’s death, two large-scale prehistoric migrations into Britain produced significant population turnovers13. Both of these migrations into Britain represented westward extensions of population movements across Europe10-12. In both cases, these migrating populations intermixed with local people who carried western European Mesolithic hunter-gatherer ancestry, as they moved across Europe. When these populations arrived in Britain they already had some hunter-gatherer ancestry derived from this mixing with local populations. Therefore the majority of western European Mesolithic hunter-gatherers ancestry that we see in modern British people probably originates from populations who lived all over Europe during the Mesolithic, which was carried into Britain by these later migrations."

Re: What Chinese looks, feels and sounds like when you're from Korea or Japan (2009)

#74

Post by lifthrasiir »

chaostheory wrote: post #63

imo Traditional written Chinese (what the Japanese call Kanji and that's used outside of China) is easier than simplified written Chinese. While hand writing traditional Chinese is harder, more complicated characters are made of other characters with a related meaning. Consequently, you can guess what the word means. Conversely with simplified, there less sub characters, so there's a lot of lost context. Easier to wr…

I'm not sure what you mean: are you claiming that...

> While hand writing traditional Chinese is harder, more complicated characters are made of other characters with a related meaning.

..."traditional" characters (which do not equal to Japanese Shinjitai!) is easier to write but harder to read, or...

> It's easy to read simplified, but not so great the other way around.

...it's easier to read but harder to write?

There is some truth in your claim: simplification does discard some context and can be harder to read. But that's only the case for irregular cases (notable example being 漢 to 汉). In many cases they are highly systematic and phono-semantic roots are preserved (e.g. 訁 to 讠, so no information is lost), or characters are so frequently used that you will have to memorize anyway (e.g. 飛 to 飞). Pronunciation-based simplification (e.g. 後 after, behind to 后 empress) is debatable, but it also tends to occur in frequently used characters.

Re: What Chinese looks, feels and sounds like when you're from Korea or Japan (2009)

#75

Post by z2 »

throwaway66554 wrote: post #68
AlchemistCamp wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd say the best way to learn would be Japanese, Korean, then Chinese (what I did). Why? I speak Chinese and used to be fluent in Japanese. I find my Chinese (and English + katakana) a huge help when visiting Japan in recent years. What's your rationale for this ordering?

Because when you learn Japanese, you have to learn kanji, the more traditional strokes (non-simplified), both Japanese and Chinese sounds, and the grammar is closer to Korean (and closer pronunciation for a lot of words). So, it's better to learn Japanese, quickly pick up Korean, then learn Chinese. Chinese last since you have to learn simplified characters, the grammar is different, tonality is quite different, etc.

Doesn't the order matter only if it's harder to do this the other way around?

Anecdotally for me, learning Chinese first with simplified characters was totally fine, and without formal study, I can read traditional characters fine 90% of the time and guess a remaining ~8% of characters I don't immediately recognize for a total ~98% comprehension, kind of like figuring out how to read medieval gothic font.

Knowing Chinese, learning Japanese and its own simplified characters (shinjitai) was a breeze compared with my classmates who struggled especially with kanji, and also pronunciation. Until I compare hours with a native Japanese speaker learning Chinese, it's hard to tell if learning Japanese, then Chinese would have been easier or not.

Re: What Chinese looks, feels and sounds like when you're from Korea or Japan (2009)

#76

Post by ms1234rth »

If you know Turkish (or any Central Asian language barring Tajik[not familiar with Persian adjacent languages]), learning Japanese is a breeze because you can translate a Turkish text into Japanese word for word and out comes a perfectly constructed Japanese text. Obviously, it works in the other direction as well.

I remember trying to learn Japanese through Russian and having hell of a time untill I came across a Japanese textbook written in Turkish.

If you are from Central Asia, you can leverage both of your languages (native Central Asian & Russian) for learning English. It's better to learn English through Russian untill it's time to learn the English tense system at which point you can swith back to your native Central Asian as Russian is not very amenable for learning the English tense system whereas the tenses(rather aspects?) of C.A. languages line up with that of English in almost one to one manner. Thinking about the English tenses through the "Russian mind" was a nightmare untill I realized I already know the tenses through my native Kazakh.

Mathematicians never shy away from throwing everything at their disposal at a problem. Acting like them speeds up language acquisition process considerably.

Re: What Chinese looks, feels and sounds like when you're from Korea or Japan (2009)

#77

Post by naniwaduni »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #17
Tade0 wrote: post #2

That Japanese Man Yuta has a great video demonstrating just how much Chinese script do ordinary Japanese folk understand: https://youtu.be/rzJqXd-1dEU

The first question is funny because the pronunciation of the last 2 characters (拉面 - lamian) is why Japanese call Chinese noodles 'ramen'.

Japanese uses an alternate simplification (麺) for the sense of noodles, and doesn't merge it with 面. Generally you wouldn't expect Japanese person to have exceptional difficulty recognizing 拉麺, though.

Re: What Chinese looks, feels and sounds like when you're from Korea or Japan (2009)

#78

Post by throwaway66554 »

lifthrasiir wrote: post #72
throwaway66554 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because when you learn Japanese, you have to learn kanji, the more traditional strokes (non-simplified), both Japanese and Chinese sounds, and the grammar is closer to Korean (and closer pronunciation for a lot of words). So, it's better to learn Japanese, quickly pick up Korean, then learn Chinese. Chinese last since you have to learn simplified characters, the grammar is different, tonality is quite different, etc.

> kanji, the traditional strokes (non-simplified) Uh, both Japan and Chinese use different simplified glyphs. And they overlap a lot because they are different standardizations of handwritten glyphs in the bigger Sinosphere. I would be surprised if you indeed learned the traditional characters while learning Japanese.

>Uh, both Japan and Chinese use different simplified glyphs.

Wrong. Though there are divergences, Chinese in mainland China use simplified Chinese characters (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Chinese_character...).

Kanji is more closely related to the traditional Chinese characters (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji#Local_developments_and_d...) than the mainland simplification.

>I would be surprised if you indeed learned the traditional characters while learning Japanese.

Kanji is closer related, or exactly the same as traditional Chinese characters (used in HK, Taiwan, etc.) than simplified.

Re: What Chinese looks, feels and sounds like when you're from Korea or Japan (2009)

#79

Post by chillacy »

thrwyoilarticle wrote: post #50
stanrivers wrote: post #5

This is interesting; I studied Korean in college / lived there for a bit. Randomly, met a Chinese woman there, who actually lived in the States, and we got married after we both moved back to the States. If I could do it over again, I would learn Chinese before Korean or Japanese. My Chinese friends who learned Korean learned it way faster than any western learner. Japanese students learned Korean even quicker than t…

>Japanese students learned Korean even quicker than the Chinese students - in addition to using Chinese words, Japanese and Korean have the same grammar structure ( Subject Object Verb ) whereas Chinese and English are different (Subject Verb Object) I've never found this a convincing reason as to why a language is difficult to learn. Word order is learned once while vocabulary, speaking and listening need to be lear…

I think you're hinting at the fact that all language acquisition ultimately boils down to vocab acquisition for the long tail to mastery.

As for why people complain about vocab, it's probably because the dropout rate for language learning is huge (look at the completion rates on duolingo or popularity of beginner resources vs intermmediate vs advanced). By the numbers I suspect most learners are struggling with grammar, and most will drop out before "finishing" with grammar and being left with the long tail of vocab.

Re: What Chinese looks, feels and sounds like when you're from Korea or Japan (2009)

#80

Post by winter_blue »

ms1234rth wrote: post #76

If you know Turkish (or any Central Asian language barring Tajik[not familiar with Persian adjacent languages]), learning Japanese is a breeze because you can translate a Turkish text into Japanese word for word and out comes a perfectly constructed Japanese text. Obviously, it works in the other direction as well. I remember trying to learn Japanese through Russian and having hell of a time untill I came across a Ja…

How close are Turkish and Japanese? I know there is a proposed "Altaic language family"[1], but I'd love to hear the perspective of someone who actually knows two such languages.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altaic_languages

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