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Japanese words and names sound African (2022)

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Re: Japanese words and names sound African (2022)

#11

Post by shiomiru »

retrac wrote: post #2

Because the Bantu languages (most prominently: Swahili) and Japanese have similar sound systems. Finnish is also oddly similar-sounding, or Hawaiian. None of them are actually related. It's because the syllable is restricted in the number of possible forms, in a similar way. (And they all have approximately five vowels. And a pitch accent.) In Hawaiian, nothing but consonant + vowel syllables are possible. Swahili an…

Nit: pokatokaino is unlikely to be Japanese, since word-initial p has morphed into h during the centuries. But it works if you turn it into, say, t.

Anyway, I think there's another factor: the common alphabet we transliterate these languages to is quite limited. I suspect the similarities become less obvious if you use something like the IPA, which has better universal correspondence between sounds and letters (i.e. doesn't reduce every sound to the same ~26 symbols).

Re: Japanese words and names sound African (2022)

#13

Post by quinnirill »

retrac wrote: post #2

Because the Bantu languages (most prominently: Swahili) and Japanese have similar sound systems. Finnish is also oddly similar-sounding, or Hawaiian. None of them are actually related. It's because the syllable is restricted in the number of possible forms, in a similar way. (And they all have approximately five vowels. And a pitch accent.) In Hawaiian, nothing but consonant + vowel syllables are possible. Swahili an…

Pokatokaino is indeed not a Finnish word, but contains multiple: Pokat - slang for sunglasses, Kato - slang version of katso (look), Toka - slang version of toinen (ordinal second), Kaino - timid/coy.

Finnish has umlauts though, so quite a lot of words don’t sound like the mentioned languages so much.

Re: Japanese words and names sound African (2022)

#14

Post by fjdjshsh »

shiomiru wrote: post #11
retrac wrote: post #2

Because the Bantu languages (most prominently: Swahili) and Japanese have similar sound systems. Finnish is also oddly similar-sounding, or Hawaiian. None of them are actually related. It's because the syllable is restricted in the number of possible forms, in a similar way. (And they all have approximately five vowels. And a pitch accent.) In Hawaiian, nothing but consonant + vowel syllables are possible. Swahili an…

Nit: pokatokaino is unlikely to be Japanese, since word-initial p has morphed into h during the centuries. But it works if you turn it into, say, t. Anyway, I think there's another factor: the common alphabet we transliterate these languages to is quite limited. I suspect the similarities become less obvious if you use something like the IPA, which has better universal correspondence between sounds and letters (i.e.…

That's a good point. Latin letters map to a big number of IPA sounds. I think this is specially true with consonants. Vowels, however, might be the same. For example, Spanish has five vowels (a, e, i, o, u in IPA). Japanese also has five IPA vowels and only the "u" is different in IPA

Re: Japanese words and names sound African (2022)

#15

Post by District5524 »

retrac wrote: post #2

Because the Bantu languages (most prominently: Swahili) and Japanese have similar sound systems. Finnish is also oddly similar-sounding, or Hawaiian. None of them are actually related. It's because the syllable is restricted in the number of possible forms, in a similar way. (And they all have approximately five vowels. And a pitch accent.) In Hawaiian, nothing but consonant + vowel syllables are possible. Swahili an…

Speaking of similar sound system of Finnish and Japenese, I think we should highlight the discredited language family claim of Uralic-Altaic, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ural-Altaic_languages You can still find tons of other theories of "what else could be related to Uralic"... So far, no African languages were included in these theories. But that's probably just a question of time and politics (and definitely not linguistic research...)

Re: Japanese words and names sound African (2022)

#16

Post by kagevf »

fjdjshsh wrote: post #14
shiomiru wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nit: pokatokaino is unlikely to be Japanese, since word-initial p has morphed into h during the centuries. But it works if you turn it into, say, t. Anyway, I think there's another factor: the common alphabet we transliterate these languages to is quite limited. I suspect the similarities become less obvious if you use something like the IPA, which has better universal correspondence between sounds and letters (i.e.…

That's a good point. Latin letters map to a big number of IPA sounds. I think this is specially true with consonants. Vowels, however, might be the same. For example, Spanish has five vowels (a, e, i, o, u in IPA). Japanese also has five IPA vowels and only the "u" is different in IPA

I don't know IPA, but Japanese e and Spanish e are also different. Spanish e is like English A in "ace", Japanese e is closer to English "eh".

Re: Japanese words and names sound African (2022)

#17

Post by jameshart »

shiomiru wrote: post #11
retrac wrote: post #2

Because the Bantu languages (most prominently: Swahili) and Japanese have similar sound systems. Finnish is also oddly similar-sounding, or Hawaiian. None of them are actually related. It's because the syllable is restricted in the number of possible forms, in a similar way. (And they all have approximately five vowels. And a pitch accent.) In Hawaiian, nothing but consonant + vowel syllables are possible. Swahili an…

Nit: pokatokaino is unlikely to be Japanese, since word-initial p has morphed into h during the centuries. But it works if you turn it into, say, t. Anyway, I think there's another factor: the common alphabet we transliterate these languages to is quite limited. I suspect the similarities become less obvious if you use something like the IPA, which has better universal correspondence between sounds and letters (i.e.…

Japanese does allow for word initial P in loan words, like Pokémon, so the sound isn’t impossible in Japanese. And pachinko is a Japanese word.

Re: Japanese words and names sound African (2022)

#18

Post by fsckboy »

quinnirill wrote: post #13
retrac wrote: post #2

Because the Bantu languages (most prominently: Swahili) and Japanese have similar sound systems. Finnish is also oddly similar-sounding, or Hawaiian. None of them are actually related. It's because the syllable is restricted in the number of possible forms, in a similar way. (And they all have approximately five vowels. And a pitch accent.) In Hawaiian, nothing but consonant + vowel syllables are possible. Swahili an…

Pokatokaino is indeed not a Finnish word, but contains multiple: Pokat - slang for sunglasses, Kato - slang version of katso (look), Toka - slang version of toinen (ordinal second), Kaino - timid/coy. Finnish has umlauts though, so quite a lot of words don’t sound like the mentioned languages so much.

>Pokat - slang for sunglasses, Kato - slang version of katso (look), Toka - slang version of toinen (ordinal second), Kaino - timid/coy

sounds like if you give it a shy 2nd look through these glasses, in the dim light it works as a word!

Re: Japanese words and names sound African (2022)

#20

Post by fsckboy »

jkuria wrote: post #4

btw, there was once a consular official who worked at the Japanese embassy in Kenya, whose name was Mr. Kuma Moto. Every time he was introduced, it was hard for folks to suppress their laughter as the name literally meant "hot vagina" (in Kiswahili the noun goes first)

seems like the Kumamoto oysters might prove a popular appetizer there
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