I think it's because we transcribe the languages discussed into the Latin alphabet.
If you hear the languages spoken, they sound nothing like each other.
Japanese words and names sound African (2022)
111–115 of 115 posts
Re: Japanese words and names sound African (2022)
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fair; though I didn't say it's impossible, just unlikely :) Japanese words starting with "p" still exist, but they tend to be loanwords (pokemon = pocket + monster) or onomatopoeia (pachinko = pachin + ko). Thinking of it now, pokapoka is also a word, but again, an onomatopoeia.
What about パクリ? and ぽっかり?
Those belong to the "onomatopoeic" stratum; you can form e.g. ぱくり・ぱっくり・ぱくぱく・ぱくっと.
Re: Japanese words and names sound African (2022)
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are also many native Japanese onomatopoeiae using an initial p sound. Interestingly enough, if we're at Pokémon, Pikachu's name is influenced by the onomatopoeia /pikapika/ which means to shine, sparkle or flash. But if we look at the original pronounciation of the Japanese verb 光る/hikaru ("to shine"), it would have been pronounced /pikaru/ in Old Japanese, so it looks like the onomatopoeia has re-established i…
The Pikachu name is also partly derived from the pika, a small rabbit-like mammal native to Asia and North America.
The pika is an obscure (yet barely interesting...) rabbit thing with no cultural salience, whose most noted features are its alarm call and lack of visible tail, nor are its names pronounced much like the pika in Pikachu in the languages Japanese has much exchange with. Pikachu is explicitly a rodent (a "mouse" with some squirrel inspirations) designed in the early 90s with none of those features.
This claim seems profoundly unlikely.
Re: Japanese words and names sound African (2022)
#114Yoruba is a tonal language like Japanese. There are a lot of similarities and Japanese isn’t nearly as alien to Yoruba speakers as it is to English speakers.
Re: Japanese words and names sound African (2022)
#115> People who pay attention to politics are probably familiar with the late Senator Gyang Nyam Shom Pwajok. Names can’t get more Chinese than that! That does not even remotely sound Chinese. Korean, maybe.
Gyang Nyam definitely sounds Korean (thanks to that old meme), but then Shom Pwajok is less discernable -- it's like a hint of Thai or some other southeast Asian language.
I would have guessed Shom Pwajok was a Polish Jew.