The origins of Japanese words -
12-13-2007, 09:40 AM
I named this words instead of language, I'll make a topic for Japonic language classification later.
Japanese language classification has something to do with this topic, but this topic is more specific.
For now, the question in on the word Kago.
かご(kago) has several meanings in Japanese.
From wikitionary:
1. 篭, 籠: basket, cage
2. 駕篭, 駕籠: palanquin
3. 加護: divine protection
4. 過誤: fault, mistake
5. 訛語: nonstandard pronunciation
All right, these Kanji were taken from China to represent what was already in the Japanese tongue, taking the kanji equivalents to what their words meant and applying the kanji that meant the same thing to them. Meaning that Japanese and Chinese are related through writing system both not necessarily through tongue. In fact according to linguists it's highly unlikely that Japanese spoken language and Chinese spoken language are in any way related.
So what is likely?
Apparently Siberian/Korea/Altaic is the most.
That Japanese is some sort of Altaic language and Korean is as well.
All right, but that's not the point of this here topic. The thing is I'm looking to see where outside of Japan the word Kago might come from and exist. Yes it's Japanese but all languages come from somewhere. Kago certainly isn't a Chinese word(no surprise there), it doesn't sound very Korean either. I put the word Kago in google and mostly find Japanese links. Not much with google finding anything non-Japanese in origin of the word.
Even if you can't find me a non-Japanese origin of the word, I would like to know more background on it. For now, this is the Japanese word I'm most interested in, I may ask more later though.
Help please?
Q: Who cares what other people think?!?!
A: Japanese people do.
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