The origins of Japanese words

[DragonShade]

　　It's written on my high school text book that Japanese is the descendent of people of Qin dynasty who immigrated to it. だから、沢山の漢字を保たれたと思う。それに、あの時 、漢字の発音は今と違う。日本語の漢字は古い発音かも しれない。漢字の意味は中国の古語のと大体同じです。 （P.S僕は中国人です、何か違うなら、教えて下さい。下 手な日本語、悪いな、ただ３ヶ月勉強してから）　XD

[anrakushi]

Originally Posted by DragonShade

　　It's written on my high school text book that Japanese is the descendent of people of Qin dynasty who immigrated to it. だから、沢山の漢字を保たれたと思う。それに、あの時 、漢字の発音は今と違う。日本語の漢字は古い発音かも しれない。漢字の意味は中国の古語のと大体同じです。 （P.S僕は中国人です、何か違うなら、教えて下さい。下 手な日本語、悪いな、ただ３ヶ月勉強してから）　XD

i agree with what you said about the kanji, since it is the sae thing as what i said. haha

is your text book talking about 日本語 or 日本人 because i would say both are incorrect.

The Japanese didn't have a written language until some time after the 5th century AD. the Qin Dynasty was from 221-206 BC. Had people from the Qin gone to Japan as your book says, isn't it not likely that Japan would have had a written system much earlier than the 5th or 6th century AD?

From what i have read it was through korean buddhist monks that the chinese characters were introduced and later through trading with china.

a quick look around the internet shows that people were in Japan during the stone age and there have been various migrations since. the Qin dynasty was well after the stone age. the jyoumon, who had been in Japan from the stone age, and the yayoi, who came to japan through the korean peninsula around 2400 years ago. it is most likely the two groups intermingled. note that this would have happened before the Qin dynasty so even if it was chinese that came through korea is was before that time.

[Nyororin]

The question you`re asking is fundamentally the question that most linguists in Japan ask... And cannot answer.

The fact is, the exact origins of most of the Japanese language is a mystery. The roots of specific words can sometimes be traced, but in general, the older the word the harder it is to be sure... And there are a LOT of theories out there. In the end, it comes down to a lot of guesswork, so reaching a consensus is hard to do.

[Kanji_The_Wanderer]

Originally Posted by Hatredcopter

Here's my Japanese mini-tip of the day.

"go" or "語" translates to 'language' or 'word'. Therefor, nihongo/日本語 is Japanese. Furansugo/フランス語 is French. Doitsugo (from Deutsch)/ドイツ語　is German.

"jin" or "人" translates to 'people'. Nihonjin/日本人 is Japanese people. Kanadajin/カナダ人　is Canadian people, and so on.

It is rather strange that we choose not to use the native word Nihon for Japan, but that tends to happen to many location names across the world. This is most likely due to the fact that Portugal was one of the first western nations to make contact and trade with Japan.

So you are saying that Japan is called Japan due to a cultural mistake? What I don't understand is, wouldn't the Japanese people want everyone in the rest of the world to call their country Nihon like they do? If a word was used to describe my country that doesn't exist in my language, I know that I would want to have it corrected....Since most people their country is what they care about the most...

Originally Posted by kireikoori

So you're saying that in the process of Japan adopting the Chinese writing system, they also incorporated a lot of Chinese words into their language as well, not just the writing system?

Makes sense. Though surely less than half of Japanese words are Chinese in origin.

Oh yes, during my studies of Asian culture in High School, I found out that the Japanese adopted over 30,000 characters/symbols from the Chinese language. Over the years, the system has changed and has become much more unique. Someone who knows Eastern culture well, can tell the difference between Japanese and Chinese writing, a long time ago, it was much harder.

[82riceballs]

Originally Posted by kireikoori

Hmm...Ga Ho actually sounds a little bit similar to Kago. But Jia Hu sounds nothing like Kago. Unsurprising, considering neither Japanese or Korean are Sino-Tibetan languages.

The reason Jia Hu sounds nothing like Kago is because "Jia HU" is modern mandarin. The pronunciation "Kago" came from ancient Chinese, which sounds almost nothing like modern Mandarin (what most people think is the only type of Chinese). The Japanese imported Kanji from China during the Tang Dynasty (golden age of China) for the Buddhist scriptures that the monk Xuanzhang got from India, so modern Japanese pronunciations of kanji sound more like ancient Chinese than modern mandarin. Got it?

[DragonShade]

Originally Posted by anrakushi

i agree with what you said about the kanji, since it is the sae thing as what i said. haha

is your text book talking about 日本語 or 日本人 because i would say both are incorrect.

The Japanese didn't have a written language until some time after the 5th century AD. the Qin Dynasty was from 221-206 BC. Had people from the Qin gone to Japan as your book says, isn't it not likely that Japan would have had a written system much earlier than the 5th or 6th century AD?

From what i have read it was through korean buddhist monks that the chinese characters were introduced and later through trading with china.

a quick look around the internet shows that people were in Japan during the stone age and there have been various migrations since. the Qin dynasty was well after the stone age. the jyoumon, who had been in Japan from the stone age, and the yayoi, who came to japan through the korean peninsula around 2400 years ago. it is most likely the two groups intermingled. note that this would have happened before the Qin dynasty so even if it was chinese that came through korea is was before that time.

Wow , that really opens my eyes. What I said above is commonly believed by Chinese people.

[anrakushi]

Originally Posted by Kanji_The_Wanderer

So you are saying that Japan is called Japan due to a cultural mistake? What I don't understand is, wouldn't the Japanese people want everyone in the rest of the world to call their country Nihon like they do? If a word was used to describe my country that doesn't exist in my language, I know that I would want to have it corrected....Since most people their country is what they care about the most...


Oh yes, during my studies of Asian culture in High School, I found out that the Japanese adopted over 30,000 characters/symbols from the Chinese language. Over the years, the system has changed and has become much more unique. Someone who knows Eastern culture well, can tell the difference between Japanese and Chinese writing, a long time ago, it was much harder.

i think you missed the point of the topic, we are not talking about Japanese taking the Chinese writing system. this is something i believe everyone should know here if they are studying Japanese. we are talking about them taking the pronunciation of the words into their language.

If you read my explanation for the name of Japan you would see it was not a cultural mistake. I personally prefer that my country has different names in different countries. Even if we used the correct names do you realise how hard that would be to pronounce. not many people in western countries without chinese background can even pronounce Shanghai correctly. they read it as if it was a word in our own language so it is pronounced incorrectly. this is essentially how the names for China and Japan came about, from taking what the people or ruling dynasty is called and then it slowly fits into the English language better but over time the sound has changed. this is the evolution of language and words.

as for your point about people calling your country a name you understand in your language, my question is what does it matter? if they are talking to you they will use English and therefore call countries by their English name. a Chinese person is not going to call America 美国 "mei guo" when speaking English. Just like when i speak Japanese to Japanese people I say
日本 "nihon" so you would never have to worry about what other people call your country in their own language unless you speak it also.

[anrakushi]

Originally Posted by DragonShade

Wow , that really opens my eyes. What I said above is commonly believed by Chinese people.

I'm glad I could help don't be surprised if you find some more differences in the future

[kireikoori]

Originally Posted by 82riceballs

The reason Jia Hu sounds nothing like Kago is because "Jia HU" is modern mandarin. The pronunciation "Kago" came from ancient Chinese, which sounds almost nothing like modern Mandarin (what most people think is the only type of Chinese). The Japanese imported Kanji from China during the Tang Dynasty (golden age of China) for the Buddhist scriptures that the monk Xuanzhang got from India, so modern Japanese pronunciations of kanji sound more like ancient Chinese than modern mandarin. Got it?

I figure all languages change over the centuries.

But that still doesn't assure me that Kago is ancient Chinese in origin. If there's any way to trace the origin of Jiahu to Chinese and prove it doesn't come from native Japanese words that existed before the Chinese came over, I should like to see it. Surely there's plenty of ways to see how ancient Chinese was spoken, not just Mandarin and Cantonese modern Chinese forms.

You do realize that Kanji is just writing system right? Yes, many spoken words along with writing system were brought over, but that doesn't mean all modern Japanese words are Chinese in origin. That would mean that Chinese complete erased the Japanese language except for structure. And I doubt that's so. Japanese shares a lot with the Ainu language which is probably pretty untouched by Chinese words. If Chinese words so heavy overlapped and erased the original Japanese I don't think Japanese would still be considered a language isolate.

http://i18.tinypic.com/87dyzdc.gif

I agree with Nyororin. Most linguists don't know. Some Japanese words can be somewhat traced, but most not. I was wondering if perhaps Kago might be one of those words that could be traced.

I've noticed the major Altaic converter this site has no luck with Kago.

Anyway thank you again anrakushi. Maybe it's not certain that Kago is linked to the Korean Ga-ho and Ancient Chinese Jiahu, but I'm happy to at least know that possibility. Much better than nothing and completely what I was looking for, a possible root.

Thanks for now. I may have a new word I'm curious about soon.

[anrakushi]

you are more than welcome, it is an interesting topic for me.

as for seeing how chinese was pronounced i believe it would be very difficult to know for sure as the writing system of chinese does not indicate pronunciation. i believe it would not be an easy task to know how chinese was pronounced 1500-2000 years ago, but it would be an easier task to see how the written language had evolved including grammar thanks to a lot of documents.

Ainu language is often regarded as a language isolate, which means it does not fit in with any language groups. it is also a moribund language, no longer used in the community and not learnt by children. it has had some resent interest by younger people who had started to learn but it is a highly endangered language. what connection it has to japanese would only exist thanks to language contact and transfer. genetic studies show that the ainu were long isolated from japanese, i assume they are referring to much earlier times, and their language developed individually.

you are now stating that japanese is a language isolate but previously you were saying is is in the altaic language group so i did a bit looking around because i don't remember reading that in the past. it seems there is no consensus that it is part of this group. it is sometimes included but it a subject of debate by many. the same goes with Korean, which is even stated to be an isolate language like the Ainu language by linguists. as for the Ainu language it is occasionally added to the altaic group. so given this information i think trying to find a link of a japanese word to an altaic language could be even more fruitless than searching within the Chinese language.

this site which is full of information is a nice one to look at for language groups and information about languages. they put japanese into it's own group consisting of 12 languages:
Ethnologue report for Altaic
Ethnologue report for Japanese

my point of this post being that you shouldn't concentrate your time looking within altaic langauges, especially when there is much debate on whether japanese belongs in this group.

we can debate about the origins of a language forever, haha. but yeah i just hope that from this you will look outside the altaic group and look towards nearby languages that may have influenced vocabulary in Japanese.