The Japanese Language: Everything You Were NEVER Taught In School

[@storylearning]

🤯 When you make a Japanese video, remember to check the edits 🤦🏼‍♂️ - 10:30, should read "漢字" ("Chinese characters"), not "感じ" ("feeling") - 11:45, should read "コンビニ" ("convenience store"), not "コンニ". 🇯🇵Need some inspiration to learn Japanese? See how this teenager reached an amazing level while living in the US! 👉🏼 kzbin.info/www/bejne/imbLkIqapq9qqrM"

[@SupremeDP]

Omg I was gonna roast you real bad but at least you realized hahaha.

[@DanielKlein83]

Also I believe Kansai dialect is usually written as 関西弁 (kansaiben) not 関西式(kansaishiki), but it could be that both are in use? Anyway, great video! どうもありがとう。

[@marikothecheetah9342]

@@DanielKlein83 that is true, it's kansaiben, ben meaning the dialect.

[@gogakushayemi]

I was about to come tell you about 漢字 Also that second mistake is just a little bit off of a word that is NSFW. lol

[@Wcrklmn]

I didn't even realize コンビニ said コンニ. I was just reading the sentence lolll.

[@zakiyamazakiyama6163]

I'm Japanese Learning English. I'm really struggling to learn it especially listening to it is so difficult for me as most Japanese feel pretty much the same way, but still I enjoy learning it every single day while working. Anyway, I'm really happy to hear not a few ppl choose to learn Japanese, really inspiring me. We're all friends learning a language or more!

[@DANGJOS]

Doesn't seem like you're struggling to me haha. Your English is great! As for my Japanese, I can barely string a normal sentence together. I wouldn't be able to write, what I'm writing write now, in Japanese.

[@zakiyamazakiyama6163]

@@DANGJOS Thanks for your generous comment! I use e-dictionary a lot (but NOT google translate) :D and love reading English books written in relatively plain words ,so writing/reading in English are way much easier than listening to/speaking it. I often hear from language experts that English have more variety of sounds that we don't use/distinguish, so we tend to yield the differences between them. (this may sound as if I try to make excuses that I can't do it... I just suggest native European language speakers are basically good at distinguishing sounds.) Japanese as a language might be tough for you, but I wish you never give up learning it and wish you eventually master it!!

[@terminallyonline5296]

Keep going at it! I think for written English, working at the usage of particles is something you may want to work on - it will come over time while working on it as it becomes intuitive. Fantastic so far!

[@user-og9nl5mt1b]

@@zakiyamazakiyama6163 damm bro your English is better then mine🤣

[@saulgoodman4451]

最も重要なことは、あなたが英語を学ぶのを楽しんでいることです!

[@deboracosta6997]

I'm learning Japanese, is an amazing language with a lot of specifics beauties. Japanese language is fully connected to the Japanese culture, how they act and think, is possible to understand their thoughts by knowing their language, including the hierarchy. This is so human! I admire the language for making us be able to go so deep in their culture. I love the video!

[@SelcraigClimbs]

Absolutely! Learning the language has been a beautiful window into the conceptual landscape that the japanese culture has. Funnily enough, I handwrite a diary in japanese for whenever I feel like expressing something, and yesterday a thought that came to me was 「言語を通して文化や考え方などがわかるようになる」which reflects your views. Its a fascinating experience to have

[@harrypotty5643]

Yes I'm in the same boat you just don't get new sounds you get a different way of thinking and structure of communicating.

[@Learninglotsoflanguages]

Knowing Korean first and how easy Hanguel is, then wanting to learn Japanese feels overwhelming for the writing system. But so far is it actually going fairly well at remembering the character sounds. Thanks for the video. Love learning the background of the language.

[@storylearning]

Thanks Amanda!

[@ShivyEnby]

Great video Olly. To expand further on the connection with Brazil, I thought I'd share something interesting. In 1917, Mitsuyo Maeda, also known as Conde Koma, arrived in Brazil to demonstrate Jujutsu (including Judo). He was a second generation student of Kodokan Judoka and taught two brothers of the Gracie family. These brother's, along with a third brother, went on to establish their own style of Jujutsu; known as Brazilian jiu-jitsu. Within three generations, from Kano (founder of Judo), to Maeda, to the Gracie family (founders of BJJ), there was a transfer of knowledge and spirit from Japan to Brazil. In fact, if you take into account the origins of Jujutsu, the Gracie family actually inherited hundreds of years of knowledge from Chinese Buddhists, Samurai, and Japanese martial artists (Sumo in particular). Today, Brazilian jiu-jitsu is taught globally, and when any member of the Gracie family returns to Japan to fight, he or she is given respect equal to the weight of knowledge passed down to them. When I think about this, it is pretty mind blowing. The conversations that must have taken place in both Brazilian Portuguese and Japanese, the stories told, the culture shared, and the exchange of histories. Damn.

[@Tiqerboy]

If people ask me the difference between Hiragana and Katakana I tell them. "Well, if you think of Katakana as printing and Hiragana as writing you aren't too far off the mark". I then go on to say the two writing systems should not be a foreign idea at all. After all we have upper case, and lower case letters in both printing and writing so in that sense, English has four different writing systems. So, the two that Japanese has becomes a less daunting concept. Now, the Kanji is something else entirely. I simply tell people that the characters by and large come from China and, while many do have constituent parts that can be broken down to help with memorization it's still a lot of work, involving getting the stroke order right. My brother once told me "the stroke order is very important because your writing will look so much better".

[@martakowal4768]

Great video. Thank you. Just started to Learn Japanese as my fourth foreign language. Hello from Poland 😀

[@storylearning]

Hello from Devon!

[@tydalm.9665]

It may be true that Japanese is the only MAJOR language where the origins are not really known, but that's also true for the Basque language, which has no relation to any other language. Certainly Basque cannot be called a major language, sadly not even in a lot parts of the Basque Country. However even though I don't speak the language, I have always been fascinated, that it's so unique.

[@Drazzz27]

What does it even mean, "origins are not really known"? All languages have obscure origins, ultimately, since we don't know when and how languages came into existence, we can only attest and reconstruct the earlier forms of the language in question to some point in the past (until we hit the inevitable wall of unknown). Anyway, what about Korean? It is as much a language isolate as Japanese is. And its origins seem to be no less obscure.

[@kazhamo]

THANK YOU for clarifying. Basque, Basque, Basque! :-)

[@nickflamel6856]

Yes, Basque! Also Hungarian: current research is disproving the Finno-Ugric theory. The truth is that we had no clue about the linguistic origins of Hungarian all along. Though there are some theories, they are all not certain ones and many are controversial, so it's safest to say that Hungarian is a big mystery.

[@htamaslaw]

@@nickflamel6856 Nope, there is no such research. The Finno-Ugric theory is very well proven though there are quite a few lunatics in Hungary who try to prove Sumerian, Etrusc or God knows what other origin...

[@nickflamel6856]

@@htamaslaw Yes I am aware and I do not support or agree with any extreme beliefs. Some even go as far as to say that Hungarians are native to the Carpathian Basin! Nuts! Poor souls I guess... One thing is for sure: the origins of the Magyar people and language is a topic of intense debate.

[@mapl3mage]

one important role of kanji is to avoid the problem with homonyms, they help make the meaning clearer.

[@AliviasNook]

Great video! Very interesting to learn more about the history of Japanese and how it came to be the language it is today 😊

[@storylearning]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@dapplederpgaming8432]

I’m learning Japanese so my understanding may be wrong, but at 10:31 kanji is written as 「感じ」 which indeed makes the SOUND “kanji” but actually means “feeling”. It should instead be written as 「漢字」 which has the literal definition “Chinese character”. If I am missing something, please let me know. Edit: I just realized the pinned comment mentions this already. Oopsies

[@shelleyneveling2214]

This information is fantastic, you simplify the data so I want to keep listening and the info is so interesting!

[@storylearning]

Glad it was helpful!

[@kathleenking47]

I've heard of kemushi chan A black GIRL l who learned Japanese here in US as a teen She lives in Japan and has 2 kids now She has a KZbin channel

[@eb6195]

Some linguists also claim that we do not know where the Basque (Euskera) language spoken in Northern Spain & Southern France comes from either.

[@angelar5956]

Fascinating. I've just started learning Japanese using and was curious about the scripts 😁 Really enjoying using Japanese Uncovered.

[@storylearning]

Great to hear!

[@n4musica]

I’m a B1/2 in Korean and A2 in Chinese. I’m about to move to Japan so this will be my 3rd language. I’m so excited to get started! I don’t want to start on Japanese until I’m a lot more comfortable in the other two languages so this video is helping to hype me up!

[@nagichampa9866]

Of the three Japanese has the easiest pronunciation, the hardest grammar (though not that hard and quite similar to Korean) and the most complex writing system. It's really fun to study...albeit occasionally frustrating! Have fun! 😊

[@LiquidMetalLifeForm]

Wow! was watchin Shogun jus now; got so fascinated in the 02 Ep that paused it and ended up in your channel! Fascinating explanations. I may actually get my stuff together to learn Japanese in a near future... Thank you so much Olly.

[@paranoidhumanoid]

As a Korean and Japanese speaker, Japanese sounds vaguely like a southern dialect of Korean in both intonation and rhythm. I think at one point there was probably loosely knit "proto" language shared between the numerous confederations and kingdoms, or at least intense exchanges between them and that is why they sound similar and shared so many features including honorifics.

[@cinnamonswords2427]

To me, Korean sounds like “melted Japanese.” Both languages are beautiful!

[@elimalinsky7069]

Recent genetic studies have confirmed that the Yayoi people who settled Japan some 2400 years ago were in fact indigenous Koreans, so the theory is that proto-Japonic was the lanugage spoken in Korea, and then whoever brought the Korean language to Korea came from outside, perhaps from Manchuria or Siberia. The Chinese historical annals mention an invasion of nomadic tribes into the Korean peninsula during the Warring States period in China, which lines up chronologically. Perhaps the invaders to Korea pushed the Proto-Japonic Yayoi people into what is now the islands of Japan.

[@catdowntheroad5765]

This is so interesting. I've fallen in love with everything Japanese and typed-in "Japanese Olly Richards" and got this amazing video. Thank you, Olly! Arigato gozaimasu

[@ochiaichannel1189]

Correction: The Japanese women weren't forbidden to use Kanji. There were many women who wrote Kanji. They just wanted to simplify the writing and make it more practical.

[@tydalm.9665]

Intersting. 先生 (xiānsheng) is usually only used as "Mr." in Mandarin nowadays, while it could also mean teacher (though normally 老師/老师 is used instead). 先辈 (xiānbèi) is used as "elders" or "former generations". The latter also being the literal translation of 先辈.

[@RaymondHng]

先生 is used for _Mister_ and commonly used for _teacher_ in Cantonese.

[@durban55]

Love the content! It’s always so engaging and informative.

[@CrsdrsWrStnsts]

the big problem of Japanese writting system is that Roma-ji usually doesn't use āīūēō to express long vowels. like the word koban that is the branch offices of the police, in exact needs to pronounce like kōban, koban means a kind of enchent coin of Japan. even if you come to Japan you won't understand what's written on information sighs due to you won't able to pronounce the words so neither hear.

[@SelcraigClimbs]

Really looking forward to your video on the differences between japanese and Korean! This was super well done お疲れ様！(otsukaresama - thank you for your work)

[@storylearning]

Thank you so much!!

[@katakana1]

Korean left us a similar mystery in regards to its origin, but it has basically the same grammar as Japanese, so we know they were likely tightly linked at some point in the past. My personal theory is that the Yayoi learned vocabulary from the Jomon upon entering Japan and adopted that, but kept the grammar of their own language, creating a pidgin that eventually developed into its own language.

[@MDobri-sy1ce]

I heard the Japanese came from people in one of the Adaman islands but the people from one island were so isolated that they didn’t share many features of their cousins on the other surrounding islands eventually moving to Japan. The Yayoi came from Korea, and possibly other Altaic tribes from the far north Islands from the Kuril Islands. Also, picking up influence from Chinese but Old Chinese and Middle Chinese is very different from modern or standard Chinese.

[@storylearning]

Whatever the truth is... it's an interesting story!

[@paulwalther5237]

When you compare Japanese and Korean of course you're comparing the most widespread dialects... Tokyo and Seoul. But the two countries have a variety of dialects, some dying out unfortunately, and some of those dialects could show more similarities than the modern widespread versions. Also, even if you speak Tokyo dialect, you can still really struggle to understand other dialects in Japan - dialects are getting softer though as time goes on though.

[@asianbeowulf4276]

I'm sure linguistics researchers have already taken that into consideration. Japanese truly seems to be an isolated language based on current research.

[@maxkim7937]

i strongly believe that comparing modern korean and modern japanese to see if they are related is not helpful. i see this happen often but if we go back to history, i think they are more related to each other than given credit. before the korean language became what it is today, we had 3 different yet related languages. these were languages of the three kingdoms. during the war, one of them lost and disappeared from korean history. but strangely, we discovered ancient artifacts such as bronze tools and rice farms that resembles this period of korean in japan. that alone makes me think both languages are more related than we think. くるま(kuruma) and 구르다 (guleuda) has the same meaning of rolling (くる = 구르). this word isn't borrowed from chinese characters. 車 (chariot) is sha in onyomi (chinese sound) and kuruma in kunyomi (japanese sound). this is just one example but there are several other words like this. it's like having vulgar latin but for ancient korean. this is probably why our grammar is also very similarly written and structured. even though i'm not fluent enough in japanese, i can still tell that their grammar is similar enough for me to listen to try to makes sense of it with what i already know. i can also see how the sound shifted between them. japanese lost a lot of their vowels and have just 5 today while korean still has most of them. if we look at what ancient japanese sounded like, they too had complex vowels. consonants were also more complex back then but both languages simplified them. an example of how sound shifting influenced words is "hatake" which means farm in japanese. はたけ (hatake) and 밭 (bat) are both a word for farm/field/garden. originally, it was something like patak/patk (i'm not exactly sure how to spell this in english...) so if we were to give this word plenty of time to shift, we get what we have today. this word is from before korea using chinese characters so it's another example of why both languages are probably from the same origin. going from a hard "pa" to a softer "ba" and then ditching it to "ha" makes a lot of sense when we think of how sounds shift over time. because of how long ago these languages split (from already having 3 in ancient korea) and the fact that written forms of said languages were lost in time (not enough to no written evidence), we don't have enough evidence to place them in the same group. i don't believe in the altaic language group, but i do believe at least that these languages are related.

[@TheElotyr]

It's always very interesting to listen about Japanese language. I recently realized that I started to learn it like 10 years ago, but for some reasons (job, family...) I had give up studying it. Now when the world situacion is as it is, my Japanese is being reborn. So I try to look for every way that would help me with kanji studying. 🙂 I literally had bought some story books last week and then found your videos on youtube about learning languages with stories. Thank you a lot for the tips. Such videos inspire me to study more, exspecially, that Japanese is not the only one language I'm learning now.

[@WorkLifeJapan]

Very well done Olly! Making us residents in Japan proud!!! 💪😊

[@kathleenking47]

What is the katakana letter is :) I don't have a Japanese typewriter Looks like an emoji

[@FilipP88]

Don't know why I watched this video. Been learning Japanese for 4+ years intensively so I know all this and much more haha But anyway nice explanations :D

[@storylearning]

You're a smart cookie!

[@paulwalther5237]

I've been studying Japanese for 10 years - it's why I was so excited to watch this video lol.

[@nagichampa9866]

I've done some digging in Japanese people's origins for a Japanese History class and came to this hypothesis that the people of Japan are Grosso modo a mix of Northeastern origins (mainly Korean), Chinese and Austronesian people. The DNA analysis seems to point to something like that. I feel that the language would be somewhat like that too as if you look at that it has similar phonetics with Austronesian languages like Indonesian and Polynesian, it has a structure and syntax akin to Korean and lots of vocabulary and writing derived from Chinese (mostly from the Tang period). Let me know what you think!

[@MarkRosa]

The Miyako language spoken by Mr. Nakama at 6:10 is the most difficult of all the Okinawan languages, so even if you're learning standard Okinawan (let alone mainland Japanese), you will find it difficult.

[@kcgrafik]

loved the video! I always learn new things! As my hobbie is in fact languages I found this information very very fun to learn.

[@storylearning]

Really glad you liked it!

[@jenisalwaysreading]

Great video, Olly!

[@NotHenGamer]

I am colloquially fluent in Korean, so Japanese was fairly easy for me to learn. I essentially just needed to memorize vocabulary since the grammar is so similar to Korean.

[@ezequielstepanenko3229]

Where I live there is a big community of Japanese, so it's not uncommon to hear it on the street, plus I worked in a Japanese company for five years surrounded by Japanese, my son likes to watch animes, and here I am, learning Russian with no knowledge of Japanese whatsoever

[@JM-tj5gu]

Really detailed study! I am impressed and could learn a lot of new things from the video even if I am Japanese!^^

[@spannfan1]

I was bilingual in Japanese and English from age 2-4. I was living in Japan with my military family and live in Japanese household helpers. I had hoped that the language stayed in my brain. When I left Japan for some reason, I refused to speak Japanese, which my parents wanted me to do to show off. When I have tried to study Japanese on apps (I am working primarily on Spanish and occasionally reviewing French which I am fluent in), I don’t find any memories or facility and learning ability in Japanese. Should it be easier for me than someone who never spoke Japanese?

[@Wazkaty]

I have tje same matter but with Arabic (MSA). I don't know for you, but me I can feel even if I don't remember, my brain remember the sounds, the grammar, etc. It is a really weird feeling but personnally I'm totally sure that it is an advantage : emotions could make learning complicated but at the end, you will succeed and 're' find "your" Japanese. Ps: sorry for my 'weird' English, I'm obviously not fluent but working on it ;)

[@eb6195]

I had a similar experience as a toddler growing up in San Diego, CA with Spanish. Then, when I was 21, I learned Spanish in a full immersion environment. It came very rapidly. I sometimes wonder if some Spanish was always there from my childhood. I get complemented often of my accent when I speak Spanish.

[@mapl3mage]

if you didn't make any effort to learn the language and it's been a long while since you used it, then it makes sense that you'd forget the language. especially since your knowledge of the language was rudimentary at best (there's a mile of difference between abandoning a language when you are 4 and when you are in/finished high school). i do expect, however, that if you have Japanese parents, you'll find it easier to learn the language compared to others, simply because you'll have more opportunities to hear the language from native speakers, practice it, and get instant feedback about your pronunciation and what-not. the question in this case is whether you are willing to put your time and effort to learn it.

[@Blaqjaqshellaq]

If you want to emphasize a kanji word (like you'd italicize or underline an English word), write it in hiragana. If you want to emphasize a hiragana word, write it in katakana. If you want to emphasize a katakana word, you're out of luck.

[@fullpowervideojapan]

I like reading Japanese subtitles for movies and TV because it’s so much shorter and quicker to understand! With English and European languages I can struggle to keep up and watch the movie at the same time!!

[@strykerbravo9910]

I imagine it's even shorter in just chinese. Since they don't have any of the hiragana or katakana lol

[@fullpowervideojapan]

@@strykerbravo9910 definitely!

[@marikothecheetah9342]

Oh, my gosh, the guy was singing "Sukiyaki" or, to be more precise: Ue o nuite, Arukou, the only Japanese song, that hit ther number one of the charts in the U.S.! BTW. I knew all of it, because I'm a Japan junkie, but I like to listen to people sharing the knowledge :)

[@user-hn2wc3fy7y]

Hawaii-raised local-Japanese, here. A little amendment to the statements in the video: The local Japanese population as of the last…many decades speak zero Japanese naturally. There is a local-Japanese culture that is intertwined with the general local one that keeps a lot of the regional traditions alive, but apart from the oldest people (85+ who already don’t use much Japanese) and very common, localized versions of Japanese words, you won’t hear much of it. I’ve met a few people who still speak it, again, mostly older, second-generation people, but if a younger person speaks it it’s due to foreign language learning. So, all in all, you will see a lot of Japanese people and hear more Japanese words here and there, but don’t expect a Japanese-looking person on the street to know anything more than the very basic Japanese greetings and what they learned in Japanese class. I guess that in itself (that we have had Japanese language electives for decades) is special, but yeah. As I get older, I’ve actually realized that the local-Japanese identity is very confused. We grow up hearing a lot of bastardized words and traditions that we think are wholly Japanese, but they turn out to be different than the actual Japanese versions. This might be due to it being derived from regional, 19th century words or traditions, or just changing and losing meaning over years with all of the intermixing of cultures here. That said, our tourism industry is a large percentage Japanese. Transplants work in Waikiki to interact with Japanese tourists and their children in the area will speak native Japanese. I live in the area and the local schools are filled with Japanese and mixed-Japanese kids who speak native Japanese. That is an exception, though. Anyway, great video! Just thought I’d share my insight since I have no other outlets for it lmao.

[@519djw6]

*I have lived and worked in Japan for a long time, but, although I can take care of daily business like shopping or communicating with the administrative staff at the university where I work as a lecturer, I have to admit that I've been remiss in learning the written language--since Japanese and Chinese are the only major languages that I know anything about that don't use some kind of alphabet . However, I am determined to make up for lost time--and one of the best sets of books that I've come across is "Learning to Read in Japanese," Volumes I-III, by Roger Lake and Noriko Ura. There is also an online audio component that goes along with this.. After learning to read and write kana, I highly recommend that the learner make flash-cards to keep the kanji from "spilling out of his/her head"! 頑張って。*

[@DavidJamesquoracy]

That karaoke guy doesn't need to learn Japanese, he just needs to learn to sing! Sakamoto wept.

[@EvgenyUskov]

being a russian native speaker, it took me 5 years to pass the first level of the Kanji Kentei level 1 test - and I DON'T REGRET IT

[@michiyodoll9916]

Mr. Nakama who spoke miyako hogen., he actually spoke ikema hogen. There are many hogen in miyako islands.

[@mishapurser4439]

I would recommend learning hiragana and katakana first and getting a solid basis in vocabulary and basic grammar first before dedicating time to kanji.

[@matzc557]

11:22 "hiragana and katana are quite simple"... Then you learn daukon... And combos... And double consonants... And long vowels

[@mapl3mage]

it is simple though. you just add a two of whatever those are called at the top right of hiragana/katakana to make the sound softer, or a small circle to make the sound sharper. You'll get used to the small っ and ッ　soon enough. you no longer have to know (assuming you don't read old literature) the hiragana/katakana for wi and we, so that's two less characters you have to worry about.

[@AdamDylanMajor]

At 10:30 there is an error. It reads 感じ which means feeling/s. It should rather be 漢字 which means chinese character

[@reyt4838]

Yes, the Kanji for Kanji is wrong here. 漢字

[@albatross1688]

Actually, Sensei more commonly means teacher, and can apply to someone who teaches anything. Of course, they are generally someone with experience in that field. As for the reason why Japanese doesn't drop kanji, I learned firsthand that it's to offer context in writing. As Japanese has so many homonyms it's not even funny, context is everything, and context is difficult to convey strictly in written form, so kanji really helps with that.

[@as_below_so_above]

I don't know if you've made a similar video for Russian or any Slavic languages but I would love to see that!! I've been getting so distracted watching your videos for the past week or two 😂

[@blackjack8957]

11:47 コンビニに correction The mysterious things on the Shinto shrine and fisherman's folk songs contains unidentified phrases. ソーラン節 So-ran bushi, if you want to hear or read, check some records in KZbin. One day, my friend understands Yiddish and Hebrew heard that songs and phrases, he told me he could almost comprehend. And when the Shinto festival comes, believers carry a box like the Ark of the Covenant. Dutch VOC has a very long history and no wonder they brought or influenced something like that but it remains really mythic. Old archaic Japanese sounds much more different than Asiatic languages and it has a taste of European poem. My thoughts about it is, first people came from Africa through Europe ends up moving, it was actually the end of the world for a long time. And they had a ship to sail, Chinese or Mongolian haven't been good at maritime. My first trip to Europe, everybody looked at my face and asked me, do I have a Basque relative? I am pretty sure the original Japanese people are just like you.

[@atsukorichards1675]

11:45 correction - "kaisha ni hairu mae ni" means "before I went/walked into the company building", not "joining" in this case. (Ark of Covenant? They are just the portable small shrines.)

[@meropale]

Oh, you only need 2,000 kanji. How comforting.

[@parastararts]

Olly, I’m new to your channel & have been trying to self study Korean just a little over a year. I would love to hear your thoughts on the language. Or if you know of methods I could use to improve my learning process.

[@BrokenScreen_desu]

10:29 It's not written like 「感じ」. It's written like 「漢字」.

[@lisanarramore222]

There's a correction written in the description :)

[@BrokenScreen_desu]

@@lisanarramore222 Oh, ok. I didn't see it hehe

[@lisanarramore222]

[@yayo8834]

You should integrate an English Course in your Storytelling method I bet would be extremely helpful for us people learning English. :)

[@storylearning]

I’ve thought about this. But… what level? And what would the teaching language be - all in English?

[@nofilt3r709]

I've studied speaking japanese for almost a year now, im still unfamiliar with the writings but this video sort of made me with learning japanese Slitely easy i guess? good video btw.

[@Eruptor1000]

Yo OLLY do this type of video but about different languages! if u want to obviously.

[@storylearning]

Yes, Sir.

[@gogakushayemi]

Yay! My town has a Jomon site that just became world heritage! Weird ancient Japan pride! lol.

[@hevconsume2504]

The map shown around 0:50 is a really odd choice, it's a WW2 map, with Japan occupying korea, taiwan, and having carved out Manchuria in north eastern china, it also includes the soviet union. You should probably have picked a modern map?

[@Quellant1]

A slight correction at 2:40 - Japanese is not known to have vowel harmony. Japanese linguist Hideyo Arisaka investigated the phonology of Old Japanese in the 1930s. He found that OJ *o, *u, and *a can't be followed immediately by *ə within the same morpheme. These are known as Arisaka's laws. However, this restriction applies only within morphemes, not across morphemes as we'd see in a true vowel harmony system. (Source: I paraphrased a post by the user limetom on the Linguistics subreddit). This sort of long-distance changing across morphemes can be seen with Korean vowel harmony, where verb endings change according to the preceding vowel: whether it is a "light," "dark," or "neutral" vowel. Some suggest that the short-distance restriction of dividing vowels in Old Japanese is a trace of an older vowel harmony system, but this has yet to be demonstrated conclusively. At any rate, awesome video! Great overview of this unique language.

[@John_Krone]

Was surprised I recognized the Sukiyaki song 😉! 7:26

[@heysiri8748]

The interesting thing i noticed about chinese is some dialects (such as the really old ones like 廣東話) actually share certain closer pronunciations to modern Japanese than the really far away dialects in the north for example just because China has never really been united/intergraded as well as countries like Japan up to this point for any significant amount of time in the last few hundred years. I look forward to seeing more videos from you Olly!

[@Lisa-bu2ii]

The video is very interesting despite the fact I knew some of these things before

[@John_Krone]

I was learning Japanese and couldn't pass the Kanji part, gave up! Spent a month in Japan and survived with the little Japanese I knew mixed with English and surprisingly met someone in Kyoto that preferred German over English which was fascinating to me. I was at home! Love this country

[@salamilid4125]

Have you tried different kanji learning methods like Anki, Wanikani, Rtk, you can see if they help you. I tried a lot and realized mnemonics really help

[@kevbar1505]

With all you say about Japanese not being related to Korean, either native speaker will easily learn the other. The syntax is so similar that in most cases it is a matter of substitution. i speak Korean and started learning Japanese - it was a breeze after knowing Korean. The difficulty to Koreans learning Japanese would be due to Japanese having three alphabets. also, don't forget that a great many vocabulary in both Korean and Japanese comes from/based on Chinese characters. So, there's a pretty large incommon (well very similar) vocab, but with differences of course.

[@davidjacobs8558]

Yes, any logical person who know both Korean and Japanese languages would conclude they are related languages. It’s just that Japanese hate to admit that for political reasons, and insist Japanese language is unique and has no relation with Korean language.

[@しおんぬ-i9p]

Even native children who learn quickly still need nine years (the period of compulsory education) to learn 2000 kanji characters. It will probably take more than nine years for foreign adults to master Japanese, including kanji. So even if you don't make much progress, there's no need to worry. It's important to learn one character at a time, day by day.

[@coasternut3091]

Japanese language: where does it come from? Me: Japan?

[@maxkim7937]

i strongly believe that comparing modern korean and modern japanese to see if they are related is not helpful. i see this happen often but if we go back to history, i think they are more related to each other than given credit. before the korean language became what it is today, we had 3 different yet related languages. these were languages of the three kingdoms. during the war, one of them lost and disappeared from korean history. but strangely, we discovered ancient artifacts such as bronze tools and rice farms that resembles this period of korean in japan. that alone makes me think both languages are more related than we think. くるま(kuruma) and 구르다 (guleuda) has the same meaning of rolling (くる = 구르). this word isn't borrowed from chinese characters. 車 (chariot) is sha in onyomi (chinese sound) and kuruma in kunyomi (japanese sound). this is just one example but there are several other words like this. it's like having vulgar latin but for ancient korean. this is probably why our grammar is also very similarly written and structured. even though i'm not fluent enough in japanese, i can still tell that their grammar is similar enough for me to listen to try to makes sense of it with what i already know. i can also see how the sound shifted between them. japanese lost a lot of their vowels and have just 5 today while korean still has most of them. if we look at what ancient japanese sounded like, they too had complex vowels. consonants were also more complex back then but both languages simplified them. an example of how sound shifting influenced words is "hatake" which means farm in japanese. はたけ (hatake) and 밭 (bat) are both a word for farm/field/garden. originally, it was something like patak/patk (i'm not exactly sure how to spell this in english...) so if we were to give this word plenty of time to shift, we get what we have today. this word is from before korea using chinese characters so it's another example of why both languages are probably from the same origin. going from a hard "pa" to a softer "ba" and then ditching it to "ha" makes a lot of sense when we think of how sounds shift over time. because of how long ago these languages split (from already having 3 in ancient korea) and the fact that written forms of said languages were lost in time (not enough to no written evidence), we don't have enough evidence to place them in the same group. i don't believe in the altaic language group, but i do believe at least that these languages are related.

[@manfredneilmann4305]

Liberdade is not a town in Brazil, as you say, but a "bairro" (neighborhood) of São Paulo.

[@twopaypal_f1]

haha i'm an American in Rio de Janeiro and just started learning Japanese. My girlfriend already suggested we visit Liberdade one day.

[@karmafairy351]

8:15 That's actually Chinese writing, traditional Chinese to be exact. I know the Japanese use Kanji but if you are going to show a picture of Japanese writing, surely there are more representative pictures out there you could've chosen.

[@danielantony1882]

Um... That's the point. Japan uses traditional Chinese writing for all of their writings. I don't know how you managed to say something so shallow but if you look at anything Japanese, all of them are gonna have Chinese Characters. That's what Kanji is

[@danielantony1882]

@Luboman411 The characters he showed didn't really look that hard. Yes, it's originally Chinese but Japanese people factually use them to this day in a Japanese way. The Japanese Kanji you are speaking of are around 2000. That reform happened around 100 years ago when America demanded simpler Kanji. The other 53,000 Kanji that Japan uses are still the classic Chinese ones. But still, it doesn't change the fact that it's Japanese because the people who use them are Japanese and they do that in a Japanese way. For example, does this make sense in Chinese? 大蛇丸

[@karmafairy351]

@@danielantony1882 You obviously do not speak either Chinese or Japanese. If you did, you would at least know that most kanji in Japanese writing would look more like simplified Chinese too. Again, if you are looking a picture of the Japanese writing, there are plenty of them on the internet, why show a picture of traditional Chinese? I pointed it out because I think it's ridiculous. But apparently that's a shallow thing to say? Welp guess the joke is on you.

[@danielantony1882]

@@karmafairy351 Ok, well. I don't speak much Chinese or Japanese. But I don't understand how Japanese Kanji are more similar to modern Chinese Hanzi. The Chinese ones just look too detailed compared to the Japanese ones. Maybe I am misinterpreting things. I would love to be corrected but abusing an Ad Hominem argument doesn't exactly make you correct. Yes, I am likely ignorant or uneducated about what is Classic and Simplified Chinese but I am not obligated to learn decent Chinese to have the right to study Japanese. Would you, please, be so kind as to let me know what the difference between Classic and Simplified Hanzi looks like? I don't know Chinese, and when I see people typing Chinese, their Hanzi almost always looks more detailed than what the Japanese usually use. Again, please, I would like a correction if my experienced interpretation is lacking in consideration or is ignorant. Can you, please, bring an example of characters from Classic and Simple Chinese+ Japanese? I would really appreciate the critical feedback.

[@DanielKlein83]

I think you are correct that the text displayed in the video is Chinese sentences, not Japanese. However, I don't agree with your later comment that Japanese Kanji is more similar to simplified Chinese rather than traditional. I can speak and read Japanese fairly well having studied it for many years, and though I cannot speak or read Chinese, I have attempted to read Chinese texts before and can understand a bit due to the similarities of Kanji and Chinese writing. I have found that the simplified Chinese characters are often the hardest for me to understand and they often don't resemble Kanji. Traditional seems closer to Kanji to me, though I suppose it is something of a mix between the two. Most of the traditional characters from the picture in the video are written the same way in Japanese. 『無』and 『電』for example are written the same in Kanji, but are very different in simplified Chinese if I'm not mistaken.

[@jangelbrich7056]

At least the rules for Japanese language make more sense than for English; even in the worst trenches of "Aimai" (how not to talk too-directly), and the grammar is 100 times simpler than any european language. They "counter-balance" that with kanji, of course

[@nickimontie]

When visiting relatives in the southern part of Japan, I was struck by them using infinitive often (aru as opposed aromas, or aru nai in stead of arimasen). When I asked about it. I was told my grandfather made all my aunts and uncles learn Tokyo Japanese, and when he passed, the relaxed their speech. Not sure if they were pulling my leg or what. Curious about that!

[@sm-oo8ly]

go for it, everyone !! みんな、頑張れ！

[@davids.7052]

Just a few comments: First, Japanese horrific forms (called Keigo) are not necessarily about politeness, but rather mostly formally. It is very possible to be extremely rude while using Keigo. Next, if you study in Japan, you will undoubtedly notice that the Chinese and Koreans usually learn Japanese much quicker than westerners. Chinese/Koreans seem to have an inherent advantage from their mother language. With Chinese, the advantage appears to be mostly due to the use of Kanji in Japanese. Just by looking at a word, in Japanese Kanji, the Chinese usually know the meaning right away, and then only need to learn the pronunciation, Furthermore, the on-yomi Japanese reading is often very similar to the Chinese reading. With Korean, it seems like the languages are very closely interlinked. I don’t speak Korean, but during my time in Japan many Koreans have told me how close the languages are in terms of structure, social aspects, and grammar. I understand that many modern scholars may say different but based on my experiences I believe that the languages are probably first cousins in the linguistic family.

[@nihaokellar180]

It's true about Hawaii! I grew up there. Most people in Hawaii are Asian, and most have some Japanese blood. In fact, to work nearly any customer facing role in Hawaii, you must have some Japanese language skills. It's one of the many things that really sets us apart from the US in general.

[@gogakushayemi]

Bunch of random comments... I am a little confused about "lack of conjunctions". I speak Japanese and a little Korean, but I feel like we have conjunctions. Yay for Okinawan music. IYASASA! Miyakojima dialect is wild, because I can understand just enough to think that I should understand the rest, so it feels like I am going crazy. There is a Netflix show set in Liberdade, Brazil and three of the characters and Japanese descendants. It is called Spectros. I really need to read Tale of Genji some day...

[@nduduzoblose4355]

Olly: people are pretty obsessed with anime Me, a mega weeb: *smashes the like button *

[@Tiqerboy]

Interesting, I read "Kaisha ni hairu mae ni, biru no chikaku no konbini ni mizu to nooto o kai ni itta", without looking at the English translation. Here's how I understood it: In front of the office where I go into work, at a nearby convenience store I went to buy beer, a notebook and water. Now you see why I just get the general idea of what people are saying in Japan, never the exact meaning.

[@atsukorichards1675]

Good point and method. (Though, generally "mae ni" part can mean two things - a. in front of, b. before, and in this case, it is b, "before entering".)

[@Tiqerboy]

Atsuko-san , Olly no kanai desu ka? kanai to iu kotoba ga chigau no, hoka no itte, Wasuremashita.

[@rangonscubin3659]

Isn’t 感じ feeling? Or is it one of those that just uses the sounds. I was leaning more along the lines of 漢字. 10:31

[@Matthew-fj6eu]

Yeah that's what I also thought. It should've shown a different Kanji

[@storylearning]

Yes, just noticed the typo!!

[@vedqiibyol]

If I remember correctly Sensei, means, roughly, the person who knows 1000 things.

[@schoo9256]

"Women wanted to write too--good on them" I think it's more of an "of course they bloody did" situation 😄😄😄 I just started reading a translation of the tale of genji, it's pretty good.

[@Articuno1]

I want to add after WW2 a lot of Japanese people migrated to Latin America. One those countries was where my parents are from The Dominican republic and there is a big community of Chinese and Japanese there.

[@beardedpanda5086]

It’s a shame most young people don’t speak Ryukyuan anymore. It’s completely different and not understandable to mainland Japanese. Thank you is にふぇでび〜る How are you is ちゃガンジュ I quite like it and throw old people off when speaking it.

[@kekeke8988]

It's quite different, but not completely different. A lot of the vocab was always cognate to Japanese, just with corrupted consonants/ vowels. They're probably at least as close as German & English. Like ti vs te (hand) warabi vs warabe (child) ami vs ame (rain) wuduyun vs (w)odoru (dance) hariyun vs hareru (to be clear) agiyun vs ageru (give) warayun vs warau (laugh) kachun vs katsu (win) chinuu for kinou (yesterday) As you can see, most of the ru from Japanese verbs changes to yun in Uchinaguchi, and i change to e, o change to u, because it has only 3 vowels instead of 5.

[@beardedpanda5086]

@@kekeke8988 i would say pure ryukyuan though japonic is a further leap than German and English. I think a lot of the Japanese influence and loan words happened over the years especially around the time and leading up to Okinawas annexation. Today since the official language is Japanese, you have Okinawa dialect of Japanese with the older purer language dying out with the elderly. You have phrases such as: Chaagan juu vs Ogenki desuka Chuuya ippei uto ton vs kyou ha ii tenki Deiji can also be used for ippei vs ippai Maasaan for oishi Shi ni vs totemo And quite a bit more. It’s completely unintelligible to any dialects I hear on mainland. It’s a shame it’s dying out.

[@a_li_d1035]

I think the picture you used at 8:15 is Chinese (Traditional) not Japanese...

[@deathdoor]

8:25 It's not really "three writing systems" right? The system is just one, with two/three different symbols.

[@zdzislawmeglicki2262]

Hello Olly, some would say that the oldest novel is "Satyricon" written by Petronius probably during the reign of Nero. What say you?

[@うそ警察]

Another one? "Watashi" "Ore" "Boku" "Jibun" "Ora" "Oira" "Uchi" "Temae" "Atai" these are all means "I" in English

[@Mayakuya]

and also "Watakushi", "Atakuchi", "Ate" and "Ware"

[@estefaneoy3483]

Olly, I like your T-shirt, where did you get it?

[@mishapurser4439]

7:25 I recognise that song from The Man In The High Castle! ^V^

[@khumairaranisa2404]

I'm learning Japanese. Thank's to explain the history about the Japanese writing system because I was confused why Japanese have to have 3 writing system. My teacher just told us if hiragana was created by a woman and katakana was created by a man.

[@MDobri-sy1ce]

Also, I think the reason Japanese and Korean sound so different from their Altaic cousins is because I think the Koreans and Japanese were too far north east but the Koreans migrated eventually to Korea more south east but the Japanese moved further east to the Japanese Archipelago.

[@nonta4617]

急におすすめに出てきたからコメントを足跡代わりにしてみます😉

[@cocopoco2006]

So interesting…

[@itsabouttime820]

While going to school in Okinawa, I was taught that Japanese people came from China. I learned this in the 60's. The only thing else on this subject that was taught is that there was a horrible war in China and many people had to flee. During this migration period these people began creating the Japanese language which was kind of like pig-Latin, but for Chinese people. This also reminds me that I was taught Christopher Columbus came from Italy, but then I was taught he actually came from Greece. So who really knows? This being said, I found this video to be more believable.

[@Terrus_38]

0:06 And Korean?

[@ba8898]

Ah so that's why Mr Miyagi says Daniel San :)

[@lisanarramore222]

Exactly!

[@danielantony1882]

Bruh why?

[@hpatdh077]

You forgot to mention the relationship between Japanese and Chinese, that Japanese not only borrowed the writing system, but also lots of words that didn't exit in Japanese at the time, but did in Chinese. that's why many words sound kind of similar. It is estimated 49% of words in the Japanese language come from Chinese! No small deal.

[@Cherodar]

In addition to that, Japanese people coined a lot of new words out of Chinese roots, many of which were later re-borrowed by Chinese!

[@RaymondHng]

Unlike English and Chinese, Japanese is an agglutinative language where it "glues" extra words at the end to change the meaning. So the English sentences: The man will be driving the car. The man would have been driving the car. The man should be driving the car. The man could be driving the car. The man could not be driving the car. The man is driving the car. The man drove the car. The man can drive the car. The man does not drive the car. The man was driving the car. The man did not drive the car. The man will drive the car. The man will not drive the car. The man should drive the car. The man should not drive the car. The man must drive the car. The man cannot drive the car. The man must not drive the car. Will the man drive the car? Could the man drive the car? Should the man drive the car? Couldn't the man drive the car? Shouldn't the man drive the car? The man would have driven the car. translate to Japanese as: 男は車を運転します。 男は車を運転していただろう。 男は車を運転しているはずです。 男は車を運転している可能性があります。 男は車を運転することができませんでした。 男は車を運転しています。 男は車を運転した。 男は車を運転することができます。 男は車を運転しない。 男は車を運転していた。 男は車を運転しなかった。 男は車を運転する。 男は車を運転しません。 男は車を運転するべきです。 男は車を運転すべきではありません。 男は車を運転しなければなりません。 男は車を運転することはできません。 男は車を運転してはいけません。 男は車を運転するのだろうか？ 男は車を運転できますか？ 男は車を運転すべきでしょうか？ 男は車を運転できませんでしたか？ 男は車を運転すべきではない？ 男は車を運転しただろう。 The first six characters for "man" "car" "drive" stay the same subject-object-verb order while all the auxiliary verbs and negation are glued on at the end. *Side-by-side* The man will be driving the car. 男は車を運転します。 The man would have been driving the car. 男は車を運転していただろう。 The man should be driving the car. 男は車を運転しているはずです。 The man could be driving the car. 男は車を運転している可能性があります。 The man could not be driving the car. 男は車を運転することができませんでした。 The man is driving the car. 男は車を運転しています。 The man drove the car. 男は車を運転した。 The man can drive the car. 男は車を運転することができます。 The man does not drive the car. 男は車を運転しない。 The man was driving the car. 男は車を運転していた。 The man did not drive the car. 男は車を運転しなかった。 The man will drive the car. 男は車を運転する。 The man will not drive the car. 男は車を運転しません。 The man should drive the car. 男は車を運転するべきです。 The man should not drive the car. 男は車を運転すべきではありません。 The man must drive the car. 男は車を運転しなければなりません。 The man cannot drive the car. 男は車を運転することはできません。 The man must not drive the car. 男は車を運転してはいけません。 Will the man drive the car? 男は車を運転するのだろうか？ Could the man drive the car? 男は車を運転できますか？ Should the man drive the car? 男は車を運転すべきでしょうか？ Couldn't the man drive the car? 男は車を運転できませんでしたか？ Shouldn't the man drive the car? 男は車を運転すべきではない？ The man would have driven the car. 男は車を運転しただろう。

[@KuraSourTakanHour]

The funny thing is Japanese can easily add spaces, but it's mostly used as a reading aid for children