Similarities Between Korean and Japanese

How similar are Korean and Japanese?
In today’s episode, we’re comparing some of the similarities between two popular East Asian languages, Japanese and Korean, with Sato, a Japanese speaker, and Seoyeon, a Korean speaker challenging each other with a list of words and sentences. If you have any questions, suggestions or feedback, please reach us on Instagram.
Shahrzad (@shahrzad.pe): shahrzad.pe
Bahador (@BahadorAlast): BahadorAlast
Japanese is a member of the Japonic (or Japanese-Ryukyuan) language family and is spoken primarily in Japan, where it is the national language. The Korean language is a member of the Koreanic language family and is the official and national language of both North Korea and South Korea.

[Bahador Alast]

We cannot respond to all your comments on KZbin, so please reach us on Instagram with your questions, suggestions and any feedback: Shahrzad (@shahrzad.pe): instagram.com/shahrzad.pe Bahador (@BahadorAlast): instagram.com/BahadorAlast

[Median Empire]

Bahador Alast please make a Kurdish baluchi video

[Njiia Brrr]

Do Serbian vs Hungarian, you would be surprised :)

[Zak.]

Median Empire Kurdish has already been done how about Somali

[Real Life]

Your videos are great! Thank you! Can you do between Kazakh(Turkic language) and Arabic?!, please

[Black Pearl]

why u didnot add this language,Susumu Ōno,[9] and Homer B. Hulbert[10] propose that early Dravidian people, especially Tamils, migrated to the Korean peninsula and Japan. Clippinger presents 408 cognates and about 60 phonological correspondences. Clippinger found that some cognates were closer than others leading him to speculate a genetic link which was reinforced by a later migration.[11][12] The Japanese professor Tsutomu Kambe found more than 500 similar cognates between Tamil and Japanese.[13] Some of the common features are:[14] all three languages are agglutinative, follow the SOV order, nouns and adjectives follow the same syntax, particles are post-positional, modifiers always precede modified words. However, typological similarities such as these could have arisen by chance; for instance, if a given pair of languages were agglutinative, most of the other typological features like SOV order, post-positional particles, modifiers preceding modified words might have evolved to be similar by mere chance (this being the general trend observable in most known agglutinative languages). The lack of a statistically significant number of cognates and the lack of anthropological and genetic links can be adduced to dismiss this proposal.[1] Comparative linguist Kang Gil-un found 1300 Dravidian Tamil cognates in Korean. He insisted that the Korean language is based on the Nivkh language and was influenced later.[15]Korean Meaning Tamil Meaning Notes Mettugi (메뚜기) grasshopper Mettukkili (வெட்டுக்கிளி) grassh

[Matt Field]

The Japanese and Korean languages are quite similar in many ways, it's kind of like Spanish being similar to Italian with different writing systems and even though Japanese and Korean are in separate completely isolated language categories they both take many words and sounds from Chinese and their gramatical and syntax structures are quite similar as well...

[Morgan]

Spanish and Italian are both direct descendants of the same mother language (Latin) and Japanese and Korean aren't even related so that comparison is a bit exaggerated

[Triangull689]

@Morganthere is an hypothesis that Korean and Japanese descended from the same language family around 3000 years ago

[Diogo Lima]

spanisha and portuguese is very similar but spanish do not understands portuguese and portuguese do understand spanish why is that...

[Luka]

I speak neither of these languages, but I understood half of the words and even the sentences at the end 😂 Thank you Korean music and Japanese anime

[dd]

yep same lol

[Kholida M Solikhah 037]

Rightt

[Эйвейл Александр]

HAHA! Those are the strongest culture output of KOREA and JAPAN.

[CARIN 02]

LMAO

[Astar Goddess]

That's very interesting so you learn by listening :)

[a a]

i also know another words that also similar like 기억 (gieok) and 記憶 (kioku) means memory. 가방 (gabang) and 鞄 (kaban) means bag. 솔직히 (soljikhi) and 正直 (shoujiki) means honestly. 기린 (girin) and 麟麒 (kirin) means giraffe. it actually has more similarities that i cant mention

[Gvr JakeS]

Also 약속 and 約束

[Troy509]

솔직히 written in Chinese characters would be 率直히 which is not the same as Japanese 正直 even though they sound very similar

[Little Wishy]

麒麟 actually refers to the mythical creature, the qilin. Giraffe is written キリン. 기린 can mean either depending on context.

[Jason Brown]

Beautiful seeing culture and language being shared. Spread love and acceptance.

[Ektiel]

Most of these words have the same Chinese roots. Korean and Japanese also have quite similar grammars, but the original Korean words and Japanese words have very few in common.

[Iris]

The meanings are from China character but both Japan and Korea struggled to get rid of it because of how ineffective to write it and we both made it. Glad that I was born as Chinese cause it would be such a pain to even communicate online today 💅🏻

[lllllllllll]

Hey guys~ I am South Korean and majored in Korean. The reason why Korean and Japanese pronunciations are similar is because both countries use Chinese characters. Also, China has similar pronunciation as Korea and Japan. For your information, it is easy to understand Chinese characters as European Latin. Thank you to reading my reply haha

[no u]

Omgg thanks for the insight💗💗

[Akun Buangan]

@no u Yes, in the past Chinese were Latin of East Asia. All similar words in this video except shirt are Chinese loanwords, but since it was borrowed during Tang Dynasty Era, the word sounds quite different to modern standard Mandarin and may be closer to Southern Chinese like Hokkien, Hakka, or Cantonese.

[no u]

@Akun Buangan omggg thats so cool! Yeah chinese is like the final bods of east asian languages😂 so if you learn chinese first and then other east asian languages, you will be familiar with A LOT of words

[Akun Buangan]

@no u for me, learn Japanese first would be better since Japanese have both Korean S-O-V grammar (Chinese grammar is SVO) but still keep Chinese characters, it's best of two worlds.

[no u]

@Akun Buangan oh, ok👍 tnx for the insightfull information💅

[iÇİN'de Ne Varsa!?]

Some words are very similar in Chinese as well: 1- Junbi= Preparation =准备(junbei) 2- mirai= future =未来(weilai) 3- shinsa= =judgment 审查(shencha) 4- jikan = time =时间(shijian) 5- segyegan = worldview =世界观(shijieguan) 6- pibu = skin =皮肤(pifu) 7- toshokan = library =图书馆(tushuguan) Even if I present some Chinese words, hello by Turkish man from Shanghai,CHINA 🇹🇷❤️🇨🇳

[xXxSkyViperxXx]

these are adopted from old and middle chinese from old chinese dynasties that influenced words in both korean and japanese like from tang dynasty there are other regional chinese languages that sound even closer: 1- junbi, junbi = Preparation = chún-pī [準備] (Hokkien Minnan[福建闽南话]) 2- mirai, mirae= future =[未來] mei6 lai4 (Cantonese[广东话]), bī-lâi (Hokkien) 3- shinsa, shimsa = judgment = [審查]shěnchá(Mandarin), sím-cha (Hokkien) 4- jikan, sigan = time = [時間] sî-kan (Hokkien), si4 gaan3 (Cantonese) 5- sekaikan, segyegwan = worldview =[世界觀] sè-kài-koan (Hokkien), sai3 gaai3 gun1 (Cantonese) 6- hifu, pibu = skin =[皮膚] phì-fû (Hakka客家话), pífū (Mandarin), bi fu (Wu吴语上海市), phê-hu (Hokkien) 7- toshokan, doseogwan = library =[圖書館] tô͘-su-koán(Hokkien), túshūguǎn (Mandarin), thù-sû-kón (Hakka), tou4 syu1 gun2 (Cantonese)

[rational💧Dude]

Yes a Lot of the roots of japanese and korean words is from old Chinese.

[Hiroshi Hasegawa]

Around 19th century Japan imported hundreds of western concepts and kanji-nized those into new Japanese words. And the contemporary Chinese and Korean have used those words with their own way of readings. This is the reason the contemporary Korean has many similar words with Japanese.

[Dubdee]

Similar pronunciation in Vietnamese as well!

[Konoe Fumimero]

Hiroshi Hasegawa has gave the answer. Then 1905-1945, Asian leaders studied in Japan, and the Japanese gov or army created schools and universities in several area.

[J隨風行赱]

Because ancient Japan and Korea absorbed a large number of ancient Chinese words (In ancient times, people from the two countries could also communicate directly through Chinese characters 漢字 whithout talking ), while in modern times, Japan and Korea absorbed a large number of English words, That's why the pronunciation of 2 countries is so similar, but this does not mean that the two languages have any direct connection.

[Irfan Brohe]

Korean language sounds so polite. I love the way she speaks.

[Astar Goddess]

It's a really cute language.....when your not getting cussed out

[caballo francisco llo]

Hoseok My baby if we could translate every bit of the swear words directly to anybody of any language, we would probably repel him.

[Candice Honeycutt]

It is polite. Much like Japanese, Korean uses honorifics which is basically a very formal and polite way of talking.

[Frida Ramirez]

@Romu < thank you for making the world a better place

[Villains]

korean and japanese have very similar grammar structures and most of chinese letters(kanji/hanja) sound similar.

[Han Ng]

A lot of these are Chinese loan words. It would be interesting to do either Korean or Japanese with a conservative dialect like Teochew. I think the full sentences though would not be intelligible. I also suspect that "shirt" and "sewing machine" in Korean are loanwords from Japanese (because of the occupation), which are in turn loan words from Portuguese and Dutch, respectively.

[Shiroi Guitar]

Majority of them seem "invented" by Japanese government during World War era. See on Wikipedia "Wasei Kango".

[없음]

2人とも、特色があってかっこいい言語。 두언어 다 특색있고 멋있는언어 Both are unique and cool languages.

[moonfairy]

As a non native japanese speaker, this was so fascinating. It's like watching a game of multilingual Mad Gab! Makes me want to try to learn Korean again!

[دكُتورة ٱرهـابيـة]

In love with korean and Japanese language and culture 🇰🇷🇯🇵✔️

[Reem 1998]

غيري اسمك !

[لا أحد]

@Reem 1998 😂😂😂😂

[Aphro]

Same sis masha Allah 🌸🌸🌸 it's great to learn about lots of cultures

[伟大的共产接班人]

实际他们大多数来自中国😅😅😅

[Sidrah Esmaël]

So fun to see how pronunciation varies between Korean and Japanese, both Seoyeon and Sato were so good at guessing!! :)

[xahal]

One interesting fact is that 単位 actually used to be たんゐ (tanwi) in japanese , but the ゐ sound vanished in standard japanese and became い (i).

[bright horse]

In Chinese "danwei"

[Mattia Mele]

Fahim Ali If you have a romaji keyboard (you type in Latin alphabet) try "wyi" or just "wi".

[K T]

in chinese it's dan wei

[zyh hh]

中国語　单位（dān wèi）

[Matthew M]

Woah as someone who speaks both languages and has lived in both countries, I habe wanted this one for so long! Thank you so much! Ah just a little error, the time one. The Korean word 시각 (shigak) is a specific moment in time and is 時刻 (jikoku) in Japanese. The word the Japanese lady guessed (and put on the screen) 時間 (jikan) is a period of time, which in Korean is 시간 (shigan).

[conan]

and if you go to the past, 시간 is written as 時間. same as japanese and chinese

[Rei Satsuki]

I'm about to point out this tho lol anyway thanks

[Yorisa]

correcto~ I was just gonna point that out too, cuz then I bet the japanese lady could've guessed it easier haha even when you say the phrase, "there's not enough time," in japanese they would use "jikan" and in korean "shigan" so yeah haha

[高倉一輝]

There is a similar situation between European language and Asian language. Each European languages are affected by Latin in a academic vocabulary. Like this, many Asian language are affected by Chinese in an academic vocabulary. But I think we have to remember the point that these effects are limited in academic and noble and diplomatic vocabulary. Daily vocabulary has big gap each other like French and English, like Japanese and Korean.

[N N]

The corean pronunciation is softer i think, and the japanese was a little bit more clear (at least to me). I dont know anything about the vocabulary in Japanese and Korean, but it was fun to see how the words change in most of the consonants ... :) great video

[SantomPh]

Korean is an Altaic language like Mongolian so there are more hard vowels

[Ryuko ΘώΘ]

@SantomPh The Altaic language family is a not a widely supported theory, most linguists do not support it

[corndog984]

Korean characters combine to form different sounds, whereas Japanese is written out. When laid out, however the core alphabet is more or less the same (pronunciation, of Hiragana/Kata/Hangul). So in effect, Koreans might sound a bit rounded as they pronounce things that would be pronounced “linearly” in Japanese. It’s due to the stacking of multiple sounds into a figurative “box”, making a word. As for Kanji / Hanja, they are literally the same; Chinese characters. The sounds derived from a kanji/Hanja symbol are different for both countries, but most are immediately recognizable as the meaning derived from the character is identical. For instance, my mother is Korean. when I show her Japanese verbs written in Kanji, she knows what they mean (even if she does not know the pronunciation in Japanese)

[Ryuko ΘώΘ]

@corndog984 fun fact, writing is separate from language

[Fernanda Somenauer Garcia]

I think korean is more flexible. Japanese has a quite squared pronunciation. I love the Japanese language!

[emtee]

This video was overall very interesting. It's a good way to memorize the other language when you already know one. I would like to learn Korean, and since I've heard there are lots of similarities with Japanese I'm quite happy 🎊

[queen tsundere]

they're both so polite to each other. and their voices are so relaxing. i wanna learn japanese now~

[Paul Adam]

Japanese and Korean, the word (Chinese character vocabulary) homologous is a small problem, more importantly, is the same grammatical structure. So every time someone asks me about learning these two languages, I tell him you can learn two at the same time

[dropthe빛]

I remember requesting this language duo a while back. Thank you so much for following through! Another cool word that is similar: shoujiki (Japanese) and soljikhi (Korean). It means honestly. :)

[Cybernaut]

I love seeing the friendship between the Republic of Korea and Japan.

[Filip Ɖurić]

Such a respectful and beautiful culture these women share, its really attractive.

[PasscodeAdvance]

Fire and Ice Japan was, they are changed men now. Let's forgive them and hope they don't return to those days.

[Kotani Yumiko]

Planet07 Yeahhh no they still haven't apologize yet and deny a lot of their war crimes, its getting better really slowly but people really need to hold the Japanese government accountable.

[Rathin Sinha]

Guage Henthorn Literally most governments are evil whether it be usa, uk, china, japan, or NK.

[Allen Toyokawa]

@Kotani Yumiko get over it

[Morgan]

@Kotani Yumiko the Japanese government of today had nothing to do with WWII. It became a democracy with an entirely new constitutional framework since then and I guarantee you nobody working in the Japanese government today was doing so during WWII lol

[gogopowerrangers666]

As a person who has interest in both these languages, I was really entertained by this video, thank you. And I'm currently staying in Shanghai, so I have a good chance to notice some similarities as well :)

[Berk Çandar]

Amazing!! Great and fun content, with very wonderful ladies! Even though I don't understand the language I really enjoyed learning! Oh and Congrats on reaching 50 thousand subscribers!!

[Nesucka]

I am learning Japanese and I also like watching K-Dramas . I always fell sympaty Japanese and Korean culture . By the way , Good job Bahador . You show us how world is interconnected. Greetings from Turkey !

[Dara Armand]

In Chinese library is Tushuguan. These languages have a lot in common. Thanks for the amazing content you produce Bahador Jaan

[LeoJohnGalt]

I do like how some words stayed pretty much the same despite being loanwords, like machine being from English and then "earthquake" and "time" coming from the Kanji/Hanja pronounciation of the hanzi words. They say there isn't much mutual intelligibility, but I feel like they could read all the same hanzi the same. This was a pretty cool video.

[Daniel Antony]

Only in Traditional 漢字 ðo.

[Double Trouble]

Love your contests Bahador. Too much fun. Can you do German vs Afrikaans ?

[Plushteddybear69]

Beautiful gals and beautiful languages!!! Bahador, a wonderful host as always ❤️ 🇮🇷 🇯🇵 🇰🇷

[Pualam Nusantara]

2 of my favorite languages!!!! Thank you for making this video 😘!!

[Avolance]

At 4:25 The word is 시간 (Shigan) not 시각 (shigag). Shigag has a totally different meaning hahaha I loved this video though! Thank you for your efforts to make content like this :D

[Scott Grohs]

Fun! Please do similarities between Estonian and Finnish.

[Kohtzoor Brewster]

Awesome, the most coherent language couple you've invited so far! I love your series!

[Willy Willy]

Both Korean and Japanese are from Altai. Their sentence order is also similiar like S O V. Therefore Korean can easily learn Japanese and vice versa.

[Gregory Petty ᜊᜌ᜔ᜊᜌᜒᜈ᜔]

The Japanese language also has a lot of Austronesian words in it as well.

[Gregory Petty ᜊᜌ᜔ᜊᜌᜒᜈ᜔]

@Lixin Shufen It seems like you are asking the question because you’ve seen similarities between Korean and Japanese languages, or you may have some notion of the shared common history between the two peoples, and are perplexed as to why the two languages are not considered to belong to the same family. The short answer is linguistic analysis. Linguists have rigorous criteria for determining whether two languages are in the same family, that is, that they share a common ancestral language. First, let me say that I’m not a professional linguist, but I know that the field of linguistics is very rigorous and sophisticated in analyzing languages and their relationships, for which the linguists have developed techniques. They need to employ those techniques because you can easily fall into a trap of thinking that two languages are strongly related to each other based on certain characteristics, but often, upon closer examination, those characteristics turn out to be insufficient and do not indicate that the languages are members of the same family. For example, many languages have what are known as “loan words”. These are words that were picked up from other languages due to factors such as mixing of different populations of people. Modern Korean (as spoken in South Korea) has many loan words that were adopted from English. So, if you are not careful, you might think that Korean and English languages share a common ancestor simply based on these loan words and conclude that they belong to the same family, but of course you know that that is not the case. This is just one example of what can happen between two old languages like Korean and Japanese when people from both groups intermingle with each other for a very long period of time, in this case, for well over a thousand years. Thus, contrary to what many people believe, just because two languages share certain similarities in grammar, vocabulary, or pronunciation does not automatically mean that they both belong to the same family. Again, let me emphasize, the definition of “language family” is that the languages that belong to a family are descendants of a common ancestral language. So if the similarities between two languages are the results of only cultural or economic contact between people, for example, and not because the languages have the same ancestor, then by definition, they are not members of the same family. Most people tend to use the word “family” loosely when they talk about languages but, in linguistics, “family” has the same concept as used in genealogy. When you think of your own family, what is the common thing that all your biological family members share? They have the same ancestors, of course. That is the same concept used by linguists when they talk about language families. If you look at the chart for Indo-European family of languages, you will see that it looks exactly like a family tree. So when linguists study languages and determine which families they belong to, they are trying to determine whether they have the same or different ancestral languages and they do so using rigorous techniques. In fact, linguists refer to languages that belong to the same family as “genetic languages”, borrowing the terminology used in DNA biology. One of the other commenters mentioned that nationalistic feelings can make analyzing origins of languages difficult. That is not true for languages like Korean and Japanese that have been studied by a diverse group of researchers for a long time. The community of professional and academic linguists come from different countries and most do not have allegiances to the cultures of the languages that they are studying. So there is sufficient objective research that you can use to factor out the ones that may be biased because of nationalistic tendencies. Although there are common, established analytical techniques in linguistics, different linguists can apply them differently. In some cases, because the techniques can be difficult to use (for example, because of lack of sufficient historical written usages of the languages), there can be differences in opinion among linguists in how to apply them. So in the case of Korean and Japanese, not all linguists will give you the same answer. However, the general consensus, accepted by most linguists, is that Korean and Japanese are not part of the same family. This consensus is the result of years of analysis and study conducted by academic linguistic experts. Even the once-accepted idea that Korean and Japanese belong to the Altaic family of languages has now been rejected by most modern linguistic scholars. Both Japanese and Korean are now considered to be language isolates, a fancy term meaning that they do not have a familial relationship to each other nor to any other modern language. For a fascinating look at the history of the Korean language, I suggest that you google for the Wikipedia article about “Koreanic languages”. If you have watched historical Korean dramas, you might be familiar with the ancient Khitan tribe of people. There is an interesting detail in the article about the relationship of the now-extinct Khitan language to Korean. the majority of linguists agree that they aren’t related languages, and the few linguists that do believe they are related have shown nothing to prove it. There simply isn’t any shared native vocabulary between them. Sometimes people will say that words in Japanese and Korean do have shared vocabulary but these are mostly from… Chinese words into both English words into both Korean words into Japanese Japanese words into Korean These are loanwords. They are not cognates. If they were related languages then you should expect to see cognates - shared words that were inherited from a common ancestor…but these simply don’t exist between Japanese and Korean.

[Daniel Antony]

It's not

[김수로]

Korea used "Hanja" characters a long time ago. Japan still uses Hanja(Kanji) characters. So there are many common Hanja words. "Ingan"'s original Korean word is "saram". "Ingan" uses only Hanja words when it is necessary to use them. The word Koreans use in everyday life is "saram". "Saram"

[いちのせみさ]

Japanese is also the same. ''Ningen(Human)'''s original Japanese word is ''Hito'' the word Japanese use in everyday life is ''Hito'' HITO(ヒト) ◀︎this is the original correct and pure Japanese word

[Jellyyz]

محمد فاضل not really. Village = قرية = Qurya Korea = كرية = kourya

[용용이s]

EF EF village in korean is "go-eul"

[Jolly Kent Bejare]

@いちのせみさ Hito means Person/People. Ningen means Human. Don't get confused with Hito 人 and Ningen 人間. Hito is word. But in case of Ningen, the person radical is read as Nin, and nin doesn't have a meaning, because it is a morpheme. If you remove the second character, then it will automatically read as Hito. Hito is a standalone character. And Ningen is a combination of person radical and Space/Interval character.

[James 21st.]

Love to learn both languages. Beautiful words. But too difficult.

[PassionforDreaming]

I noticed some similarities between the two languages when studying them. Your series is a great way for language learners to learn vocab for two languages at once 🙂

[James K]

I know both languages. The word examples taken for this were either Sino-Korean/Sino-Japanese words or words imported from English. They would have much higher chance of matching phonetically than pure Korean or pure Japanese words. A much more interesting comparison would be to find old pure Korean and pure Japanese words and see how close they are. Certain scholars believe that 2000 years ago people would have understood each other's speeches. On the other hand, modern people probably wouldn't understand those languages spoken 2000 years ago. We have no recordings and can't really compare them.

[sevda.]

hello. half japanese here! this video was recommended to me, and this makes me want to pick back up on korean. i only self-taught myself the hangul alphabet, but didn't realize the similarities between the two languages until i came across this video. thank you, it will serve as motivation fuel for the future.

[Chulwon Lee]

I love this video but it is also dangerous because it might give people a misperception that Korean and Japanese languages are mutually intelligible or very closely related to each other. In fact, those similarities only appear from the Chineses loan words, which are also found from other countries with Chinese influences, Vietnam for instance. It is worth noting that such similarities are very limited in most of the fundamental vocabulary in each of those languages. Our languages are so different...

[Love Yourself 4ever]

This is quite relaxing and peaceful They're just lovely ❤ I love the both language 💞

[pubokiazm]

korean and japanese languages are highly influenced by the hokkien/fujian/xiamen chinese dialect which was the official language of the tang dynasty at the height of the chinese golden age. some words are also influenced by the foochow/fuzhou dialect. 1. junbi = jun bi (hokkien, foochow) 2. mirai = wui lai (hokien, foochow) 3. shinsa = sin chat (hokkien) 4. jikan = si gan (hokkien), si gang (foochow) 5. segyegan = se gai guan (hokkien), sie gai guang (foochow) 6. pibu, hihu = pi hu (hokkien, foochow) 7. toshokan = tu su guan (hookien, foochow) 8. shinbun = sin bun (hokkien), sing wung (foochow/fuzhou) 9. danwi = dan wi (hokkien), tang wui (foochow) 10. ningen, ingan = jin gan (hokkien) ing gang (foochow) 11. shigag, jikan = si gan (hokkien), si gang (foochow) 12. jijin, jishin = de jin (hokkien), di jing (foochow) 13. gwangei, kankei = guan heh (hokkien), guang hie (foochow) 14. japanese number pronunciation is rather similar to foochow's 15. and on and on so is a lot of tang dynasty hokkien influence in south east asia.

[Nate Collins]

Feels like K-Pop vs Anime , both of them are so Popular ....

[K & D joshi]

True lol

[GyopoGames]

Orlando Sages there is no copy it’s just pop from either korea or japan. One’s obviously more popular than the other.

[K & D joshi]

Orlando Sages more like J-pop getting inspired from western pop & some Kpop since Japan was always better at Rock (perhaps the only place where rock is still alive)

[GyopoGames]

Orlando Sages everyone has their own opinions there’s no point in arguing lmao

[Ando Bull]

They both have at least a bit of knowledge about each other's way of pronunciation... I could've never guessed some of them no matter how many time I listened to.

[Jaime Echerivel]

Southeast Asian languages share a lot of similarities too. Lao and Thai share like 70% of their languages, it’s just accents are different. I’m learning Lao because my wife speaks it and she said if I learn Lao, I’ll know a lot Thai too.

[Alexis Collins]

This looks so fun! I’m a Japanese speaker as well and once I was watching a Korean song with Japanese subtitles and I noticed that 準備 and 준비 were the same pronunciation and meaning. It blew my mind 😂

[@Pok Ya - Anak Rantau]

Bahador, a lot of the similarities in vocabulary seen in this video seem to be attributable to the shared Sino-Korean /Sino-Japanese lexical corpus derived from the use of Hanja/ Kanji (Chinese characters).

[Juan Hsieh]

I am a Taiwanese and speak mandarin. Actually some of words they use is from other language called Hokkin. Then Hokkin was used in Taiwan from 15th centry. In Taiwan we called Hokkin as Taiwanese. So even we have no idea about two languages, we still can tell both languages.

[Amanda]

A lot of the reasons why some words are the same is bc of China. Both Japan and Korea had adopted Chinese characters, when Sejong invented Hangeul some words still kept the Chinese pronunciation, same for Japan. On yomi and kun yomi, chinese and Japanese readings of a word. Also the modern words like shirt, restaurant, cake etc. Comes from English so its no wonder those sound similar in both languages too

[SSD HEM]

Some of the missing points for this video clip: 1. Japanese and Korean languages are the most similar languages to each other in the whole world 2. Besides the similarity of these two languages in vocab, 97.5% of their grammar are the same 3. Both Korean and Japanese belong to the same language tree called altaic 4. Modern Japanese language is said to be originated or strongly influenced by an ancient Korean kingdom called Goguryo while modern Korean language is said to be originated or strongly influenced by another ancient Korean kingdom called Shilla.

[Akun Buangan]

Actually the only similarity between Japanese and Korean are the grammar and Chinese loanwords. Native Japanese words are nothing sounds like native Korean words. There is no similarity between Japanese hito (person) with Korean saram (person). Usually the sister languages should share same cognates for example Spanish mundo and Italian mondo, but Korean and Japanese have almost no cognate native words. The only cognates between Korean and Japanese are the Chinese loanwords. Surprisingly Japanese and Korea share a little amount of false friends that aren't cognates like Hana (means one in Korean, but flower in Japanese), Sora (means sky in Japanese, but shell in Korean), and Yuri (means Lily flower in Japanese, but glass in Korean). Some linguists propose that a little amount of Japanese and Korean native words are cognates, for example Korean Haneul is cognates with Japanese Hare, both means sunny day. But the numbers of cognates between native Japanese and Korean words are still lower compared to cognates between Chinese loanwords in two languages.

[Gregory Petty ᜊᜌ᜔ᜊᜌᜒᜈ᜔]

@Akun Buangan You are right about that.

[SU'EM]

​@Akun BuanganAs a South Korean I can confirm you are right

[darkuser999]

I'm Chinese and i can play this game as well because a lot of the words are vocabulary derived from Chinese (Hanja and Kanji) in both languages...others are garaigo from English! I'd be super surprised if there are no direct influences between Japanese and Korean!

[Neaum Kkot]

I’m korean and i can understand almost 30% of japanese eventhough i’ve never learned japanese. Korean and japanese are really similar. i enjoyed your vedio :)

[bb]

형 video야..

[dmddo00]

중국의 한자 영향 때문에 한자어 단어 만을 봤을때 같은 뜻에 비슷하게 발음되는 단어가 꽤 많음 하지만 일본말 하는거 들어보면 하나도 이해 못하실꺼임 일본어와 한국어는 전혀 다른 언어임

[Vitor Emanuel Oliveira]

You can thank the Chinese for being so influential in both cultures, to the point that 60% of your vocabulary comes from Chinese, and the same goes to japanese haha

[Yorisa]

@Vitor Emanuel Oliveira Well.. I wouldn't say 60% per say haha I get your point though that there's a lot of sino-korean words in korean through the chinese dynastic periods, but a lot of them actually aren't commonly used today, they're either(*edit :D ) replaced by western words, or reverted back into native korean. It's a valid point however that the old chinese language had influenced korean literature pre-hangul and still have some remaining in modern korean.

[Dale Choi]

한자문화권이여서 비슷한 단어는 많아도 문장전체로 보면 아예다른데

[fi vantvcs]

Hello +Bahador Alast, even if it is not proved still, it is possibly that Koran and Japanese can be far far cousin languages (maybe a root from Siberia), as the grammar and the syntax are similar, as has shown Paul of +Langfocus and for vocabulary, there are a lot of Chinese loanwords in the two languages. Very interesting video!!

[Island Yoga]

Japanese language is an ancient Korean language from one of the Three Kingdoms that's been infused with Aboriginal/Jomon and few other foreign languages. Their writing system, hiragana and katakana were invented by scholars from Shilla Kingdom while attempting to make chinese writing system easier for the general populace.

[Makoto Lazuardi]

I'm half Japanese , I do speak Japanese and I went to international school which 60%++ of the students were Korean. I do not listen or watch any K-pop song or drama so listening someone talking in Korean it's a rare case for me. But since I started to listening my classmates talk, I realized how similar the words are and also the meaning. Just a wonderful sight for me about diversity.

[Nox Arbor]

I've become interested in the similarities between these languages every since I heard a Korean version of an English song and thought it sounded like Japanese. I watched a good number of subtitled Naruto episodes and thought I could recognize Japanese, just like I could other languages like Nordic ones, even if I couldn't speak any of them. Glad to know my brain isn't completely crazy.

[shan jim]

i believe all these words are similar in Japanese, Korean, Chinese and Vietnamese except those originated from English, since they all retain their pronunciations of 汉字(Kanji, Hanja, Từ Hán Việt). Chinese, Vietnamese and Korean share about 50% of their vocabulary(not so sure about percentage of Japanese). You would find tons of similar vocabulary in these four languages, especially when it comes to literature, culture, science, history, etc. Basically i think Chinese and Vietnamese are more similar to each other, while Korean and Japanese are more closely related than with the other two languages.

[Serbia423]

Your channel works well for the countries that are affected, look to comprise the states that were in conflict or who are currently. Socializing is important, regardless of the color of the skin or religion.

[Van Eliot]

Bahador...bringing languages closer together...one video at a time. 😊 Thank you so much for these videos, Bahador!

[Bahador Alast]

❤️❤️❤️

[Jeffry Syam]

Great work Bahador. I'd like to know the "flow" of the etymology of those particular words, considering Korean peninsula was under Japanese control from 1910 to 1945. Btw, I used to work with Korean Oil & Gas company, and my trainee told me that each of his grandparents had a Japanese name, besides of their original Korean names.

[miyagiX79]

Both of my favourite languages are in this video ☺ i kind of noticed those similarities between them and i told myself that either it's gonna be easy to learn them both or it's gonna be hard cuz i will mix things up 😂

[니키]

The similarity between two languages is limited within Chinese origin words, tho it's fun and interesting enough to compare the resemblance which is more similar than Chinese itself. The genetic relativeness of languages is measured by the similarity in basic words, not in conceptual or technical terms, nor in grammatical way. For instance, the word "mother" is "meter", and "foot" is "pod-" in Attic Greek(a Greek language spoken by Athenians, about 2500 years ago), which is listed in Indo-European language family. But the same word is "eomma"/"haha", "pal(bal)"/"ashi" in Korean and Japanese, respectively. But as you can find in the comments below, Korean and Japanese have more similar pronunciations in Sino-Korean/Japanese words rather than with Chinese that is the origin of the words. It's because of the conservativeness of the loanword. Language changes itself by the time goes, but loanwords are tend to be slower in the change than indigenous words. Korean and Japanese imported Chinese words which was way more developed in academic or delicate words then, by fitting them into their own phonology. After they well planted those words in their languages, they avoided to change the pronunciation because those were still recognized as loanwords from foreign language. You can find this is true when you check the pronunciation of these loanwords in their dialects. The sounds do not actually vary, except for some case of critical change of its phonology (merging or shift in vowels, changing of consonants). It is noticeable because Japanese and Korean have huge varieties of its dialects. Also, if you know about old Japanese orthography, it shows much more similarities. Korean : Kweonwi(authority) in modern Japanese : Ken'i in old Japanese : Ken'wi Korean : Kwangye(relationship) MJ : Kankei OJ : Kuwankei Korean : Pibu(skin) MJ : Hifu OJ : Pipu Korean : Peopryul(law) MJ : Houritsu OJ : Popuritu Korean : Pangbeop(method) MJ : Houhou OJ : Poupopu And if we apply the Old Korean pronunciation, Modern Korean : Teguk(big country) Old Korean : Taiguk(u)* Modern Japanese : Daikoku MK : Kepe (opening & closing) OK : Kaipyeoi MJ : Kaihei OJ : Kaipei MK : Angma** OK : Ak(u)ma MJ : Akuma *not actually has the vowel "u" but it tended to explode the last consonant rather than stop it like modern Korean. It might sounds like it has a weak "u" at the end of the word to Japanese or modern Korean's ears. **It's due to the assimilation between the velar consonant and the nasal consonant. I don't really know Mandarin or other Chinese languages at all, but I heard that they're quiet different from these two, although sometimes some loanwords are intelligible for Chinese, and even for Vietnamese. Funny thing is, as the conclusion, definitely none of those is included in a same language family lol.

[bean]

this is super informative, thank you!

[Nadine Liava'a]

Really nice to have them bond over the similarities

[Y]

About half of the words in Korea, Vietnam, Japan, and China have similar pronunciations because all four countries have a "Chinese character" culture. Chinese characters are derived from ancient China, and the word "live long" is said to be "만수무강(萬壽無疆) 하세요" in Korea. One character with the same meaning in this way almost the same pronunciation

[Arash M]

wow this was really special . your guests were very smart .which is not surprising given where they are from . it seems that if you know vowels of a language you are half way there for a correct guess . love you guys.

[K & D joshi]

8:53 Now that's what I was thinking about! I was having a hard time pronouncing the "Gw" & such mixed sounds in Korean so that was the reason I thought it's difficult. My mother tongue is pretty similar to Japanese then (in terms of pronunciation). I can pronounce the "Kh" "Ji" & "tsu" pretty easily but I feel like Japanese is a language which seems easy but it's pretty tricky (atleast to me) lol

[LogiForce86]

@Bahador Alast Do a Japanese-Dutch similarities one next. There is a lot of borrowed Dutch words that should still exist in Japan today, and it would be interesting to see how easily a Dutch person could understand the Japanese pronunciation and thus also a Japanese the Dutch pronunciation. This is due to Rangaku or "Dutch learning" which was taught between 1641-1853. Just to give you a hint on where and how to look for words (quickly found with a bit of googling).

[Pl Aya]

Ive just downloaded the vid to show further to the Russian girls/women how to behave themselves) It was an eye pleasure to watch these two girls answer with utmost respect to each other. That is what has gone missing in Russia.

[Abhi Dhoundiyal]

I'm an anime and kpop fan at same time, and yes there are so so many similar words in both languages ♥

[arista ikawati]

I love your channel, despite the difference of language, physical appearance, etc, you bring people together, showing us that human is somehow connected to each other. We're not that different, so i really hope in the future, all human can live together.... I know, it is like a super big dream, but who knows....

[paranoidandroid]

The more appropriate way of demonstrating the similarity of Korean and Japanese (or of any language for that matter...) would be to speak in full sentences and not merely comparing individual Chinese-derived vocabulary (漢語 kango). These are naturally going to be very similar because the words are derived from ancient Chinese which influenced Korea and served as the transmitter of knowledge to the Japanese isles. The grammatical structure would better illustrate the genetic link between the two languages. E.g., 1. 日, 時間あれば図書館へ行きましょうか？ (Ashita, jikan areba toshoukan-e ikimashouka?) 아침 시간있으면 도서관에 갈까요? (Ach'im, shigan isseumyuhn tosuhkwan-e kalkka yo?) Literally: Tomorrow, time if-(you) have, library-to shall (we) go? (If you have time shall we go to the library tomorrow?) 2. 私が彼の声を聞くと、私の心は温かくなります。 (Atashi-ga kare-no koe-wo kikuto, atashi-no kokoro-wa atatakakuni-narimasu...) 내가 그의 목소리를 들으면, 내 마음은 따뜻하게합니다. (Nae-ga keu-ui moksori-reul deuldorado, nae(ga) ma'eum-eun ttatteut'hage-hamnida...) Literally: I/me-(definite) he/him/his (possessive marker) voice-(direct obj.) hear-if/when (conditional), I/me-(definite) heart-topic marker warm-present/future tense-to become... (When (if) I hear his voice, my heart becomes/will become warm...) These complex sentences show the exact same word order and also demonstrate how the particles of both languages are affixed to the end of each word which show its relationship within a thought. Interestingly, even the definite particle "-ga" is the same in both Korean and Japanese and has the same function, though in Korean it is dropped in colloquial speech (as it is also often times in everyday Japanese). Agglutinative words: Itsu/uhnjae: when Made/kkaji: until Mo/na: also; too Itsumademo/Uhnjaekkajina: whenever /or/ Itsumo/Uhnjaena: always This shows how languages are actually related, NOT merely comparing vocabulary words. If that were the case, English (a Germanic language related to German, Swedish, Dutch, Frisian) could be said to have a relationship with a Romance language (such as French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Catalan, etc.). Neither are related except for the fact that English uses a lot of Latinate words because of the Roman conquest. It doesn't mean that English is genetically related to Spanish. Read your history! Host: "Read this..." French speaker: "le même chose!" Spanish speaker: "¿le me chos? la mima cosa... ¡Ah! "la misma cosa!" Si, si!" Everyone: "Oh! The same thing!" (nervous laughter) Host: "How bout this one?" Portuguese speaker: "O livro?" Spanish speaker: "El libro?" Everyone: "OMG, wow that's amazingly similar!" (nervous laughter) Host: "This one is going to floor you!" Italian and Spanish speaker: "La luna?" French speaker: "La lune..." English speaker: "You guys are loons..." Everyone: "OMG, (GASP!) SO SIMILAR! HOW?!"

[Aaron Marks]

As a linguist, I totally get where you're coming from. But he's picking speakers with no linguistics background and he's trying to keep the guessing and thinking time to a minimum. His channel isn't so much a straight typological language comparson, like LangFocus does, it's more getting speakers to have fun recognizing vocab in an unknown language that's really similar to their own.

[Lunatic Cat]

This is the right point of view. I'm Korean and I'm always amazed by the grammatical similarities between Korean and Japanese. The native words of those both languages are very different which stops these two from being in the same language group, and enabling people to understand each other, but the existence of particles and postpositions in both languages are actually mesmerizing. Some are saying this is just for fun, but things like this sometimes misguide people who really don't care. And they make ignorant comments on my daily life.. I love your mirror example in the European language. Thank you :)

[WEI of the DRAGON]

I heard many similarities here with Old Chinese, which is today's Hokkien dialect spoken in Fujian province and Taiwan and also amongst Chinese diaspora in South East Asia. Japan and Korea were heavily influenced by China's culture and language from Tang dynasty until Song dynasty.

[Lunatic Cat]

Great video!! But this could mislead some people thinking these two languages are actually similar. Although Korean and Japanese are more similar to each other than they are to other languages, if a native speaker of one of those two languages doesn't know how to speak the other one, they won't be able to understand at all. I'm Korean and used to speak a little bit of Japanese yet I can't understand Japanese except for the parts I remember learning in the past. I'm living in Canada now, and some people here sometimes seem to think all Asian languages are like Spanish/Italian or Norwegian/Swedish. The truth is that this similarity is from the imported Chinese script. For example, The word 'I' Korean: Na/Juh (and different forms depending on how the word is used in the sentence) Japanese: Watashi/Boku (there must be more, but my Japanese is not the best really) The word 'to eat' Korean: Muk-da Japanese: Taberu These examples are the non-imported Chinese words (sino-korean / sino-japanese), and you can see how different they are from each other. Think of English and French. English imported many words from the French language like 'necessary', 'article', but these two languages are not compatible.

[kepala kentang]

you shouldve explained how the words came to be similar, whether they are cognates, borrowed from the other language or borrowed by both from the same language or something. that would be more interesting to know :)

[Changzhen Xie]

In fact, ninety percent that links the two languages in words' pronunciations is Chinese. OnYomi(音读み) in Japanese is just adapted from Chinese; similar with Korean. But there're exceptions of some percentage that make these languages share, which are derived from English like 미심 and ミシン.

[oparasatauwaya]

It's because those words came from Middle Chinese. They are ancient loanwords. (I lived in Japan before, and visited Korea). If you look at *native* Korean words and native Japanese words, thats where it becomes really hard to spot any similarities. It seems Japonic languages were born from a number of trade creoles made up of an extinct Silla-ic branch of the Koreanic, Austronesian (from Taiwan and the northern Philippines, as genetic markers in Okinawa and Kyushu match both Taiwanese aboriginal and Filipino people, and artefacts match architecture and stone age tools found in both places) + an proto-Ainu (Jōmon or native paleolithic Japanese people) substratum. This is why Korean and Japonic languages (Japanese, Okinawan, Yaeyaman) share grammar, while maintaining completely different words (apart from loanwords from Chinese), with Japanese and especially Okinawan sharing the more vowel-heavy sounds and mora system typical of both Ainu and Austronesian languages.

[Miss Mess]

Wow, as a person who watches japanese anime and korean drama that was VERY EXCITING!! Because I have already noticed some similarities ✌, and now I've leared new words too this vid is very nice. 👍

[Khairul Warisin]

Yes me too😎

[Raymond Yan]

Japanese words of Chinese origin and Korean words of Chinese origin are very similar. And word orders of both languages are almost same because both of them are said to belong to Ural Altaic languages. But Korean words of Korean origin "고유어goyueo" and Japanese words of Japanese origin"大和言葉yamato-kotoba" are completely different like the diffence of "어제eoje" and 「昨日kinou」which means yesterday.

[epic djyoshi]

Learning both but didn't realise they were so similar! Thank you for the video

[Lixin Chen]

These words all have the same Chinese root. It will be interesting to compare the similarities between Chinese, Korean and Japanese.

[Aziz]

You should do one with Japanese-Turkish. We have many similiar sounding words. :)

[Leanh Leanh]

Most of the similarities is from Chinese loan words i think because i can say some of them are pretty similar to Vietnamese too. Like: Preparation Koean and Japanese: Junbi Vietnamese: Chuẩn bị Future Korean: Milae Japanese: Mirai Vietnamese: Tương lai Unit Korean: Danwi Japanese: Tani Vietnamese: Đơn vị Judging Korean: Shimsa Japanese: Shinsa Vietnamese: Kiểm tra Devil Korean: Agma Japanese: Akuma Vietnamese: Ác ma Human Korean: ingan Japanese: niggen Vietnamese: Nhân gian Time Korean: Shigag Japanese: Jikan Vietnamese: Thời gian World View Korean: Segyegan Japanese: Sekaikan Vietnamese: Thế giới quan Earthquake Korean: Jijin Japanese: Jishin Vietnamese: Địa chấn (not that close) Relationship Korean: Gwangei Japanese: kankei Vietnamese: Quan hệ Libary Korean: Dosogan Japanese: Toshokan Vietnamese: Unfortunately we don't use "Đồ thư quán" as Libary anymore

[Captain]

The question is why are the some words similar? One, some words are borrowed Pinyin (Chinese) words. Two, Japanese spoke Koguryo, a language of Korean peninsula in the past. Three, Japanese introduced many western words to Koreans during the Japanese colonization. The point is the ancestors from China, Korea, and Japan have shared culture, and it's really good to see these two fine ladies sharing their language in a fun way!

[Falconv]

Captain First one. Korean and Japanese use same Chinese character in some nouns.

[Tonny Dong]

The truth. Finally:)

[Captain]

Don't get too cocky! While Koreans and Japanese know Classical Chinese, how many Chinese know Classical Chinese?

[Jamz]

Korean and Japanese writing and language was influenced by china

[Captain]

That is what I said in my first sentence. Now English words has dominance. See Asian Boss "Can Japanese Speak In Pure Japanese? " or "Koreans Speak In Pure Korean?"

[Dude]

This was a very fun video to watch. I'll be spending 3 months in Japan, and then 3 months in South Korea. I have practice with Japanese, but none with Korean. Thanks for the video!

[Arda Karaduman]

Yeah, as somebody mentioned, most of these are loan words from Chinese/English. It is natural because both countries used Chinese letters for a long time. I'm a Turkish guy living in Japan for a long time, so I know fairly good Japanese. When I realised I can make out some words from Korean, I mentioned this to my Korean/Japanese friends. The reaction I get is mostly 'oh no we are so different'. of course I didnt mean Japanese / Korean cultures are the same, but there are lots of similarities. I really like both these cultures, I wish they get along better.

[fxpxc]

There should have been a disclaimer that these words sound similar because they are Chinese loanwords. There are French loanwords in English, Russian, Farsi. There are Arabic loanwords in Farsi, Hindi, English. If you actually compared original Korean to original Japanese, they sound nothing alike. The only similarity between the two languages are in intonation and sentence structure.

[Mikhala]

I love this channel! Your videos show that humans, we are more alike than different! we have so much in common.

[Kingman Brewski]

The reason all these words sound similar is that many compound nouns in Japanese originally come from China (onyomi pronunciation), and to get there, they usually came through the Korean peninsula. So my guess is that these words sound very similar in Chinese as well. And in any other languages on which Chinese has had a major influence.

[Kheira MAKRELOUFI]

Japanese pronunciation sounds easy and precise! Korean pronunciation is cute and interesting great video I enjoyed!

[Rob Guyton]

I love these vids that show how closely we are all related to each other.

[Carlos D Cardona]

It's like Japan and Korea are like the Spain and Italy of Asia! The two countries are very close they share practically the same culture and their languages are similar not identical but very similar!

[blueprism]

I love this series. I actually learning japanese, but this video helps me to learn korean as well.

[Robert Heslop]

This is so fascinating to me, as I lived in Japan and I've studied Korean and I didn't know that some words were so close!

[Gokai Green]

THERE ARE A LOT MORE THAN WHAT’S SHARED IN THIS VIDEO AND I KNOW BECAUSE I AM JAPINOY HALF JAPANESE HALF FILIPINO AND I SPEAK BOTH JAPANESE AND KOREAN 😃

[Robert Heslop]

@Gokai Green I'd expect their be a lot more, indeed. Even their whole system with particles are quite similar.

[MetalGuitarManiac]

as a german most of the words sounded 95% the same to me, for them they sound totally different. thats so interesting!

[PSY-LION]

these languages are sounding so cute and gentle ^^

[Sailor Derpy]

Some words like the ones for machine sound similar as they try to phonetically sound like the English word for it. Some words, like skin, sound similar as they are similar to the mandarin word “pi2 fu1 皮肤” Some Korean words sound like the Hokkien dialect too. Eg. Hak Seng or student; Tcheh which means book. Basically they have Sino-xenic ties to old and Middle Chinese. :) Shigan or Jikan aka Time is similar to Cantonese (Si Gan). 😊 60% of Korean and Japanese (also, Vietnam) language stemmed from Middle Chinese. Mandarin has evolved with time, but Cantonese retains many of the old school Middle Chinese terms. Whilst Kanji has similarities to the Wu dialect from the Shanghai region.

[Acme ____]

Japanese have adapted so many new foreign words since being colonized by Koreans for over thousand years. Korean scholars have done an excellent job teaching them reading and writing. Japanese were taught to refer to Baekje Kingdom in Korea as “Kudara”, which originated from a Korean word “Kun Nara”, meaning a big nation.

[Acme ____]

Look up the Three Kingdoms Period of Korea as well as Baekje Kingdom. Everything is explained in there.