When a Chinese Speaker Tries Reading Japanese (ARIGATOU)
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In this video Paul from Taiwan tries to read Japanese WITHOUT EVER HAVING STUDIED IT! He did extremely well, considering he'd never studied it at all!
Japanese is closer to languages like Turkish and Mongolian because Chinese is a tonal language and the other languages mentioned aren’t.
but they both use the chinese character 😅
@@YCprivate Chinese grammar is closer to that of English
@@FebruaryHas30Days ya you right bout that part
chinese belongs to sino-tibetan language family thus not related with japanese, and it has a word order of SVO which is kinda similar to english
but i was just saying that that doesn’t seem to be the point of this challenge
Yeah, the point of the challenge is really to see how well Chinese speakers can read Japanese *despite* the fact that the underlying languages are very different and belong to different language families (based on Chinese characters and the Chinese-derived vocabulary they represent).
@@YCprivate Japanese just borrow Chinese characters mostly for their meanings. The grammar is radically different.
And Chinese think JAPANESE can understand thier Mandarin chat…😂
umm……no we don’t😂
Kanji comes from chinese
@@ReallyRandomMe
It’s more complex than that. In some sense, Kanji isn’t just “from Chinese” but “is Chinese”, because Kanji is just the Japanese name for the script.
Strictly speaking Chinese is not a full language, it is actually a written language. It is historically and still to this day a script shared among Sinitic Languages Family and a few unrelated languages.
Somewhat analogous to like how the Egyptian alphabet is ultimately adapted and shared by Latin and Cyrillic languages.
Every single language in the Sinitic Family has two parallel pronunciations for each Chinese character, one in their native pronunciation(colloquial reading 白讀音) and the other one is closer to the pronunciation near the capital(literary reading 文讀音)
Similar to how speakers of a language close to Latin may have two pronunciations for a given spelling one closer their native language one in Catholic Latin.
Modern Mandarin is an exceptional to the rule, it’s artificially altered spoken language that derived from the latest official language undergone the language standardization movement. Its dichotomy pronunciation system has collapsed almost completely with only a few words preserved the remnant alternative pronunciation.
The majority of the words are now pronounced only in either their original vernacular or literary readings, and the choice is more or less random.
And because to the other Chinese influenced languages like modern Japanese, most of the Onyomi are derived from literary readings, so unless the Mandarin speaker intentionally speaks literary pronunciation, most of the time words that are pronounced in colloquial readings will not going to even sound remotely close to what a Japanese speaker may be able to guess.
But if they write it down, especially revert to the classical vocabularies it’s almost mutually intelligible. Analogous to two Latin languages communicating with each other by writing down the oldest words closest to Latin.
@@ReallyRandomMe then you should be able to understand spanish then since english is half latin no?
The origin of ありがとう(arigatou) is 有難い(arigatai) meaning being very rare to be. 有 existing and 難い difficult so it is difficult to exist = rare.
The idea is more close to not taking act of kindness for granted and acknowledging it. Acknowledging kindness turn into a expression of thankfulness.
There are ways to appreciate by apologizing in Japanese but ありがとう is not that linked to being sorry.
That’s interesting. My speculation was based on the close connection between thankfulness and apology in Japanese culture.
This particular clip is not in the main video, partly because I wasn’t certain enough about my explanation there. But I thought I’d throw it out as a Short anyway.
Yeah Arigatou is basically saying “it’s very rare that this happens to me” as a sort of sign that this is worth appreciating.
@@Langfocus i think sumimasen fits the situation that you described
@@Langfocus @kyotako1372 dives into the meaning of 有難う in a short, pretty much what @pear3136 said.
Sumimasen 「済みません」would be one way to express thanks with an apology.
That’s what she said!
At first I was baffled by the meaning of 有難 but when you said an apology for causing you trouble, it makes sense, because in Chinese there’s another way to say thank you similar to this meaning 麻煩你了 literally meaning “it has troubled you”, it’s usually used when someone has taken the obligation to help you and you say that, with or without the classic “thank you” 謝謝, but 有難 means more of someone in need of help because he/she is “in trouble” or “having a rough time”.
Ay thats me
Is that really you? Thanks again for taking part!
I think a better literal translation of arigatou is “hard to exist” and the intended meaning is that acts of kindness are rather rare so you express your appreciation for that act of kindness.
“Thank You” == “Apologies that I’m breathing” 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
[Edit: Yes, I saw the other comment about the actual etymology of arigatai.]
It’s funny that I heard Japanese actually do use a form of “sorry” (すみません) to mean “thank you” for petty things in daily speech
Yes, when someone does something for you that seems like an inconvenience, it’s common to say “sumimasen”. It’s done with a certain tone of voice and body language, so it’s something you learn naturally in that context.
I’ve never seen arigatou spelled with kanji, so I didn’t recognize that.
Because no Japanese writes it that way. They might write the adjective “arigatai” as 有難い. bit not “arigatou”.
私も
arigatou (ありがとう) is short from 有難うございます, which is 有り (ari) + 難い (katai, difficult to …) + ございます. The u-onbin (う音便) of i-keiyoushi (イ形容詞, i-adj) + ございます is the polite form used before WW2 in Japan.
nah. you see meaning you know origin. they are saying “it’s hard to happen” and what are hard to happen in life? good things
the character for difficulty is spot on
Because sometimes people find it difficult to say sorry.
Interesting 😮
Arigato came from Portuguese, once borrowed they took the kuyomi reading of these kanjis
obrigado
??? Where did you get this information?
The literal meaning of “arigato” kind of reminds me of the literal meaning of “obrigado” (in Portuguese), which also means “thank you” but literally means “I’m obligated to”
This is very interesting!
I was surprised when I learned the definition of this kanji too, but it was super easy to remember and understand when someone used the example of a samurai using it to his lord after being praised for something.
that’s a MANDARIN speaker. Chinese is a LANGUAGE family
Yes, I’m very aware. But Mandarin is the current standardized and official form of Chinese, so I used Mandarin ability as the unifying feature between the participants. I think every participant in the full video also speaks another regional language, and that contributes to their ability to read Japanese, but I can’t talk about every Chinese language in one video.
This particular participant also speaks Hokkien, I believe.
That’s what she said