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  • How similar are Japanese and Korean?

  • Hold on.

  • Okay. Now we can start.

  • *intro music*

  • Hello everyone, welcome to the Lang Focus channel.

  • My name is Paul.

  • How similar are Japanese and Korean,

  • That is the question of the day.

  • Japan and Korea are geographically very close to each other,

  • and, at first glance,

  • they look like similar countries with similar cultures

  • in a way,

  • But just how similar are the Japanese and Korean languages?

  • Well, the short answer is

  • They're closer to each other than they are

  • to any other languages,

  • and they are remarkably similar in some ways,

  • but in other ways they're also very different

  • and they are certainly not mutually intelligible.

  • I don't speak very much Korean

  • but I do speak Japanese

  • and I am aware of the differences and similarities between them.

  • Let's look at the similarities in terms of grammar,

  • vocabulary, pronunciation and the writing systems.

  • When it comes to syntax and grammar,

  • Japanese and Korean are very similar.

  • Japanese and Korean sentences can often be translated word by word,

  • with each word in one sentence having an equivalent in the other.

  • Let's look at a couple of Korean and Japanese sentences

  • side by side

  • and we can see the similarities.

  • Again, I don't really speak much Korean

  • so if my pronunciation is terrible,

  • Koreans please forgive me.

  • In English, "I am a student".

  • In Korean, "na neun haksaeng-ida".

  • In Japanese, "watashi wa gakusei desu".

  • You can see these sentences are translatable word by word

  • Each word in the first sentence has an equivalent in the second sentence

  • in the exact same position.

  • So they are directly translatable.

  • One thing I want to point out is the topic marker.

  • That's the 2nd word in each of these sentences,

  • the topic marker is something kinda unique to Japanese and Korean,

  • topic marker points out the topic of a sentence

  • that's different from the grammatical subject

  • the overarching focus or topic of the sentence.

  • Another thing I want to point out is the last word in each sentence,

  • In Korean it's "ida" and in Japanese it's "desu".

  • In both cases that's like a copula,

  • Like the word "is" in English.

  • So in both Japanese and Korean this is a standalone word

  • That is usually placed at the end of a sentence.

  • Example 2: "I drink water"

  • In Korean, "na neun mul eul masinda".

  • In Japanese, "watashi wa mizu wo nomimasu".

  • So again we see the topic marker is the 2nd word in each sentence

  • But a more important thing I want to point out here

  • is the SOV word order,

  • Subject-Object-Verb.

  • So, we can see the subject is "watashi"

  • or it's "na" in Korean,

  • and then we have the object next.

  • So the object is water,

  • In Korean it's "mul" in Japanese it's "mizu".

  • and then we have the verb at the end

  • So in Korean, "masinda" and Japanese, "nomimasu".

  • But before the verb, there is an interesting little word

  • that we don't have in English

  • and that is an object marker.

  • That's another unique thing we find in both Japanese and Korean,

  • Used in exactly the same way in exactly the same position

  • in the sentence.

  • Even though the grammar and sentence structure of the two languages

  • is remarkably similar, the vocabulary is remarkably different.

  • If a Japanese speaker heard Korean without any prior exposure,

  • they probably wouldn't understand any of the words at all

  • or maybe just a word here and there.

  • But that doesn't mean those words aren't related.

  • Korean and Japanese both inherited a large number of loan words from Chinese

  • Approx 60% of the vocabulary in either language

  • comes from Chinese.

  • If there are so many Chinese loan words in both languages

  • then we are they not mutually comprehensible?

  • Well it's important to note that for both languages,

  • in daily conversation, informal speech

  • The Chinese loan words are not used nearly as much as they are in writing.

  • Also, the Chinese loan words are different in either language

  • they entered the language in the form of Chinese characters

  • but the pronunciation of those characters

  • became adapted to fit the phonological system

  • of either language.

  • So let's look at some examples,

  • The 1st example is just the names of those Chinese characters thenselves.

  • In Chinese, "hànzì".

  • In Korean, "hanja".

  • In Japanese, "kanji".

  • So you can see that the pronunciation started as "hànzì"

  • But it diverged and became different in Korean and Japanese

  • even though it's the same two characters

  • Some other examples, in Korean "sajin"

  • In Japanese, "shashin".

  • Photograph.

  • The word for singer.

  • In Korean, "kasu".

  • In Japanese, "kashu".

  • The word for "promise".

  • In Korean, "yagso(g)".

  • In Japanese, "yakusoku".

  • Those examples sound quite similar but sometimes they sound

  • really quite different

  • But if we look at the Romanised words sometimes we can see the similarities.

  • This is the word for "telephone".

  • In Korean, "jeonhwa"

  • In Japanese, "denwa"

  • So, those come from the same characters but again

  • they're rendered differently in pronunciation.

  • The next word is "school".

  • In Korean, "haggyou".

  • In Japanese, "gakkou".

  • Another example is "university"

  • In Korean "daeha(g)"

  • In Japanese "daigaku"

  • "Tofu" in Korean, "dubu".

  • In Japanese, "toufu".

  • The word for spa or hot spring in Korean, "oncheon"

  • In Japanese "onsen"

  • So you can see that sometimes the words are clearly related

  • But when you're listening to the language being spoken

  • You probably wouldn't be able to catch those words.

  • Chinese loan words aside, there are also some Japanese loan words

  • That have entered the Korean language.

  • The word for "cheers" when you're having a drink

  • In Korean, "geongbae"

  • In Japanese, "kanpai"

  • The Japanese word for bag

  • In Korean it's "gabang"

  • In Japanese it's "kaban"

  • There are also words that are native to both

  • Korean and Japanese that might be related to each other

  • The word for "island" in Korean, "seom".

  • In Japanese, "shima".

  • The word for village in Korean, "maeul".

  • In Japanese, "mura"

  • There are lots of words like that that I don't really think are connected

  • But linguists think might be connected

  • Interestingly though some of the grammatical particles have

  • Very similar pronounciations in the two languages

  • For example, the word for "above" in Korean, "wiei"

  • In Japanese, "ue".

  • Question particle "kka" in Korean"

  • With a double consonant, a double "k"

  • and in Japanese it's "ka"

  • The word for "to" or "towards"

  • In Korean it's "e" and it's Japanese it's "e".

  • The subject marker so this is different from the topic marker

  • The subject marker is, in Korean, "ga" or "i"

  • In Japanese it's just "ga"

  • So basically Korean and Japanese have a lot of vocabulary that are related

  • but not the same

  • It's probably enough to help you remember that word if you study it

  • But not necessary enough to pick up that word

  • when you're hearing it in conversation

  • And of course, most of the spoken vocabulary

  • Seems to be unrelated, or they're words that have

  • very ancient connections to each other

  • Now let's look at the different pronounciation of the two languages.

  • In some ways they're similar

  • The basic phonetic sounds of the 2 languages

  • are quite similar

  • But the way those phonetic sounds are arranged to

  • create syllables is different in the 2 languages

  • In Japanese basically every syllable has to end in a vowel

  • You cannot have a word that ends in a solid consonant like "cut"

  • It has to be something like "カット" "kutto"

  • With a vowel added to the end

  • But in Korean you can have a consonant at the end of a syllable

  • That's why in one of the words we compared before

  • The word for "promise"

  • In Japanese it's "yakusoku"

  • You need those vowels after the consonants

  • But in Korean it's "yagsog"

  • Another difference is that in Japanese

  • The pronounciation of consonants doesn't change

  • Depending on their position in the word

  • They just are always the same, but in Korean

  • There are consonants that can change depending on

  • Whether they're in the beginning, middle or end of a word.

  • Korean also has a greater variety of vowels and dipthongs.

  • So in general Korean pronunciation is just more complex than Japanese pronounciation

  • One thing that is completely different between the two languages is their writing systems.

  • Japanese is written using a combination of Chinese characters

  • and two syllaberies

  • Those syllabaries consist of characters that represent

  • entire syllables rather than just individual phonetic sounds

  • The Japanese writing system is quite complex

  • and since you need to learn more than 2000 kanji

  • To be able to read at an adult level

  • It can take quite a lot of time and effort to learn

  • Korean, on the other hand, is written in the Hangul alphabet

  • Which is one of the simplest writing systems in the world

  • Korean used to use hanja or Chinese characters

  • in the same way Japanese uses kanji in combination with hiragana and katakana

  • But they've done away with that, now they're just using simplified writing system of Hangul.

  • The Hangul alphabet consists of individual phonetic symbols

  • That are arranged together to create syllables

  • In this example for "hanja"

  • This is the sound for "ha" like an H

  • This is the sound for "A"

  • This is the sound for N, like an N

  • This is the sound for J or CH

  • And this is A

  • So whereas Japanese requires you to learn 92 syllabary symbols

  • and 2000 kanji

  • In Korean you just have to learn 24

  • phonetic symbols and you can use those to represent any new words that you learn.

  • So to summarise, Korean and Japanese are very similar in terms of grammar and sentence structure

  • and they both have a large number of Chinese loan words

  • But the native vocabularies are quite different as is the pronounciation

  • Which makes these 2 languages mutually unintelligible.

  • On top of that, the 2 writing systems are now completely different

  • With the modern Korean system completely avoiding Chinese characters these days.

  • My feeling is that Japanese and Korean

  • did originate from the same language

  • a very long time ago but they've been diverging for a long time

  • perhaps about 2000 years

  • so that now they're very different

  • even though structurally they're quite similar

  • Thank you for watching the Lang Focus channel

  • leave comments down below

  • especially if you've studied Japanese or Korean

  • and you can let us know about some other similarities

  • or differences that you have discovered

  • Thank you for watching and have a nice day.

  • *outro music*

How similar are Japanese and Korean?

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日本人と韓国人はどれくらい似ているのか? (How Similar are Japanese and Korean?)

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    jigme.lee888 に公開 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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