[HN Gopher] Japanese words and names sound African (2022)
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Japanese words and names sound African (2022)
Author : eatonphil
Score : 77 points
Date : 2024-06-16 18:20 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.farooqkperogi.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.farooqkperogi.com)
| retrac wrote:
| Because the Bantu languages (most prominently: Swahili) and
| Japanese have similar sound systems. Finnish is also oddly
| similar-sounding, or Hawaiian. None of them are actually related.
|
| It's because the syllable is restricted in the number of possible
| forms, in a similar way. (And they all have approximately five
| vowels. And a pitch accent.) In Hawaiian, nothing but consonant +
| vowel syllables are possible. Swahili and Japanese allow an
| optional final n sound. Finnish is a little more flexible, and
| syllables can end with an n, r, l or t. No consonant clusters, in
| any of the languages. No syllables ending with consonants outside
| the restricted set (if any), in any of the languages.
|
| This results in a lot of syllables of the form: i, a, ne, na, ka,
| ta, po, to... "Pokatokaino". I just made that up and it's
| probably not a Swahili, Finnish, Hawaiian, or Japanese word --
| but it could be.
|
| This basic pattern (consonant + vowel + maybe limited option for
| final consonant) is very common; it's the most common arrangement
| among the worlds languages. Far more common than languages like
| English which allow monstrosities like "strengths" (which is 6
| consonants and one vowel).
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _Pokatokaino_
|
| According to Google Translate, that would be "shortcuts" in
| Maori. (Reverse, "Pokatata".) Nice!
| Nition wrote:
| Maori is also another language that has the same vowel sounds
| as Japanese.
|
| Google is being generous in interpreting a nonsense word
| there though, Pokatata (as you saw when reversing the
| translation) is the correct spelling.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _Google is being generous in interpreting a nonsense
| word_
|
| My prudential 'would' (not to mention the safety reverse
| check) saved me again... ;)
| latentsea wrote:
| If you know Japanese go to Google maps and scroll around
| New Zealand and see how many Maori place names actually
| make sense in Japanese.
|
| There's quite a few fun ones that do. Paraparaumu,
| matamata, tearai etc. Plenty more.
| e12e wrote:
| I believe Hawaiian and Maori are somewhat related (Eastern
| Polynesian family)?
| RachelF wrote:
| Something amusing about Japanese vs Xhosa (a Bantu language) is
| that their words for yes and no are reversed:
|
| Japanese Hai = yes, Xhosa - Hai is a no
|
| Japanese eeye = no, Xhosa - ewe is yes
| lukan wrote:
| Amusing as long as you don't agree to something stupid I
| guess ..
|
| Are they pronounced very similar?
| shiomiru wrote:
| Nit: pokatokaino is unlikely to be Japanese, since word-initial
| p has morphed into h during the centuries. But it works if you
| turn it into, say, t.
|
| Anyway, I think there's another factor: the common alphabet we
| transliterate these languages to is quite limited. I suspect
| the similarities become less obvious if you use something like
| the IPA, which has better universal correspondence between
| sounds and letters (i.e. doesn't reduce every sound to the same
| ~26 symbols).
| fjdjshsh wrote:
| That's a good point. Latin letters map to a big number of IPA
| sounds. I think this is specially true with consonants.
| Vowels, however, might be the same. For example, Spanish has
| five vowels (a, e, i, o, u in IPA). Japanese also has five
| IPA vowels and only the "u" is different in IPA
| kagevf wrote:
| I don't know IPA, but Japanese e and Spanish e are also
| different. Spanish e is like English A in "ace", Japanese e
| is closer to English "eh".
| trealira wrote:
| That's the difference between [e] and [e] in IPA (in IPA,
| with "narrow" phonetic transcription, you enclose the
| sounds in brackets). In American English, "ace" is [eIs]
| and "mess" is [mes]. But I don't think that's right; I'm
| pretty sure both the Japanese e and Spanish e sound
| exactly the same.
|
| And if you pronounced [e] and [e] to native speakers of
| either Spanish or Japanese, they most likely wouldn't be
| able to differentiate the two sounds consistently without
| having had training. I know that in Spanish, realization
| of e can be either vowel depending on the speaker and
| context; they might pronounce "tierra" as [tjera] and
| "mesa" as [mesa].
| kagevf wrote:
| Japanese e would only ever be [e]. The constructs to
| produce an [e] sound would be transliterated as "ei" (the
| quoted are just letters, not meant to be IPA).
|
| So, while I disagree that they sound "exactly the same",
| I do agree that in most cases the differences between [e]
| and [e] wouldn't be enough to cause confusion between
| speakers of either language.
| semi-extrinsic wrote:
| As a speaker of Scandinavian languages, literally none of
| the vowels in English map correctly to how we pronounce the
| same vowels. Several of the English vowels are diphthongs,
| which we spell out with double vowels. Like eng. "i" is our
| "ai", eng. "a" is our "ei" - "a bridge" is translated to
| "ei bro", where the articles are pronounced exactly the
| same. Or the Scottish word for home, "hame", is pronounced
| _exactly_ like we say the same word, "heim".
| kergonath wrote:
| English vowels are weird compared to most continental
| European languages, to be fair.
| meowface wrote:
| To add to the confusion, in English people might
| pronounce the article "a" as "ei" (like when reciting
| "ABC") or "uh" (like the start of "under"). I think most
| Americans do the latter. I do, at least.
| jameshart wrote:
| Japanese does allow for word initial P in loan words, like
| Pokemon, so the sound isn't impossible in Japanese. And
| pachinko is a Japanese word.
| shiomiru wrote:
| Fair; though I didn't say it's impossible, just unlikely :)
|
| Japanese words starting with "p" still exist, but they tend
| to be loanwords (pokemon = pocket + monster) or
| onomatopoeia (pachinko = pachin + ko). Thinking of it now,
| pokapoka is also a word, but again, an onomatopoeia.
| thih9 wrote:
| I thought of Pocky, but turns out this is an onomatopoeia
| too
|
| > It was named after the Japanese onomatopoeic word
| pokkiri (potsukiri), which is supposed to resemble the
| sound of the snack being cracked.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pocky
| latentsea wrote:
| What about pakuri? and potsukari?
| wwilim wrote:
| Poka-yoke
| ekianjo wrote:
| those are imported words.
| arghwhat wrote:
| To be fair, Pokemon is abbreviated English, while pachinko
| is recent from pachin, the onomatopoeia of the loud sound
| made by the metal balls.
|
| I believe the change into "h" sounds is more applied to
| words that were traditionally initiated in "p" but morphed
| over time, in turn also making words starting on "p" an
| oddity.
| ithkuil wrote:
| There are other subtle rules that language may follow in word
| formation.
|
| For example, in Japanese, a word like tokatokaino may mutate
| into tokadokaino due to a phonological effect called Rendaku
| (it depends on details like if "tokadokaino" is a compound
| word made of "toka"+"toka"+"ino")
| dotancohen wrote:
| Is this the reason that we call Toyoda's company by the
| name Toyota?
| Macha wrote:
| So Toyota has a company folklore explanation to do with
| the number of strokes when written in hiragana being a
| lucky number, but Japanese linguists were skeptical when
| the BBC did a piece on it and think it was just a
| preference for the unvoiced version when the town in
| which it was founded changed its name to match the
| company: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-
| pacific/8534294.stm
| quinnirill wrote:
| Pokatokaino is indeed not a Finnish word, but contains
| multiple: Pokat - slang for sunglasses, Kato - slang version of
| katso (look), Toka - slang version of toinen (ordinal second),
| Kaino - timid/coy.
|
| Finnish has umlauts though, so quite a lot of words don't sound
| like the mentioned languages so much.
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _Pokat - slang for sunglasses, Kato - slang version of
| katso (look), Toka - slang version of toinen (ordinal
| second), Kaino - timid /coy_
|
| sounds like if you give it a shy 2nd look through these
| glasses, in the dim light it works as a word!
| District5524 wrote:
| Speaking of similar sound system of Finnish and Japenese, I
| think we should highlight the discredited language family claim
| of Uralic-Altaic, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ural-
| Altaic_languages You can still find tons of other theories of
| "what else could be related to Uralic"... So far, no African
| languages were included in these theories. But that's probably
| just a question of time and politics (and definitely not
| linguistic research...)
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _the discredited language family claim of Uralic-Altaic_
|
| I'd substitute "doubtful" for "discredited".
|
| The article you link says nothing more damning than "It is
| now generally agreed [wrt Ural-Altaic] that even the Altaic
| languages [themselves] do not share a common descent: the
| similarities between Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic are
| _better explained_ by diffusion and borrowing ", but that
| wiki comment is a paraphrasal of a source that says "a
| pattern [that] is _easily explainable_ by borrowing and
| diffusion rather than common descent ", i.e. not "better",
| just weakening that alternate claim.
|
| Also, the Altaic article says that there is still a small
| group of scholars who adhere to an "Altaic" grouping.
|
| And I would add, the lack of existence of an "Altaic" common
| ancestor to Mongolic, Turkic, Tungusic, and Koreanic says
| nothing about potential connections between Uralic and any of
| those 4 independent languages.
|
| I'm not expert enough to advocate any position, but I'm
| interested and it's irritating when I pursue researching my
| interest to discover people slightly misquoting others or
| ignoring additional possiblities to make their own pov
| stronger.
| ajb wrote:
| That's interesting.
|
| From an English perspective katakana (a system for writing
| words foreign to Japan, which can't write English very well)
| seems broken, but I guess from what you say that it's probably
| effective for most languages
| sdrothrock wrote:
| It may be "broken" in the sense that it's not accurate to the
| original language in orthography or pronunciation, but it's
| great because it's internally consistent for speakers of
| Japanese. I can look at any foreign word in katakana and
| instantly know how to pronounce it in a way that is
| intelligible to other people in the language I'm speaking:
| Japanese.
|
| Even with the way English does it for other languages that
| use the same alphabet, while the orthography may be similar,
| the pronunciation is generally just left to luck and the
| speaker's/listener's perception of the word's original
| language.
| casey2 wrote:
| Yep it's just the coincidence of a simple sound system and
| finding patterns where none exist. For example saying ba means
| horse in Japanese isn't exactly correct, horse is uma, ba is
| just the closest sound that exists which allows Japanese people
| to pronounce Chinese words like Ma Li circa whenever that word
| was added to the language, if they took it today it would be
| ma.
|
| It's the equivalent of Latin or Greek words and affixes in
| English.
| jkuria wrote:
| btw, there was once a consular official who worked at the
| Japanese embassy in Kenya, whose name was Mr. Kuma Moto. Every
| time he was introduced, it was hard for folks to suppress their
| laughter as the name literally meant "hot vagina" (in Kiswahili
| the noun goes first)
| fsckboy wrote:
| seems like the Kumamoto oysters might prove a popular appetizer
| there
| latentsea wrote:
| I guess Kumamoto prefecture is popular with Kenyan tourists
| then?
|
| I guess it'd be like if there was someone who worked at the
| Russian embassy in Japanese and was named Mankovich because it
| would be rendered as mankobitsuchi pussy bitch.
| ijidak wrote:
| When viewing my resume, my name, Ayo Ijidakinro (Nigerian), is
| often mistaken for Japanese.
|
| Especially because I had on my resume that I speak some Japanese.
|
| When I show up for the interview there is surprise.
|
| The syllables are identical.
|
| A-yo I-ji-da-kin-ro
|
| a-yo i-zi-da-ki-n-ro
|
| Have always found it interesting.
| ashirviskas wrote:
| That's interesting, because Kinro or ki-n-ro is an actual name
| in Japanese (or at least some Anime that I watch)
| 999900000999 wrote:
| I want a historical fantasy explanation for this.
|
| Just seems like it would be a fun world to explore.
| Almondsetat wrote:
| This article is just a list of examples. You will not find an
| answer
| zekrioca wrote:
| It is interesting, the author even added a "Why?" In the
| article's title, but couldn't come with one.
| adastra22 wrote:
| > People who pay attention to politics are probably familiar with
| the late Senator Gyang Nyam Shom Pwajok. Names can't get more
| Chinese than that!
|
| That does not even remotely sound Chinese. Korean, maybe.
| routerl wrote:
| > Shok Jok. That name could pass for a Mandarin or Cantonese
| name.
|
| These sounds do not exist in Mandarin. This would never be, or
| sound like, a Mandarin name. And no mention is made of tones,
| which are critical in Mandarin.
|
| The article already smelled of a bovid's feces, but at this
| point I actually saw the bullshit.
| userbinator wrote:
| Gyang Nyam definitely sounds Korean (thanks to that old meme),
| but then Shom Pwajok is less discernable -- it's like a hint of
| Thai or some other southeast Asian language.
| yongjik wrote:
| While they _could_ be valid Korean syllables, they don 't sound
| like Korean names, either. The only words containing "gyang" or
| "nyam" I can think of are slangs or onomatopoeia, and I don't
| think I've seen "shom" or "pwa" in the wild.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| A similar phenomenon https://youtu.be/uGkLjfPWqeI
| jbs789 wrote:
| So do we know why? Apologies if I've missed this.
| robxorb wrote:
| The article seems to say it's random chance, based upon one
| linguists opinion. Doesn't at all feel right statistically.
| Seems more likely there would be some kind of missing link.
| Could someone better informed possibly figure out the odds?
| kgeist wrote:
| >Doesn't at all feel right statistically
|
| Why not? Many unrelated languages steer towards the open
| syllable rule. It's basically the only similarity between
| Japanese and African languages. Open syllables without
| complex consonant clusters are easier to pronounce.
|
| Say, Proto-Slavic phonetics mostly allowed only open
| syllables, although its ancestor and descendants allow more
| complex clusters. For example, Proto-Indoeuropean domos
| "house" became Proto-Slavic domu, and mater "mother" became
| mati.
|
| Let's list some Proto-Slavic words: noga "foot", ronka
| "hand", nosu "nose", oko "eye", podushiwa "foot sole", noguti
| "nail" etc.
|
| You can cherrypick many languages like that (Finnish, Maori,
| Basque, even French to some extent)
|
| It would be much more surprising if they found 2 unrelated
| languages and they both had same complex clusters a la
| Georgian (mtsvrtneli "trainer").
| buzer wrote:
| > Finnish is a little more flexible, and syllables can end with
| an n, r, l or t. No consonant clusters, in any of the languages.
| No syllables ending with consonants outside the restricted set
| (if any)
|
| What do you mean? There are words like Ahti (Ah), ankerias (as),
| isku (is) or lapsi (lap) which contain syllables that end in
| consonants other than n, r, l or t. There are also a lot of words
| with double consonants (like jarru, lasso, noppa, nurkka) where
| syllable get split at the middle.
| thevillagechief wrote:
| There is a whole genre of puns in Swahili relating to Japanese
| names, some real some made up.
| SonOfLilit wrote:
| In Hebrew too, most famously Ishimoto sounds like Ish (guy) 'im
| (with) Otto (car) so is considered a good name for a driver.
| I'll leave you to figure out why Sakimkaki is a good word for
| "diaper", and yes, I know that can't be japanese because of the
| m, but most Hebrew speakers don't.
| slaser79 wrote:
| Yes interesting elephant in Japanese is almost the same word in
| Shona (a bantu language of Zimbabwe) nzou vs zou and sound very
| similar. Many words have similar structures. Many shona names
| could be mistaken to be Japanese.
| bouncycastle wrote:
| zou is actually the onyomi (Chinese origin) reading. I guess
| the sound has been morphed since Japanese doesn't have tones
| like Chinese.
| aragonite wrote:
| Then there are real coincidences, like 'Muratori', which is both
| an Italian name [1] (Casey Muratori) and a real (though somewhat
| rare) Japanese name. [2]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muratori
|
| [2]
| https://www.google.co.jp/search?q=muratori+%E6%9D%91%E9%B3%A...
| Unbefleckt wrote:
| What language is African
| xelxebar wrote:
| There's also this tome, which lists thousands of cognates between
| latin and Japanese: https://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BA80581101
|
| It's trying to make the claim that these are etymological
| connections, which is a bit sketchy, but the phonological
| similarities it has meticulously catalogued are surprisingly
| convincing!
| latentsea wrote:
| Everytime I listen to Waka Waka by Shakira in the chorus I always
| sing saaminna, minnasankoreha, Xue haaaaa
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