Saturday 27 November 2010

Japanese Korean: Same same but different

Native, classical Japanese has a very different feel to Chinese and Korean. Especially to Chinese... Chinese and Japanese are not connected at all except for the adoption of Chinese characters.  Beyond the loan words from China that are Kanji-based, Japanese is totally foreign to Chinese - in nearly all respects.


Japanese and Korean share word order, but the basal language is very different.  Verb forms - to be - です(desu) or だ (da)- in Japanese and 입니다 (ip-ni-ta but pronounced - im-nida) or 이다 (i-da) in Korean.

And the words used to conjoin verb clauses act similarly but are phonetically different words:
English - It is my book but please go ahead... (and read/take it (implied meaning))
Japanese - 私の本だけど・ですが、どうぞ。。。
Reading - Watashi no hon da-kedo (/desu ga), dozo... 
Korean - (그건) 내 책이지만, 제발...
Reading - (keugon) ne ch'ek ijiman, chebal...

Watashi no = ne = My
Hon = ch'ek = Book
da/desu = i = is
kedo/ga = ch/jiman = but (verb affix)
douzo = chebal = please, go ahead...

I suppose this is similar to French English German... 
1) Je mange; I eat; Ich esse
2) Je vais; I go; Ich gehe
3) Je l'aime, mais il ne m'aime pas; I like him, but he doesn't like me; Ich mag ihn, aber er mag mich nicht.

These are very different words... but in Europe there are threads between languages... the meaning and pronunciation of words evolve/mutate through people/through history...  

LIKE... somewhere this is related to German 'gleich' (equal) .. via old English 'gelic' ...  we would have once said 'it likes me' ... 'it is like me' ... and so on... 

and "black" (from O.E. blaec) so similar to "blanc" "blanch"; "white" (from O.E hwit) "weiss" ... apparently 'black' replaced 'sweart' in Old English... from which we get swart, swarth, swarthy... and could be linked to Germanic 'schwarz' (black)

Where are the threads between languages in East Asian? ... 

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