Chinese vs. Japanese
Do you believe that all the languages originated from the same one single language? Some linguists speculate that the languages we are using nowadays actually evolved from one language, and some of them still remain in doubt. To solve the question, linguists devote their entire lives to research on the system of universal grammar (UG). The famous linguist,
Noam Chomsky, claims that UG is a
part of biological endowment that
reflects on humans’ language faculty,
and our destination is to reveal the law
of languages. In other words, UG is the
instinct nature of humans. In order to
reveal the law of languages, linguists
make their effort by comparing
thousands of languages and try hard to
put the big jigsaw puzzle of languages
together. In the following, we will take Chinese and Japanese sharing the similarities mostly as the illustration to guide you to know more about linguistic study. In terms of the high scale of similarity between these two languages, they are an easier example to start with. Subsequently, we are going to peep at the tip of the iceberg and give a slight taste to linguists’ study.
Kanji vs. Chinese Characters:
As we all know, Chinese and Japanese share a vital similarity of meaning between kanji and Chinese characters. When Chinese people take a trip to Japan, the Japanese bar, “izakaya” （居酒屋）, is the essential tourism spot. Surprisingly, we will find that the sign of the bar is written in Chinese （居酒屋）! As a matter of fact, the kanji of “izakaya” is absolutely the same as Chinese. Another example is the kanji of “cute”（可愛い） in Japanese, which is also the same with Chinese（可愛）. Chinese people who don’t understand Japanese can have a guess of its meaning by the kanji. However, if one leans on the similarity between kanji and Chinese characters, then he or she would be in trouble because most of the time they do not refer to the same thing! When Chinese people see the kanji of “running” （走る） in Japanese, they might take it wrong. The Kanji of “running” （走る） in Japanese means “walking” （走）in Chinese. On top of that, the kanji of the “floor”（床） in Japanese also shares the same character of the “bed”（床） in Chinese. Although the kanji of the “floor” in Japanese also has another meaning—the “bed”, which has no difference between Chinese and Japanese, because of the Japanese meaning of the “floor”, a lot of jokes happen unintentionally from time to time. From the above, we can conclude that the kanji in Japanese and the characters in Chinese surely have some similarities upon the meanings. Simultaneously, though their figures of words are the same, they are also differed by their meanings.
Onyomi vs. Kunyomi:
Although people may cause some hilarious jokes because of the differences between Chinese and Japanese, Japanese is still an easy foreign language for Chinese people to start with due to the quality of onyomi in Japanese. In Japanese, there are two kinds of pronunciations, one is onyomi, and another one is kunyomi. Onyomi is the pronunciation of the words originating from Chinese. Generally speaking, Chinese people can apparently feel the
similarities of onyomi with Chinese
pronunciation. To illustrate this,
onyomi is the pronunciation of
Japanese kanji which is similar to
the Chinese pronunciation of the
kanji. For instance, the word
“beautiful”（きれい） in Japanese
is “kilei”, and the kanji of it is
Chinese character “綺麗.” The pronunciation of 綺麗 in Chinese is “qili”. As you can see, they all have the sound of “L” in the latter part. Besides, if you can read Chinese and Japanese, you will know the pronunciations of “ki” and “qi” are quite similar. However, it doesn’t mean that the word of onyomi shares the same meaning with Chinese. Take the word, “teacher”（先生せんせい） in Japanese for example. “Teacher” in Japanese is called “sensei”. Although the pronunciation of its kanji is similar to Chinese, the Chinese meaning of its kanji is a “mister” rather than a “teacher”. On the contrary, kunyomi was made by Japanese but does not originate from Chinese. As a matter of course, the pronunciation of kunyomi will not be similar to Chinese. For example, like “water”（水みず）, the kanji of water is pronounced as “mizu” in Japanese, while it is pronounced as “shui” in Chinese. They are not similar at all. Thus, we can indicate that one of the pronunciation way in Japanese—onyomi has similar pronunciation with Chinese. However, the meanings of the words are not always the same. On the other hand, the pronunciations of kunyomi are totally different from the Chinese pronunciations, sometimes they share the same meanings though.
Tones:
Besides the Chinese characters, Chinese is also known for its complex tones. There are four pitches in Chinese. The first pitch of Chinese tone is flat pitch, and the second pitch is rising pitch. Continuously, the following two pitches are going-up-and-down and descending pitch. These four tones are difficult to distinguish for non-native speakers. Among these
four the third tone is the
hardest and the most confusing
one. In contrast, there are only
two pitches in Japanese. The
two pitches can be simply
separated into high and low
pitch. Although Chinese and
Japanese tones are so different,
the tone definitely has the same
importance for both Chinese
and Japanese. Numerous
words in Chinese and Japanese can indicate a totally different meaning if a tone is pronounced wrong. For example, the word, “rain”（雨あめ） in Japanese has two syllables. The first syllable is “a”, and its tone is high. The second syllable is “me”, and its tone is low. If someone accidentally pronounces the second syllable with a high tone, the meaning will be changed into “candy（飴あ め）.” As for Chinese, “handsome”（帥） in Chinese is called “shuai” with the fourth pitch. If you pronounce the word with the first pitch, you are not saying someone is handsome; oppositely, you are saying that someone is “unlucky（衰）.” To sum up, we compare the tones of both Chinese and Japanese and find them equally important to either Chinese or Japanese. For Chinese, there are four different pitches which are much more complex than Japanese two pitches, but they both regard the tones as the key to the meanings of the words.
According to the above, we can infer that Japanese and Chinese do share some similarities, but a number of differences exist between them simultaneously. First of all, they have similar characters referring to the Japanese kanji and Chinese characters, but the characters may not share the same meaning. Secondly, the kanji of onyomi in Japanese is pronounced similarly as Chinese, while their meanings still may not be the same. Additionally, the kanji of kunyomi compared with Chinese is pronounced completely differently. Thirdly, Japanese has fewer tones than Chinese, but the tone is equally important to both Chinese and Japanese because a misusing pitch in one word can make the meaning totally different. From a different perspective, we can find that there are still a lot of differences and similarities that can be discussed in Chinese and Japanese. As these findings become more and more detailed, the research on universal grammar will be more complete. It is hoped that we can decipher the secret of languages someday.
Reference
Victoria Fromkin, Robert Rodman, and Nina Hyams. 2019. An Introduction to Language.