aHC3i6N9Wvk.srt

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Quiz time or the following words?
Chinese or Japanese first?

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Yes,
it's Japanese next.

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It's Chinese.
Next.

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Actually this is both Chinese and 
Japanese and finally,

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actually this is neither.
This is ty.

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What you thought.
All Asian languages are the same.

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Hello everyone.
Welcome to the Lange Focus Channel and 

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my name is Paul.
Today's topic is the question how 

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similar our Chinese and Japanese,
a lot of people look at a map of Asia 

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and see how close to Japan and China are
or they might look at a sample of 

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Chinese and Japanese writing and think 
that something looks similar and they 

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might conclude that the two languages 
are similar,

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but are they really similar?
Well,

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the short answer is no.
They are completely different languages,

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but Japanese has been highly influenced 
by Chinese and it's vocabulary and then 

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it's writing systems.
Chinese and Japanese do not share any 

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common origin and they don't belong to 
the same language.

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Family,
the Chinese languages belonged to the 

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CNO,
to Betson language.

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Family in Japanese as far as we know 
belongs to the Japonica language.

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Family phonology.
First off,

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the phonology of the language is,
is very different with the most basic 

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difference being that Chinese is a tonal
language.

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While Japanese is not a tonal language 
is one in which there are tones or 

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pitches that helped determine the 
meaning of the words you use if you use 

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the wrong tone than the meaning of the 
word changes.

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Here's an example,
the word for teacher sure.

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And the word for naive slow.
Sure.

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And the word for old fashion.
So I'm sure that Chinese teachers get 

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called naive and old fashion all the 
time by mistake or maybe not by mistake.

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In Japanese,
there are basically no tones like this 

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that determine the meaning of words.
In Japanese,

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there is something called pitch accent,
which means that the syllables of a word

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have either a higher pitch or a lower 
pitch,

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but they're not like the tones and 
Chinese because they typically don't 

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determine the meaning of the word.
They're more like stress.

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In English structure,
the structure and grammar of the two 

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languages is completely different.

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At the most basic level,
Chinese is an Svo language,

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while Japanese is an Sov language.
Here's an example in Chinese.

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Sure.
This means he speaks Chinese and you can

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see s the o subject verb object and 
here's that sentence translated into 

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Japanese,
how they walk to go google on Nasim us 

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here we can see s o v subject,
object,

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verb and you can see there are some 
extra little words in Japanese that 

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don't exist in the Chinese sentence.
For example,

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Japanese has the topic marker Wa which 
doesn't exist in Chinese and Japanese 

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also has the object marker all which 
doesn't exist in Chinese.

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Chinese is an analytic language,
which basically means that you create a 

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sentence by a placing independent 
elements side by side.

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Analytic languages like Chinese do not 
use inflection.

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Inflection means modifying words to 
indicate some kind of grammatical 

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meaning like plural,
gender,

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tenths or case.

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You don't change any part of a word in 
order to change its meaning.

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Instead,
you can add to the meaning of that word 

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by adding an extra word next to it.
Japanese,

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on the other hand,
it's an a glutinous of language that 

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uses inflection.
A gluten native language is used a lot 

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of affixes.
Rather than just placing independent 

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worlds side by side,
you attach additional pieces to words to

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add or modify.
Meaning this kind of inflection in 

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Japanese means that Japanese words are 
often longer than Chinese words and that

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it may take a few words in Chinese to 
translate one Japanese word.

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In these Chinese sentences,
we can see that there's no inflection or

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this sentence means I go to school or 
choose this sentence means I went to 

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school,
so no part of the verb is changed to 

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indicate the past tense.
We can show the past tense by just 

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adding a time expression.

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Now these similar sentences in Japanese 
show inflection.

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The sentence means I go to school 
[inaudible] I went to school.

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Once I see what [inaudible] does and the
polite form of I go to school 

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[inaudible] I want to go to school.
What does she wear?

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De Gaulle,
achy tie.

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In this Japanese example,
we use inflection,

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changing the word to the Eqi form,
and then we use a gluten nation to 

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attach a form that shows intention tied 
in Chinese though there's no inflection 

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or agglutination,
you just add an extra word like this.

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That's just a brief sample of how 
different the grammar is in Japanese and

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Chinese.
Basically they're completely different 

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languages when it comes to their 
grammatical structure,

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vocabulary and Chinese characters.
The one area in which there is some 

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similarity between Chinese and Japanese 
is in vocabulary and in the use of 

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Chinese characters.
During a period of great Chinese 

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influence between the fifth and ninth 
century Ce,

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there was a huge amount of borrowing 
from early middle Chinese into Japanese.

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Japanese originally had no written form,
so Chinese began to be used as the 

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literary language and as the language of
science and religion,

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Chinese vocabulary began to be borrowed 
into Japanese and the Chinese writing 

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system was gradually adapted to fit the 
Japanese language.

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So not only were at vocabulary board,
but the Chinese characters that 

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represent them were also adopted.
60% of the vocabulary words used in 

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Japanese are of Chinese origin.
But that includes all of the words in 

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the dictionary.
And that includes a lot of very 

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specialized academic and formal 
vocabulary that's mainly used in writing

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and spoken Japanese.
The number of Chinese loan words used as

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much lower at about 18% the borrowed 
words were almost all Chinese nouns,

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even though in Japanese they might be 
used as verbs or as adjectives.

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That's just one way in which the 
vocabulary is used differently.

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But also with the pronunciation of those
Chinese words that were borrowed into 

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Japanese changed to match the Japanese 
phonological system.

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And that included the loss of the tones 
of those words.

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And also these words were borrowed a 
long time ago,

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which means that the words have also 
changed in pronunciation in Chinese.

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So the pronunciation has diverged quite 
a bit,

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meaning that modern Japanese 
pronunciation and modern Chinese 

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pronunciation of similar characters or 
words is quite different.

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And it's also important to point out 
that mandarin was not the standard form 

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of Chinese back in those days when those
vocabulary words were borrowed into 

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Japanese.
So even at the time they were borrowed,

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the pronunciation was different from 
standard Chinese today.

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And what I understand,
the modern Japanese pronunciation of 

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those lone words is often more similar 
to modern cantonese than it is to 

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Mandarin.
These examples show how the same words 

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are pronounced very differently.
In Japanese ended Mandarin,

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the word for family in Japanese,
it's cut date and actually in Japanese 

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the meaning is more like household or 
home and in Mandarin Jab him.

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Next,
the word for death in Japanese,

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she bolt and amendment to the wall next 
to word four season in Japanese key set 

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to and in Mandarin Gpa and the word for 
home country in Japanese vocal group and

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in Mandarin or so you can see that these
words look the same and they have 

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basically the same meaning,
but they sound very different.

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So Chinese vocabulary represented by 
Chinese characters were borrowed into 

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Japanese,
but those Chinese characters were also 

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them applied to native Japanese 
vocabulary that had a related meaning 

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for those Chinese loan words.
That means that a Chinese speaker can 

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often look at a native Japanese word and
understand its core meaning without 

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knowing that Japanese words,
because the Chinese character is used to

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represent it.
So Chinese people can often read a text 

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in Japanese and they can make sense of 
the basic meaning of it based on the 

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Chinese characters,
but they won't understand all the 

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details.

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And the same is true in reverse.
Japanese people can look at a Chinese 

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texts and kind of make sense of the 
meaning of it based on the Chinese 

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characters that they know.
But it is easy to misunderstand the 

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details of what's written,
especially if they have zero knowledge 

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of the other language.
Here are some Japanese example sentences

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that have the same Chinese characters,
but the meaning is very different 

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because of the inflection that's used.
Nicole [inaudible],

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that means the cat eats fish,
Nicola suck and [inaudible].

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That means the cat doesn't eat fish.
Nicola suck.

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Another topic.
That means the cat ate fish in the past 

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tense.
Nicola [inaudible] Samadhi,

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the cap plans to eat fish.
Nicola [inaudible] data.

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That means the cat was eaten by a fish.
So a Chinese speaker of reading these 

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sentences would get the core meaning of 
the Chinese characters,

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but they would miss some meaning in the 
inflection.

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For example,
the negative or the past tense or 

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intention or the passive form.
Especially.

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The last example could be highly 
misunderstood,

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so imagine you're an English speaker 
reading something with English long 

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words.
It might look something like this,

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Catholic glofish,
blah,

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blah,
blah.

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Of course,
even after just a little bit of study in

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Japanese or Chinese speaker could 
probably learn enough to understand 

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basic Japanese sentences like that.
For me,

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as someone who's studied Japanese two,
a relatively advanced level,

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the same as true in reverse.
When I was in Taiwan last year on the 

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subway for example,
I could read a lot of the advertisements

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and I would get most of the meaning.
I wouldn't understand all of the Chinese

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characters,
but I would get usually three out of 

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four of them and the fourth one would be
new to me because in Chinese there are a

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lot of characters that actually aren't 
used in Japanese at all,

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but just getting three out of four of 
them was often enough to understand the 

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basic meaning of that advertisement.

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But of course I had no idea how to 
pronounce those Chinese characters and 

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if I tried to read them out loud like 
the Japanese,

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I would hear laughter from both my 
girlfriend and from local bystanders.

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It might seem strange that I can look at
a Chinese character in Chinese and 

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understand what it means without knowing
how to say it,

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but think of it as a symbol,
like a number.

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The number seven right here is 
pronounced differently in different 

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languages,
but when you see it,

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you know what it means,
no matter how you pronounce it.

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Chinese characters are kind of like that
except that they represent a much wider 

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range of meanings.
The Chinese characters used in any 

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particular sentence can be very 
different from those used in the other 

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language for a sentence of similar 
meaning and in Japanese there are a lot 

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of compound words that were created from
Chinese characters,

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but those compound words don't actually 
exist in Chinese.

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These are called Wasa Congo,
which means something like Chinese 

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vocabulary created in Japan.
Here are some examples of Wasa icon 

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will,
some were created to represent things 

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unique to Japan,
like Ninja Geisha and others were 

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created during the Meiji period to 
represent western concepts like 

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democracy,
men shoes.

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So even though you might recognize a lot
of characters when you look at some 

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texts in the other language,
they might be used in a very different 

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ways.
So the meaning will be unclear.

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A Chinese speaker might be confused by 
Wasi Kango when they tried to read some 

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Japanese and Japanese people might be 
confused when they read Chinese because 

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there are a lot of Chinese characters 
that were never boiled into Japanese in 

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the first place or they're not used in 
modern Japanese.

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But in either case,
even basic knowledge of the other 

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language would help in reading 
comprehension quite a bit.

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Japanese returned moen words in Chinese,
so as we've discussed already,

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lots of Chinese vocabulary was borrowed 
into Japanese,

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but some Japanese vocabulary has also 
been borrowed into Chinese.

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A moment ago I mentioned Wasa Kango,
Japanese vocabulary created from Chinese

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roots vocabulary that didn't exist in 
Chinese,

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but some of those Lasa Kango have 
actually been borrowed from Japanese 

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into Chinese.
Some sources say that such vocabulary 

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accounts for around 30% of modern 
Chinese vocabulary.

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Of course,
the way those returned loan words are 

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pronounced as based on the modern 
Chinese pronunciation of the Chinese 

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characters.
Here are some examples.

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The word for history in Japanese that 
Kishi in Mandarin,

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the shoe,
the word for industry in Japanese Kogel 

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in mandarins,
the word for electron or electronic in 

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Japanese.
Then cheat in Mandarin and the word for 

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injection in Japanese to shop in 
Mandarin jewel.

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Sure.
The word for philosophy in Japanese.

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Tetsu got goats in Mandarin.

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Yeah,
the workforce system in Japanese,

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Cato and in Mandarin.
She told him,

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and most Chinese people these days are 
probably not even aware that those words

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were borrowed from Japanese.
It's also important to point out that in

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mainland China,
simplified Chinese characters are now 

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used as opposed to the traditional 
Chinese characters used in Taiwan and 

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Hong Kong.
That means that someone from mainland 

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China may have some more trouble 
recognizing Japanese Kanji than someone 

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from Taiwan.
For example,

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someone short,
Chinese and Japanese are very different 

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languages,
especially the spoken languages.

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Even though there was a lot of 
vocabulary borrowed from Chinese in the 

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Japanese and the little bit from 
Japanese into Chinese,

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only in writing are those two languages 
somewhat intelligible because of the 

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Chinese characters that are used.
So the question of the day for Japanese 

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speakers,
what's your experience when you look at 

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Chinese texts,
are you able to understand the basic 

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meanings based on the Chinese characters
and similarly for Chinese speakers?

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What happens when you look at a Japanese
texts?

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Can you understand the basic meaning or 
do you get confused because of the 

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different way that the Chinese 
characters are used?

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00:12:11,410 --> 00:12:12,243
Thanks again to all my patrion 
supporters and I want to say thanks to 

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all the new subscribers who joined this 
month.

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There are a lot of you and you are very 
welcome and very appreciated.

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Thank you for watching.
Have a nice.