Just asking out of curiously. In English for example you can tell in most cases when a word is of French or Latin origin (for example all words that end with ‘age’ like marriage or voyage are of French origin). Are there any analogous sound combinations in Japanese which characterize Chinese loan words?
by Fafner_88
14 comments
Multiple kanji words usually, at least they use Chinese readings anyway, not sure if the words are legitimately from China or made in Japan with said Chinese readings though.
There is no absolutely sure way for all of them, but in general it’s definitely true that words can “feel” like they’re obviously Sino-Japanese or Japonic words. Even if I were to make up a nonexistent word such as “もりかな” this word does not exist but it “feels” Japonic in it’s phonological structure. “のうぎゃく” doesn’t exist either but it “feels” Sino-Japanese.
That having been said, as in English there are words where it’s not so obvious. “死” and “気” are Sino-Japanese but could have just as easily been Japonic. “今日” is Japonic but feels a fair bit Sino-Japanese but the historical form of “けふ” from which we arrive at modern “きょう” feels far more Japonic.
The same is true with English I suppose. “alas” feels very Germanic, but it’s actually a loan from French and of the two famously made up words that actually made it into English “embiggen” and “cromulent”; it’s obvious which of both feels Germanic, and which feels like it would be a loan from Latin.
It’s easy, just learn Chinese /s
There is a bunch of (old-ish) Chinese phonetic characteristics that get transliterated into Japanese in obvious ways:
A single Chinese character is always a single syllable, potentially with a consonant ending, and in Japanese that consonant ending can only be read as: -t (-tsu, e.g. 達, Japanese “Tatsu”, Cantonese “Daat”; 日, Japanese “Nichi”, Cantonese “Yaat”), -k (白, Japanese “Byaku”, Cantonese “Baak”; 式, Japanese “Shiki”, Cantonese “Sik”), or -n (always ～ん in Japanese)
There are also other consonant endings in Cantonese, but -m and -ng got merged into n in Japanese, and -p went through a bunch of sound changes and doesn’t exist in Japanese anymore. Also, Mandarin basically threw out all of them except -n and -ng, so it’s not as useful for referencing old Chinese pronunciations…
Where these consonant endings appear in Japanese they also end in -i or -u, so where an on’yomi consists of more than one ‘syllable’ it just about always ends in ん、ち、つ、き、く、い、or う。
Also, Chinese-origin words never have any part of their pronunciation in the okurigana, since it’s all part of the word itself; the words themselves also tend to become nouns in Japanese.
That’s all I can think of at the moment; like all things language-related, there are always edge cases, weird outliers, and unspoken rules, so there are definitely things I’ve gotten wrong.
Chinese speaker here, if it contains 「しゃく」「しょく」「しょう」 or any other starting consonant with the same “endings” it often is Sinitic.
There are words like ‘在トルコ日本大使館’ that Chinese grammatical structure is used in Japanese. In this example, ‘在’ means ‘トルコにある’. There must be a few more examples like this, but I can’t remember them right now.
You can assume 音読み onyomi words are of Chinese origin in most of cases, whereas 訓読み kunyomi words are of Japanese origin.
There are some exceptions though, as is always the case with everything.
Some onyomi words are actually of Japanese origin.
Words such as 民主,社会,主義,哲学, and 科学 are actually coined words by Japanese people in the period of Meiji Restoration era, which were then exported back to China.
An interesting thing is that words that translate into words of Latin origin in English tend to be coined words by Japanese, because these were new concepts which didn’t exist until recently.
Overwhelmingly it will be 2-kanji words where both are on-yomi.
Why have I never noticed marriage and voyage could be of any other origin. It’s quiet shocking the more I learn things, as a native English speaker , how little we know about our own language since we don’t have to study it. I notice it more now when my Japanese friends asks me English questions they can’t even begin to explain hah
most kango are of Chinese origin
some kango were made up in Japan from Chinese characters (and their respective readings)
One thing you have to remember is that Chinese isn’t just one language – it’s a common written script for many dialects/languages to that vary by region. In Singapore ethnic Chinese are taught Mandarin as a second language, but at home depending on their regional ancestry they may speak Hokkien, Cantonese, Teochew, Hakka, etc.
Growing up in Singapore, I can speak some Hokkien and Cantonese, and when I started learning Japanese I realized that a lot of words have been imported from these two Chinese dialects.
This makes sense because the Minnan people from Southern China: Cantonese, Teochew and Hokkien being the biggest dialect groups, were the big sea traders. My last name, Chua, makes people think I’m from the Philippines (even though I don’t have a drop of Filipino ancestry) mainly because Hokkien traders settled there.
For Japanese, for example, one of the first things I noticed was that the pronunciation for “world” (世界 – sekai) is almost homophonic with the Cantonese word for it (sei gai). ”Hour” (時間 – jikan) is almost homophonic with the Cantonese “time” (see gan).
“Stroll” (散歩 – sanpo) is also Cantonese (san bo). “Five” (五 – go) in Japanese is Hokkien (gor). One of the words for “butter” is 牛油 – gyuyu (cow/beef oil), the written words being identical to Chinese and the pronunciation almost homophonic with the Hokkien “goo yoo”. There are many more examples, like “easy” (簡単 – kantan) is almost homophonic to the same word in both Hokkien (kan-tan) *and* Cantonese (gang-dang).
For an example from another language – bread is パン, which is from the Portuguese pão, which is pronounced (loosely) “pun”.
its complicate， even some chinese words is origin from japan
Others have replied, but to put things simply, the “on’yomi” words are from Chinese (even if created in Japan, like how “biology” is probably not an ancient Greek word). These usually consist of strings of only kanji.
The “kun’yomi” readings are original japanese, and usually consist of either just kana or one kanji followed by kana.
I don’t think you can always tell, but I can tell sometimes. For example, most な adjectives are of Chinese origin, while most いadjectives are Japanese origin.
There’s no absolute way to tell. You could say that Chinese characters are usually more rigid and complex, but that rule obviously doesn’t always apply.