(I apologise for the wall of text, but I wouldn’t be able to express how I feel about this with a TL;DR, nor am I smart enough)
I’ve been learning on and off for about a year total, and I’m in the beginning of N4 for reference.
This is probably going to come off as shitposty but; ever since I started learning, I’ve become more fascinated with the language itself, it’s history, and Japanese culture as a whole.
So going straight to the point; early on, I learned that during ancient times Japan imported a lot of stuff from China which included a lot of loanwords (this is obvious). Although, I’d developed this linguistic purist mindset subconsciously (like wanting to use 美しい over 綺麗, for example).
What makes it worse is when there isn’t a 話語 word for its 漢語 counterpart and a concept cant be expressed without sino-terms (like how “to feel an emotion” can only be expressed with 感じる/感ずる, or 大丈夫 with “safety”), a native term had gotten displaced by the sino-term, or (my personal favorite) when theres a word that I assumed to be a native term, actually isn’t (for a while I’d thought そんな was a native term, but is a contraction of その様な (I’d also assumed 様 to be native before this)), I become incredibly ocd about it.
I start asking myself questions (some unanswerable) like “Why isn’t there a native term in modern Japanese? Why is a loanword used for something so fundamental? Why didn’t they coin a word themselves?”, etc.
And even when I do find a native still in use, I find out that its etymology is muddy, maybe being borrowed after all a long time ago from one of the old Korean kingdoms (like how 君 is said to possibly be related to a Sillian word for ‘king’, 水 being related to Goguryeo 買召, or Alexander Vovin calling every word that sounds similar to an Old Korean word a loanword into Japanese).
Also on the topic of Korean, I also tend compare Japan and Korea’s ancient histories, since they were both equally influenced by China.
But when I see that Korean still has a native term in its modern language for a term that Japanese only has a borrowed term, I get ocd about that too;
“ground, land”
Japanese: 地 (borrowed)
Korean: 땅 (native)
“guest, visitor”
Japanese: 客 (borrowed)
Korean: 손님 (native)
“drawing, illustration”
Japanese: 絵 (borrowed)
Korean: 그림 (native)
(you get the idea).
I get anxious/ocd wondering why Korea opted for native terms/expressions for these things, but Japan didn’t.
There was also a point where I compared Japanese loans to Latinate/Greek ones in English, but after learning that all European languages are apart of the same family, I didn’t consider it anymore (at least mostly).
But it was my fault for trying to compare cultures/languages with radically different histories.
One of the main things still driving the above is the reason why I’m learning Japanese; I want to become a 漫画家 one day (as lame as that sounds), and one of my main ideas has a medieval/ancient fantasy theme, and I want to use a sort of “Ye Old Japanese” style of writing with it. I try to find a native word, there is none, or I find one, might be borrowed from Korean (says Vovin/Anonymous Wiktionary Contributer), I get ocd, then anxious, and I’m not learning Japanese anymore.
I’ve put forward these concerns on discord servers, other subreddits and the like, and I’m told not to worry about something so silly as linguistic purism or to talk to my therapist about it, but I can’t stop it no matter what. Its gotten to the point where I’m now taking a break from learning since it became a major primer for my anxiety disorder and depression.
When I first started out, I didn’t care if a word came from China or whatever; I just had fun learning the language.
All I want is that back. I hate this mindset that I’ve developed, and I think I’m passed the point of no return where I’ll always feel ocd about something (ひどい still pisses me off a little).
I honestly don’t know what to do anymore or who to go to.
As ridiculous as it is, if someone could help, it would mean the world to me.
6 comments
No offense but you definitely need to do something about your mental health. You can’t let this run your life. You seem to have cool interests and we’d be friends if we knew each other IRL. Like, I like art and like learning 日本語 too.
Anyway, Japan used Chinese words for all their written history.
If you want no Chinese words you will be making a comic about prehistoric Japan where they didn’t have writing and they didn’t have Samurai yet. Your comic will be about the stone age essentially.
The alphabet you used to typed your post has all kinds of history and different origins for every single letter.
Everything is mixed and you shouldn’t worry about it.
Your cells are DNA and RNA mixed. The air you are breathing is mixed.
Keep studying comics and try to draw slowly with a nice slow pen like a micron pen. Take deep slow breaths and try to calm down, and focus on making some cool comics and don’t worry.
One thing to bear in mind is that a number of modern kanji compounds actually originated in Japanese, chiefly during the Meiji Restoration, and eventually fed back into modern Chinese (社会 and 人民 to name a couple). So cultural and linguistic exchange with China isn’t a one-way street, and it’s there’s not always a straightforward rubric with which to classify a word as “more” or “less” Japanese. You may drive yourself a bit crazy trying to de-muddify these waters…
Okay I lied, *this* is why I come to this subreddit.
Is “beautiful” an English word, or is it a French word that invaded English and kicked out the “correct” English word? What about “bureau”, or “blouse”? Are they not considered to be English words despite their origin (never mind the fact that they’re only the ones off the top of my head starting with B). There are *tons* of words in English that were originally borrowed from other languages, but we consider them to be native English words, with many of them being added to English later than these Chinese words would have been added to Japanese. And if you were to try to go back to “pure English”, nobody would understand what the hell you were saying. They wouldn’t even recognize many of the words as English, despite their inclusion in the “pure” Old English. And Japanese isn’t any different. The words introduced later in the language’s history are as much a part of the language as those from earlier. So don’t think of 綺麗 as a Chinese word that’s used in Japanese. It is a Japanese word, through and through.
I love etymology, but I feel that it can be super counter productive to learning. I find questions starting with “why” to be incredibly unhelpful when it comes to understanding how to actually use a language. Things will go better if you can just accept some things as they are, because that’s how native speakers use the language. If you can’t do that, then you will probably not get far, let alone native level.
To be honest, if it stresses you out that much, maybe it’s not a healthy thing to do, or at the very least maybe take a break. Who knows, you might find it easier to ignore these issues if you come back at it later from a new angle.
>There was also a point where I compared Japanese loans to Latinate/Greek ones in English, but after learning that all European languages are apart of the same family, I didn’t consider it anymore (at least mostly).
Why would ^this change your feelings though about Western if your reason for wanting Japanese purism is your prehistoric manga? A manga about prehistoric England would have to avoid Latinate loans in exactly the same way!
Would echo the top comments here.
I don’t see how English being related to Greek makes it any different. Japanese has no demonstrable relations aside from Ryukyuan, but you must know that the language didn’t stop and start with its written attestation. Languages aren’t finitely definable things, our boundaries are largely based on ad hoc convenience. The whole idea of ‘Japanese’ as you understand it is mostly a modern construction; for sure it’s built on historical ideas stretching back centuries, but for example there’s good reason to believe that many dialects across the archipelago historically were essentially unintelligible, with these groups having unique local cultures. Or, in other words, the reason you think of this group as Japanese is the historical development of what are effectively power, economic, and cultural structures – simply put, it’s sociopolitical, and your understanding of it doesn’t map onto the experiences of those living historically.
And, again, just because Japanese has no demonstrable relatives beyond Ryukyuan, does not mean it had no relatives. The language that came before would have been no different; loaning words from neighbouring languages, giving words, splitting off into new languages and dialects, etc.
I’m not sure what ambiguity there is here; linguistic purism is irrational to the extent that, well, no language is pure, it’s just for some, the dirt is so worn into them that you can’t tell whether that’s their natural colour, or discoloration.
This said, there is something to be said for purism as an expression of identity, or as an artistic thing. I don’t think it’s unreasonable for speakers of a small language to want to use native terms over English ones, for example. But, fwiw, prescription likely won’t help, only individual choice will.
As for the latter, well art can serve goals; political, philosophical, etc. Or it can be just for fun. And here’s the thing – I can point out to you your notion of pure Japanese is kinda contradictory here, but do you care?
I mean, as well, if you go using native terms for everything, you’re not going to sound ‘old-timey,’ you’re not going to sound like Basho – you’re just going to sound weird, probably alien, probably foreign, and if you’re doing this without a really advanced understanding of the normal language, quite likely incomprehensible. You have to learn the game before you can break the rules. (I see a similar issue with people trying to write texts in ‘modernised’ old english – ie old english with all its case morphology, but with Germanic neologisms – where they basically just don’t know the language well enough to be writing, well, anything, so instead of ‘Old English with neologisms’ you get this weird caricature that’s borderline incomprehensible.)
I mean, that can be fine, if you honestly don’t care about that either. You do you. But don’t expect Japanese people to be receptive to it. At such a point, you’re basically conlanging – and, if you want to make an alternate history japan conlang, go right ahead dude. But, yeah, if it’s providing you stress, and this is part of more general compulsive behaviour, you might want to speak to a doctor/counsellor/therapist. Best wishes, OP.
(Also, you know, you read and write Japanese with a Sinitic script.)
Edit: also, some languages prefer compounds, some prefer borrowing, some prefer multiword constructions. There’s nothing inherently better or worse about any of these.