are there any similar words between chinese and japanese?

9 comments

1. Pronounced the same? I’m not sure. Kanji would be the shared written language.

2. Japanese has a huge number of Chinese loanwords. Most words that use on’yomi readings will be loan words from Chinese.

3. Some words are pronounced differently but they are written the same, like the word for school 学校 (gakkou) 学校 (xuéxiào). Some words are pronounced the same and written the same like the word for tea 茶 (cha). Some words are completely different, for example: to study in chinese is 学习 (xuéxí) and in japanese it’s 勉強する(benkyou suru).

4. Nearly all Onyomi readings are Chinese loans

5. If you look at words (kanji) on wiktionary it will tell you the reading and meaning of the word in Japanese, Chinese and Korean.

6. 安心, comfort, is pronounced as anshin in both languages.

7. 開始(kaishi) in Japanese and
   开始(kāishǐ) in simplified Chinese.
   The kanjis are the same, but the first kanji/hanzi(开) in the Chinese one is a simplified version of the traditional Chinese/Japanese 開.

   The word translates to ”beginning” or ”start” in both languages, I believe.

8. There’s hundreds and thousands of words in common

   Any word with two or more kanji and chances are pretty even it’s also a Chinese word— same meaning, same kanji (literally the same often though depending on the kind of Chinese you’re reading the either the Japanese or Chinese has simplified characters).

   A lot of affixes are also shared between Chinese and Japanese words, and similar patterns as well, so the similarities don’t end at just shared words. For example, 以及 isn’t a word in Japanese, but it uses the same logic as words that are shared between the languages like 以前，以下，以上etc. One day (this is not recommended as a study method by the way) I decided as a joke to have a conversation with a Chinese friend where I would just try to guess any word I didn’t know by either saying the Japanese word in Mandarin or slightly tweaking the word to fit Chinese morphology— for example, in Chinese 今天，昨天，明天 are used in place of 今日、昨日、明日 (今日is also in Chinese), so I tried to jokingly use 明後天 in a sentence to mean 明後日 and it was correct.

9. 新漢語 shin-kango, such as 社会, 経済, 革命, 資本主義, 生産, 共産主義…. created by Japanese in order for them to translate words in western languages into Japanese texts in modern days. These Japan made words are also used in modern Chinese language since the end of 19th century.

   宅男, 宅女, 太萌了!, 食草男, 卡哇伊 kǎwāyī, 可愛の家 Kě’ài de jiā, etc. are recently borrowed words from Japanese to Chinese.