Japanese “-chan” and Turkish “-can”?

8 comments

1. Also, c is j in Turkish, so “can” sounds more like “jahn.”

2. That’s interesting, There’s a similar thing in German with -chen.

3. Pure coincidence, but yeah.

4. Altaic proved

5. Omg guys Altaic is real‼️‼️

6. In Russian there’s also -ka. Probable a coincidence though

7. Also, since it hasn’t been said, I just want to note that “chan” comes from “san”, which comes from “sama”.

8. Japanese “-chan” doesn’t literally mean little though, they’re just both used as terms of endearment. I imagine the Turkish “-can” is similar to the Greek “-aki”, where you can attach it to someone’s name to imply endearment, but you can also attach it to any noun just to imply a small size without any particular sense of affection. So in Greek, the noun trapezi (table) can become trapezaki if it’s small, but in Japanese you can’t say テーブルちゃん unless you’re Nina from Code Geass.