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This sort of thing happens in a lot of languages though. Your average Italian can comprehend a decent amount of French text without being able to keep up in con
by coopierez 6y ago
This sort of thing happens in a lot of languages though. Your average Italian can comprehend a decent amount of French text without being able to keep up in conversation, or even speak the language. Same with Dutch and German.
- jhbadger 6y agoTrue, but what is unusual about the Chinese/Japanese connection is that these languages aren't related linguistically -- they just share (partly) a writing system. The Romance languages all descend from Latin, and the Germanic languages likewise have a common ancestor. So it's not surprising to find similarities there.