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My favorite little coincidence is that ending a sentence in "ne" turns it into a question in both Japanese and colloquial German, with exactly the same sense ("
by TillE 3y ago
My favorite little coincidence is that ending a sentence in "ne" turns it into a question in both Japanese and colloquial German, with exactly the same sense ("isn't it?").
- metaxy2 3y agoA slight variation of that is even in colloquial English, with "no." As in "we should probably get going, no?"
- mbork_pl 3y agoAnd in Polish, where people often add a ", nie?" to the end of the sentence, with a similar result.
- bombela 3y agoAnd in french with "non ?" at the end. Often pronounced "nanh" (english), "nan" (french). A more familiar form of "non". On va prendre de l'essence d'abord, nan? We're going to get gas first, right?
- interestica 3y agoTrinidadian English: "ent?" I think there's an innate human desire to modify the sentence to make it a question with as few additional sounds as possible.
- _a_a_a_ 3y agoEnglish English: "innit?"
- metaxy2 3y agoI wonder if "ent" evolved from "innit" under British colonization (or they both evolved from a common ancestor in British English).
- interestica 3y agoBoth probably from "is it not > isn't it" Canadian's have 'eh?' that serves basically the same function.
- metaxy2 3y agoAmericans (and I'd imagine the British) have "eh?" too, it's just not as common ("not bad, eh?"). Among Americans I feel like I've seen it more in casual written online conversation than in speech.
- arrowsmith 3y agoIn some places pronounced "ennit?"
- jimbosis 3y agoIn Latin, adding the enclitic -ne to (generally) the first word of a sentence makes that sentence a yes/no question. See https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0001:part=2:section=8 https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1... , especially paragraph #332.
- madcaptenor 3y agoPeople have mentioned other languages (Polish, Latin, French, English) but the negation particles in all of those languages is from the same source (Proto-Indo-European "ne"). The Japanese one is entirely unrelated though.
- throwaway290 3y agoYeah and it's the same for German ne. Completely unrelated to Japanese.
- madcaptenor 3y agoYes, that’s what I meant - all the languages that had already been mentioned are Indo-European, with the exception of Japanese.
- throwaway290 3y agoSame in Russian, no? (or should I say ne?)
- arrowsmith 3y agoAnd in Portuguese, né?
- schoen 3y agoAlso Portuguese, where "né?" is understood as a contraction of "não é?" ("isn't it?"). I don't mean to say that this is a coincidence as far as the European languages go; negation words with N are often a shared inheritance from Indo-European https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/ne https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-Eur...
- dormento 3y agoAlways felt funny to me how the common japanese immigrant stereotype in Brasil includes ending every question with "né?" Makes total sense now.
- Findecanor 3y agoI've noticed a similar similarity between the particle "yo" in Japanese and adverb "ju" in Swedish, both used for the same purpose at the end of sentences.
- Findecanor 3y agoA few more: Swedish:"tabberas"(eat everything) from Latin:"tabula rasa"(clean slate) <=> Japanese: "taberu"(eat). Swedish:"må" <=> Japanese:"mo". "allowed to" Pronounced the same. Expression: Swedish:"det går inte"(not possible, not allowed to), literally "that does not go" <=> Japanese:"ikemasen"(not allowed to), literally "can not go".
- User23 3y agoYou can do that in English too.