9 ms·

Japanese words and names sound African (2022)

127 points by eatonphil 2y ago

retrac 2y ago
Because the Bantu languages (most prominently: Swahili) and Japanese have similar sound systems. Finnish is also oddly similar-sounding, or Hawaiian. None of them are actually related. It's because the syllable is restricted in the number of possible forms, in a similar way. (And they all have approximately five vowels. And a pitch accent.) In Hawaiian, nothing but consonant + vowel syllables are possible. Swahili and Japanese allow an optional final n sound. Finnish is a little more flexible, and syllables can end with an n, r, l or t. No consonant clusters, in any of the languages. No syllables ending with consonants outside the restricted set (if any), in any of the languages. This results in a lot of syllables of the form: i, a, ne, na, ka, ta, po, to... "Pokatokaino". I just made that up and it's probably not a Swahili, Finnish, Hawaiian, or Japanese word -- but it could be. This basic pattern (consonant + vowel + maybe limited option for final consonant) is very common; it's the most common arrangement among the worlds languages. Far more common than languages like English which allow monstrosities like "strengths" (which is 6 consonants and one vowel).
- mdp2021 2y ago
  > Pokatokaino According to Google Translate, that would be "shortcuts" in Maori. (Reverse, "Pokatata".) Nice!
  - Nition 2y ago
    Maori is also another language that has the same vowel sounds as Japanese. Google is being generous in interpreting a nonsense word there though, Pokatata (as you saw when reversing the translation) is the correct spelling.
    - mdp2021 2y ago
      > Google is being generous in interpreting a nonsense word My prudential 'would' (not to mention the safety reverse check) saved me again... ;)
    - latentsea 2y ago
      If you know Japanese go to Google maps and scroll around New Zealand and see how many Maori place names actually make sense in Japanese. There's quite a few fun ones that do. Paraparaumu, matamata, tearai etc. Plenty more.
  - e12e 2y ago
    I believe Hawaiian and Maori are somewhat related (Eastern Polynesian family)?
- RachelF 2y ago
  Something amusing about Japanese vs Xhosa (a Bantu language) is that their words for yes and no are reversed: Japanese Hai = yes, Xhosa - Hai is a no Japanese eeye = no, Xhosa - ewe is yes
  - lukan 2y ago
    Amusing as long as you don't agree to something stupid I guess .. Are they pronounced very similar?
  - ncpa-cpl 2y ago
    I have seen something similar with Korean and Dutch Korean: Ne = yes Dutch: Nee = no
  - euroderf 2y ago
    The "n" sound denoting negative seems deeply ingrained in English (and also in this native English speaker). So Finnish "niin" for affirmative took a very long time to get used to, and to actually begin using. It just felt wrong.
    - scotteric 2y ago
      It goes even deeper than just English. No descends from the Indo-European negation phoneme *ne. You see similar 'n' sound negative words in pretty much every IE language group. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/ne https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-Eur...
- shiomiru 2y ago
  Nit: pokatokaino is unlikely to be Japanese, since word-initial p has morphed into h during the centuries. But it works if you turn it into, say, t. Anyway, I think there's another factor: the common alphabet we transliterate these languages to is quite limited. I suspect the similarities become less obvious if you use something like the IPA, which has better universal correspondence between sounds and letters (i.e. doesn't reduce every sound to the same ~26 symbols).
  - fjdjshsh 2y ago
    That's a good point. Latin letters map to a big number of IPA sounds. I think this is specially true with consonants. Vowels, however, might be the same. For example, Spanish has five vowels (a, e, i, o, u in IPA). Japanese also has five IPA vowels and only the "u" is different in IPA
    - kagevf 2y ago
      I don't know IPA, but Japanese e and Spanish e are also different. Spanish e is like English A in "ace", Japanese e is closer to English "eh".
      - trealira 2y ago
        That's the difference between [e] and [ɛ] in IPA (in IPA, with "narrow" phonetic transcription, you enclose the sounds in brackets). In American English, "ace" is [eɪs] and "mess" is [mɛs]. But I don't think that's right; I'm pretty sure both the Japanese e and Spanish e sound exactly the same. And if you pronounced [e] and [ɛ] to native speakers of either Spanish or Japanese, they most likely wouldn't be able to differentiate the two sounds consistently without having had training. I know that in Spanish, realization of e can be either vowel depending on the speaker and context; they might pronounce "tierra" as [tjɛra] and "mesa" as [mesa].
        kagevf 2y ago
        Japanese e would only ever be [ɛ]. The constructs to produce an [e] sound would be transliterated as "ei" (the quoted are just letters, not meant to be IPA). So, while I disagree that they sound "exactly the same", I do agree that in most cases the differences between [e] and [ɛ] wouldn't be enough to cause confusion between speakers of either language.
- quinnirill 2y ago
  Pokatokaino is indeed not a Finnish word, but contains multiple: Pokat - slang for sunglasses, Kato - slang version of katso (look), Toka - slang version of toinen (ordinal second), Kaino - timid/coy. Finnish has umlauts though, so quite a lot of words don’t sound like the mentioned languages so much.
  - fsckboy 2y ago
    >Pokat - slang for sunglasses, Kato - slang version of katso (look), Toka - slang version of toinen (ordinal second), Kaino - timid/coy sounds like if you give it a shy 2nd look through these glasses, in the dim light it works as a word!
- District5524 2y ago
  Speaking of similar sound system of Finnish and Japenese, I think we should highlight the discredited language family claim of Uralic-Altaic, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ural-Altaic_languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ural-Altaic_languages You can still find tons of other theories of "what else could be related to Uralic"... So far, no African languages were included in these theories. But that's probably just a question of time and politics (and definitely not linguistic research...)
  - fsckboy 2y ago
    >the discredited language family claim of Uralic-Altaic I'd substitute "doubtful" for "discredited". The article you link says nothing more damning than "It is now generally agreed [wrt Ural-Altaic] that even the Altaic languages [themselves] do not share a common descent: the similarities between Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic are better explained by diffusion and borrowing", but that wiki comment is a paraphrasal of a source that says "a pattern [that] is easily explainable by borrowing and diffusion rather than common descent", i.e. not "better", just weakening that alternate claim. Also, the Altaic article says that there is still a small group of scholars who adhere to an "Altaic" grouping. And I would add, the lack of existence of an "Altaic" common ancestor to Mongolic, Turkic, Tungusic, and Koreanic says nothing about potential connections between Uralic and any of those 4 independent languages. I'm not expert enough to advocate any position, but I'm interested and it's irritating when I pursue researching my interest to discover people slightly misquoting others or ignoring additional possiblities to make their own pov stronger.
    - canjobear 2y ago
      I’d say the situation is worse than “doubtful”—-There was never any really good evidence for Ural-Altaic. Altaic is a little more complicated, but whatever it is, it doesn’t seem to be a linguistic family tree in the same way that Indo-European is.
- ajb 2y ago
  That's interesting. From an English perspective katakana (a system for writing words foreign to Japan, which can't write English very well) seems broken, but I guess from what you say that it's probably effective for most languages
  - sdrothrock 2y ago
    It may be "broken" in the sense that it's not accurate to the original language in orthography or pronunciation, but it's great because it's internally consistent for speakers of Japanese. I can look at any foreign word in katakana and instantly know how to pronounce it in a way that is intelligible to other people in the language I'm speaking: Japanese. Even with the way English does it for other languages that use the same alphabet, while the orthography may be similar, the pronunciation is generally just left to luck and the speaker's/listener's perception of the word's original language.
    - ajb 2y ago
      Fair - English's orthography is definitely worse.
- casey2 2y ago
  Yep it's just the coincidence of a simple sound system and finding patterns where none exist. For example saying ba means horse in Japanese isn't exactly correct, horse is uma, ba is just the closest sound that exists which allows Japanese people to pronounce Chinese words like 馬力 circa whenever that word was added to the language, if they took it today it would be ma. It's the equivalent of Latin or Greek words and affixes in English.
- CoastalCoder 2y ago
  Just curious: what path lead you to know this stuff?
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- troad 2y ago
  > This basic pattern (consonant + vowel + maybe limited option for final consonant) is very common; it's the most common arrangement among the worlds languages. Far more common than languages like English which allow monstrosities like "strengths" (which is 6 consonants and one vowel). It's a fun spectrum! Italian is often given as an example of this, but Italian does allow more complex consonant clusters at the beginning of a syllable than Hawaiian or Japanese (e.g. gra-do, glo-bo, pneu-ma-ti-co). You see echoes of the Italian proclivity towards final vowels in English-language stereotypes of Italian accents, where a schwa (an 'uh' sound) is added after word final consonants ("I want-uh" etc.). Czech, on the other end of the spectrum, happily allows for things like zmrz-li-na and - famously - strč prst skrz krk (yes, that spelling is phonetic - the rs are syllabic). Interestingly though, Czech evolved out of late Proto-Slavic, and PS had a rule that no syllable end with a consonant (the law of open syllables). This made late Proto-Slavic look more like modern Italian. So, e.g. prst in Czech was prĭ-stŭ in Old Church Slavonic, and krk was krŭ-kŭ.
- blacksqr 2y ago
  > Finnish is also oddly similar-sounding For a long time I ignorantly assumed that Marimekko was a Japanese brand.
  - euroderf 2y ago
    Not to mention Nokia.
- unscaled 2y ago
  Your general gist is correct: languages with CV (consonant-vowel) phonotactics[1] with a simple vowel systems tend to develop similar features, possibly through convergent evolution: - agglutinative syntax (i.e. combining long sequences of words and suffixes to form complex meanings) - vowel harmony (seems to exist in the earliest attested forms of Old Japanese, but not anymore) - palatalization before front vowels (i, e) - further simplification of the vowel system My only nitpick is that Bantu languages are not relevant here. The author is explicitly focusing on Nigerian languages (although he titled that "Japanese words and name sound African"... Africa is a big continent with just as much language diversity as Asia, if not more). While there are some Bantu languages in Nigeria, they aren't as prominent there as they are in East, Central and South Africa. The author mentions Yoruba, Igbo, Fula, Hausa, Edo and several others - none of them is a Bantu language, although some are related. Even though you can put all of the languages above (except for Hausa) into the hypothetical Niger-Congo macro-family, together with the Bantu languages, they are quite far away by this point. The other issue is that Bantu languages are probably not the best example for "Japanese-sounding" languages. They feature very frequent use of prenasalized consonants. While prenasalization almost certainly existed in Old Japanese[2] and is still retained in some northeastern dialects, this is not something people would identify with "Japanese-sounding" nowadays. Not to mention southern Bantu languages like Zulu and Xhosa that feature heavy usage of click consonants - these are completely alien to Japanese phonology. But this doesn't detract at all from your argument. Languages with similar structure, will often sound similar. I think the other anecdote the author mentions (Plateau State languages sounding Sino-Tiban) also checks out. I am not familiar with any of these languages, but it seems many of them are tonal and based around heavy use of complex monosyllabic morphemes with complex combinations of initial consonant + medial glides(?) + diphthongs + final consonants. This is exactly what so strongly distinguishes the phonology and phonotactics of Sino-Tibetan languages. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonotactics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonotactics [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendaku#Origin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendaku#Origin
- tomcam 2y ago
  I thought Japanese was unpitched
- antiterra 2y ago
  Regarding the similarities between Hawaiian and Japanese: There are theories among linguists that there is a connection between Austronesian languages and Japanese. These theories don’t seem to be infeasible, but are currently lacking sufficient supporting evidence.
jkuria 2y ago
btw, there was once a consular official who worked at the Japanese embassy in Kenya, whose name was Mr. Kuma Moto. Every time he was introduced, it was hard for folks to suppress their laughter as the name literally meant "hot vagina" (in Kiswahili the noun goes first)
- fsckboy 2y ago
  seems like the Kumamoto oysters might prove a popular appetizer there
- latentsea 2y ago
  I guess Kumamoto prefecture is popular with Kenyan tourists then? I guess it'd be like if there was someone who worked at the Russian embassy in Japanese and was named Mankovich because it would be rendered as マンコビッチ pussy bitch.
- ncpa-cpl 2y ago
  In some varieties of Spanish Mr Kuma Moto would be Mr. Machete Motorcycle”
ijidak 2y ago
When viewing my resume, my name, Ayo Ijidakinro (Nigerian), is often mistaken for Japanese. Especially because I had on my resume that I speak some Japanese. When I show up for the interview there is surprise. The syllables are identical. A-yo I-ji-da-kin-ro ア-ヨイ-ジ-ダ-キ-ン-ロ Have always found it interesting.
- ashirviskas 2y ago
  That's interesting, because Kinro or キ-ン-ロ is an actual name in Japanese (or at least some Anime that I watch)
- mastersummoner 2y ago
  Ayo Edebiri has it easier I'm guessing; her last name sounds less ethnically ambiguous I'd say.
- marethyu 2y ago
  Your name doesn't sound Japanese to me unless it ends with u vowel so that your last name sounds like Ijidakinrō.
999900000999 2y ago
I want a historical fantasy explanation for this. Just seems like it would be a fun world to explore.
Almondsetat 2y ago
This article is just a list of examples. You will not find an answer
- zekrioca 2y ago
  It is interesting, the author even added a “Why?” In the article’s title, but couldn’t come with one.
thevillagechief 2y ago
There is a whole genre of puns in Swahili relating to Japanese names, some real some made up.
- SonOfLilit 2y ago
  In Hebrew too, most famously Ishimoto sounds like Ish (guy) 'im (with) Otto (car) so is considered a good name for a driver. I'll leave you to figure out why Sakimkaki is a good word for "diaper", and yes, I know that can't be japanese because of the m, but most Hebrew speakers don't.
- ncpa-cpl 2y ago
  Spanish too, as Japanese snd Spanish share many syllables and vowel sounds https://www.mundodeportivo.com/uncomo/ocio/articulo/chistes-de-como-se-dice-50888.html?amp=1#anchor_1 https://www.mundodeportivo.com/uncomo/ocio/articulo/chistes-... And Japanese names that sound similar to Spanish phrases: Yamamoto - Llama Moto - Fire Motorcycle Niigata - Ni gata - Not even a cat Kazamaura - Casa/Caza Maura - Marries or Hunts Maura Nomiya - … No mía - Not mine / Doesn’t pee And then there is: Kaga - … Kagasawa - … What I don’t know is if there are Spanish puns in Japanese?
adastra22 2y ago
> People who pay attention to politics are probably familiar with the late Senator Gyang Nyam Shom Pwajok. Names can’t get more Chinese than that! That does not even remotely sound Chinese. Korean, maybe.
- routerl 2y ago
  > Shok Jok. That name could pass for a Mandarin or Cantonese name. These sounds do not exist in Mandarin. This would never be, or sound like, a Mandarin name. And no mention is made of tones, which are critical in Mandarin. The article already smelled of a bovid's feces, but at this point I actually saw the bullshit.
  - unscaled 2y ago
    These sounds sounds more like a Southern Chinese language, not Mandarin. Mandarin has highly simplified set of finals (essentially /n/, /ng/ and /r/) which cannot even combine freely with most vowels. But Southern Chinese languages preserve a more complex final system. I still don't think "Shok Jok" sounds very much Chinese (It mostly sounds American English[1] to me), but YMMV. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_jock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_jock
- userbinator 2y ago
  Gyang Nyam definitely sounds Korean (thanks to that old meme), but then Shom Pwajok is less discernable -- it's like a hint of Thai or some other southeast Asian language.
  - IncreasePosts 2y ago
    I would have guessed Shom Pwajok was a Polish Jew.
- yongjik 2y ago
  While they could be valid Korean syllables, they don't sound like Korean names, either. The only words containing "gyang" or "nyam" I can think of are slangs or onomatopoeia, and I don't think I've seen "shom" or "pwa" in the wild.
29athrowaway 2y ago
A similar phenomenon https://youtu.be/uGkLjfPWqeI https://youtu.be/uGkLjfPWqeI
jbs789 2y ago
So do we know why? Apologies if I’ve missed this.
- robxorb 2y ago
  The article seems to say it's random chance, based upon one linguists opinion. Doesn't at all feel right statistically. Seems more likely there would be some kind of missing link. Could someone better informed possibly figure out the odds?
  - kgeist 2y ago
    >Doesn't at all feel right statistically Why not? Many unrelated languages steer towards the open syllable rule. It's basically the only similarity between Japanese and African languages. Open syllables without complex consonant clusters are easier to pronounce. Say, Proto-Slavic phonetics mostly allowed only open syllables, although its ancestor and descendants allow more complex clusters. For example, Proto-Indoeuropean domos "house" became Proto-Slavic domu, and mater "mother" became mati. Let's list some Proto-Slavic words: noga "foot", ronka "hand", nosu "nose", oko "eye", podushiwa "foot sole", noguti "nail" etc. You can cherrypick many languages like that (Finnish, Maori, Basque, even French to some extent) It would be much more surprising if they found 2 unrelated languages and they both had same complex clusters a la Georgian (mtsvrtneli "trainer").
    - robxorb 2y ago
      Thanks, that all makes a lot of sense. As to why it felt off: identical patterns across as-yet unconnected distributions is usually an early indicator of undiscovered relation. Your suggestion of language steering toward open syllables may well be that relationship.
- Ekaros 2y ago
  All humans share same vocal cords, breathing and tongue and mouth shape. For there you can derive some amount of sounds that travel reasonably well in air. I would expect most of these sounds to follow similar rules. Sometimes there might be something like clicks, but in general similar sounds will be used. And certain styles will probably cluster as well. In the end you have handful of options and thousands of languages. So some must end up being similar.
buzer 2y ago
> Finnish is a little more flexible, and syllables can end with an n, r, l or t. No consonant clusters, in any of the languages. No syllables ending with consonants outside the restricted set (if any) What do you mean? There are words like Ahti (Ah), ankerias (as), isku (is) or lapsi (lap) which contain syllables that end in consonants other than n, r, l or t. There are also a lot of words with double consonants (like jarru, lasso, noppa, nurkka) where syllable get split at the middle.
slaser79 2y ago
Yes interesting elephant in Japanese is almost the same word in Shona (a bantu language of Zimbabwe) nzou vs zou and sound very similar. Many words have similar structures. Many shona names could be mistaken to be Japanese.
- bouncycastle 2y ago
  zou is actually the onyomi (Chinese origin) reading. I guess the sound has been morphed since Japanese doesn't have tones like Chinese.
aragonite 2y ago
Then there are real coincidences, like 'Muratori', which is both an Italian name [1] (Casey Muratori) and a real (though somewhat rare) Japanese name. [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muratori https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muratori [2] https://www.google.co.jp/search?q=muratori+%E6%9D%91%E9%B3%A5 https://www.google.co.jp/search?q=muratori+%E6%9D%91%E9%B3%A...
- ZoomZoomZoom 2y ago
  TIL. Just assumed it's more likely a "cool" pseudonym, considering a common fascination with everything Japanese in the nerd circles, than a diverse heritage. Turns out it's neither.
- gfccggc 2y ago
  Quick IT lesson: Muro means wall Muratore means wall builder (-atore means doer) Muratori means wall builders (male plural )
  - Binginesic 2y ago
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Unbefleckt 2y ago
What language is African
- seanhunter 2y ago
  "African" isn't a language. But it does mean "from Africa". So saying Japanese words sound African is a perfectly sensible thing to say. Source: am African. I too am not a language.
xelxebar 2y ago
There's also this tome, which lists thousands of cognates between latin and Japanese: https://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BA80581101 https://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BA80581101 It's trying to make the claim that these are etymological connections, which is a bit sketchy, but the phonological similarities it has meticulously catalogued are surprisingly convincing!
- FoeNyx 2y ago
  There are a lot of obvious cognates between Japanese and Latin through recently borrowed English or Romance words, so I was wondering what was surprising about it. But it seems the author is talking about traditional Japanese words, and looking for ties in words and idioms like ("kokoro" & "corculum"), ("koi" & "cupio"), ("ganbare" & "quam vale"), ("omedetō" & "omen datum"). Seems a bit farfetched to me, but I'm no expert.
latentsea 2y ago
Everytime I listen to Waka Waka by Shakira in the chorus I always sing さあみんな、みんなさんこれは、穴はあぁあぁ
mastersummoner 2y ago
What about European Portuguese and Russian? For some reason they have some very similar sounds, to my ear.
awesomeideas 2y ago
>His lexicostatistical analysis found that less than 30 percent of the similar-sounding words between Plateau State languages and China’s Sino-Tibetan languages share similar meanings. Linguists call these kinds of similarities "accidental evidence." Ok, but that's still a very high percentage. Shouldn't that be surprising?
- euroderf 2y ago
  Perhaps of interest: STEDT https://stedt.berkeley.edu https://stedt.berkeley.edu
ronyeh 2y ago
Reminds me of when a Japanese town celebrated Obama becoming president. https://youtu.be/K3qEIzYLOwA https://youtu.be/K3qEIzYLOwA https://www.reuters.com/article/us-obama-japan/japans-obama-town-parties-for-inauguration-idUSTRE50J4A120090120/ https://www.reuters.com/article/us-obama-japan/japans-obama-... (Yes I know he’s not African.) But it’s fun that his surname can be easily pronounced in Japan and Hawaii (although it would probably be Opama).
- eatonphil 2y ago
  This situation was referenced in the article. :)
kazinator 2y ago
JP Hash: hashes strings into an output consisting of easy-to-type/remember Japanese syllables, ensuring there is an upper case letter, symbol and digit. https://addons.mozilla.org/en/firefox/addon/jp-hash/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en/firefox/addon/jp-hash/ https://www.kylheku.com/cgit/jp-hash/about/ https://www.kylheku.com/cgit/jp-hash/about/
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jojobas 2y ago
Given how many language families there are in Africa and how wide the sound gamut is between them I bet there's a close phonetic counterpart to any language somewhere in Africa.
rurban 2y ago
I doubt that Bantu has Mongol origins. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2296962-origins-of-japanese-and-turkish-language-family-traced-back-9000-years/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2296962-origins-of-japa...
rurban 2y ago
I doubt that Bantu has Mongol origins. They only might have in common the tendency to avoid consonant clusters, by inserting vocals. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2296962-origins-of-japanese-and-turkish-language-family-traced-back-9000-years/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2296962-origins-of-japa...
untitledfolder 2y ago
There is also the Dorobo tribe which had a unique practise going back thousands of years of stealing the catch of predators such as lions. [1] Which shares the same and the same meaning and reading as the Japanese word 泥棒(どろぼう、ドロボー、どろぼー）"dorobo", meaning thief, burglar, robber. [2] I believe its more than just coincidence. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3MTDFNf71I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3MTDFNf71I [2] https://jisho.org/word/泥棒 https://jisho.org/word/泥棒, https://jisho.org/word/%E6%B3%A5%E6%A3%92 https://jisho.org/word/%E6%B3%A5%E6%A3%92
a0-prw 2y ago
I think it's because we transcribe the languages discussed into the Latin alphabet. If you hear the languages spoken, they sound nothing like each other.
MrSkelter 2y ago
Yoruba is a tonal language like Japanese. There are a lot of similarities and Japanese isn’t nearly as alien to Yoruba speakers as it is to English speakers.

127 points by eatonphil 2y ago

Because the Bantu languages (most prominently: Swahili) and Japanese have similar sound systems. Finnish is also oddly similar-sounding, or Hawaiian. None of them are actually related. It's because the syllable is restricted in the number of possible forms, in a similar way. (And they all have approximately five vowels. And a pitch accent.) In Hawaiian, nothing but consonant + vowel syllables are possible. Swahili and Japanese allow an optional final n sound. Finnish is a little more flexible, and syllables can end with an n, r, l or t. No consonant clusters, in any of the languages. No syllables ending with consonants outside the restricted set (if any), in any of the languages. This results in a lot of syllables of the form: i, a, ne, na, ka, ta, po, to... "Pokatokaino". I just made that up and it's probably not a Swahili, Finnish, Hawaiian, or Japanese word -- but it could be. This basic pattern (consonant + vowel + maybe limited option for final consonant) is very common; it's the most common arrangement among the worlds languages. Far more common than languages like English which allow monstrosities like "strengths" (which is 6 consonants and one vowel).

mdp2021 2y ago
> Pokatokaino According to Google Translate, that would be "shortcuts" in Maori. (Reverse, "Pokatata".) Nice!
- Nition 2y ago
  Maori is also another language that has the same vowel sounds as Japanese. Google is being generous in interpreting a nonsense word there though, Pokatata (as you saw when reversing the translation) is the correct spelling.
  - mdp2021 2y ago
    > Google is being generous in interpreting a nonsense word My prudential 'would' (not to mention the safety reverse check) saved me again... ;)
  - latentsea 2y ago
    If you know Japanese go to Google maps and scroll around New Zealand and see how many Maori place names actually make sense in Japanese. There's quite a few fun ones that do. Paraparaumu, matamata, tearai etc. Plenty more.
- e12e 2y ago
  I believe Hawaiian and Maori are somewhat related (Eastern Polynesian family)?
RachelF 2y ago
Something amusing about Japanese vs Xhosa (a Bantu language) is that their words for yes and no are reversed: Japanese Hai = yes, Xhosa - Hai is a no Japanese eeye = no, Xhosa - ewe is yes
- lukan 2y ago
  Amusing as long as you don't agree to something stupid I guess .. Are they pronounced very similar?
- ncpa-cpl 2y ago
  I have seen something similar with Korean and Dutch Korean: Ne = yes Dutch: Nee = no
- euroderf 2y ago
  The "n" sound denoting negative seems deeply ingrained in English (and also in this native English speaker). So Finnish "niin" for affirmative took a very long time to get used to, and to actually begin using. It just felt wrong.
  - scotteric 2y ago
    It goes even deeper than just English. No descends from the Indo-European negation phoneme *ne. You see similar 'n' sound negative words in pretty much every IE language group. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/ne https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-Eur...
shiomiru 2y ago
Nit: pokatokaino is unlikely to be Japanese, since word-initial p has morphed into h during the centuries. But it works if you turn it into, say, t. Anyway, I think there's another factor: the common alphabet we transliterate these languages to is quite limited. I suspect the similarities become less obvious if you use something like the IPA, which has better universal correspondence between sounds and letters (i.e. doesn't reduce every sound to the same ~26 symbols).
- fjdjshsh 2y ago
  That's a good point. Latin letters map to a big number of IPA sounds. I think this is specially true with consonants. Vowels, however, might be the same. For example, Spanish has five vowels (a, e, i, o, u in IPA). Japanese also has five IPA vowels and only the "u" is different in IPA
  - kagevf 2y ago
    I don't know IPA, but Japanese e and Spanish e are also different. Spanish e is like English A in "ace", Japanese e is closer to English "eh".
    - trealira 2y ago
      That's the difference between [e] and [ɛ] in IPA (in IPA, with "narrow" phonetic transcription, you enclose the sounds in brackets). In American English, "ace" is [eɪs] and "mess" is [mɛs]. But I don't think that's right; I'm pretty sure both the Japanese e and Spanish e sound exactly the same. And if you pronounced [e] and [ɛ] to native speakers of either Spanish or Japanese, they most likely wouldn't be able to differentiate the two sounds consistently without having had training. I know that in Spanish, realization of e can be either vowel depending on the speaker and context; they might pronounce "tierra" as [tjɛra] and "mesa" as [mesa].
      - kagevf 2y ago
        Japanese e would only ever be [ɛ]. The constructs to produce an [e] sound would be transliterated as "ei" (the quoted are just letters, not meant to be IPA). So, while I disagree that they sound "exactly the same", I do agree that in most cases the differences between [e] and [ɛ] wouldn't be enough to cause confusion between speakers of either language.
quinnirill 2y ago
Pokatokaino is indeed not a Finnish word, but contains multiple: Pokat - slang for sunglasses, Kato - slang version of katso (look), Toka - slang version of toinen (ordinal second), Kaino - timid/coy. Finnish has umlauts though, so quite a lot of words don’t sound like the mentioned languages so much.
- fsckboy 2y ago
  >Pokat - slang for sunglasses, Kato - slang version of katso (look), Toka - slang version of toinen (ordinal second), Kaino - timid/coy sounds like if you give it a shy 2nd look through these glasses, in the dim light it works as a word!
District5524 2y ago
Speaking of similar sound system of Finnish and Japenese, I think we should highlight the discredited language family claim of Uralic-Altaic, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ural-Altaic_languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ural-Altaic_languages You can still find tons of other theories of "what else could be related to Uralic"... So far, no African languages were included in these theories. But that's probably just a question of time and politics (and definitely not linguistic research...)
- fsckboy 2y ago
  >the discredited language family claim of Uralic-Altaic I'd substitute "doubtful" for "discredited". The article you link says nothing more damning than "It is now generally agreed [wrt Ural-Altaic] that even the Altaic languages [themselves] do not share a common descent: the similarities between Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic are better explained by diffusion and borrowing", but that wiki comment is a paraphrasal of a source that says "a pattern [that] is easily explainable by borrowing and diffusion rather than common descent", i.e. not "better", just weakening that alternate claim. Also, the Altaic article says that there is still a small group of scholars who adhere to an "Altaic" grouping. And I would add, the lack of existence of an "Altaic" common ancestor to Mongolic, Turkic, Tungusic, and Koreanic says nothing about potential connections between Uralic and any of those 4 independent languages. I'm not expert enough to advocate any position, but I'm interested and it's irritating when I pursue researching my interest to discover people slightly misquoting others or ignoring additional possiblities to make their own pov stronger.
  - canjobear 2y ago
    I’d say the situation is worse than “doubtful”—-There was never any really good evidence for Ural-Altaic. Altaic is a little more complicated, but whatever it is, it doesn’t seem to be a linguistic family tree in the same way that Indo-European is.
ajb 2y ago
That's interesting. From an English perspective katakana (a system for writing words foreign to Japan, which can't write English very well) seems broken, but I guess from what you say that it's probably effective for most languages
- sdrothrock 2y ago
  It may be "broken" in the sense that it's not accurate to the original language in orthography or pronunciation, but it's great because it's internally consistent for speakers of Japanese. I can look at any foreign word in katakana and instantly know how to pronounce it in a way that is intelligible to other people in the language I'm speaking: Japanese. Even with the way English does it for other languages that use the same alphabet, while the orthography may be similar, the pronunciation is generally just left to luck and the speaker's/listener's perception of the word's original language.
  - ajb 2y ago
    Fair - English's orthography is definitely worse.
casey2 2y ago
Yep it's just the coincidence of a simple sound system and finding patterns where none exist. For example saying ba means horse in Japanese isn't exactly correct, horse is uma, ba is just the closest sound that exists which allows Japanese people to pronounce Chinese words like 馬力 circa whenever that word was added to the language, if they took it today it would be ma. It's the equivalent of Latin or Greek words and affixes in English.
CoastalCoder 2y ago
Just curious: what path lead you to know this stuff?
- deleted 2y ago
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troad 2y ago
> This basic pattern (consonant + vowel + maybe limited option for final consonant) is very common; it's the most common arrangement among the worlds languages. Far more common than languages like English which allow monstrosities like "strengths" (which is 6 consonants and one vowel). It's a fun spectrum! Italian is often given as an example of this, but Italian does allow more complex consonant clusters at the beginning of a syllable than Hawaiian or Japanese (e.g. gra-do, glo-bo, pneu-ma-ti-co). You see echoes of the Italian proclivity towards final vowels in English-language stereotypes of Italian accents, where a schwa (an 'uh' sound) is added after word final consonants ("I want-uh" etc.). Czech, on the other end of the spectrum, happily allows for things like zmrz-li-na and - famously - strč prst skrz krk (yes, that spelling is phonetic - the rs are syllabic). Interestingly though, Czech evolved out of late Proto-Slavic, and PS had a rule that no syllable end with a consonant (the law of open syllables). This made late Proto-Slavic look more like modern Italian. So, e.g. prst in Czech was prĭ-stŭ in Old Church Slavonic, and krk was krŭ-kŭ.
blacksqr 2y ago
> Finnish is also oddly similar-sounding For a long time I ignorantly assumed that Marimekko was a Japanese brand.
- euroderf 2y ago
  Not to mention Nokia.
unscaled 2y ago
Your general gist is correct: languages with CV (consonant-vowel) phonotactics[1] with a simple vowel systems tend to develop similar features, possibly through convergent evolution: - agglutinative syntax (i.e. combining long sequences of words and suffixes to form complex meanings) - vowel harmony (seems to exist in the earliest attested forms of Old Japanese, but not anymore) - palatalization before front vowels (i, e) - further simplification of the vowel system My only nitpick is that Bantu languages are not relevant here. The author is explicitly focusing on Nigerian languages (although he titled that "Japanese words and name sound African"... Africa is a big continent with just as much language diversity as Asia, if not more). While there are some Bantu languages in Nigeria, they aren't as prominent there as they are in East, Central and South Africa. The author mentions Yoruba, Igbo, Fula, Hausa, Edo and several others - none of them is a Bantu language, although some are related. Even though you can put all of the languages above (except for Hausa) into the hypothetical Niger-Congo macro-family, together with the Bantu languages, they are quite far away by this point. The other issue is that Bantu languages are probably not the best example for "Japanese-sounding" languages. They feature very frequent use of prenasalized consonants. While prenasalization almost certainly existed in Old Japanese[2] and is still retained in some northeastern dialects, this is not something people would identify with "Japanese-sounding" nowadays. Not to mention southern Bantu languages like Zulu and Xhosa that feature heavy usage of click consonants - these are completely alien to Japanese phonology. But this doesn't detract at all from your argument. Languages with similar structure, will often sound similar. I think the other anecdote the author mentions (Plateau State languages sounding Sino-Tiban) also checks out. I am not familiar with any of these languages, but it seems many of them are tonal and based around heavy use of complex monosyllabic morphemes with complex combinations of initial consonant + medial glides(?) + diphthongs + final consonants. This is exactly what so strongly distinguishes the phonology and phonotactics of Sino-Tibetan languages. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonotactics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonotactics [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendaku#Origin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendaku#Origin
tomcam 2y ago
I thought Japanese was unpitched
antiterra 2y ago
Regarding the similarities between Hawaiian and Japanese: There are theories among linguists that there is a connection between Austronesian languages and Japanese. These theories don’t seem to be infeasible, but are currently lacking sufficient supporting evidence.

jkuria 2y ago

btw, there was once a consular official who worked at the Japanese embassy in Kenya, whose name was Mr. Kuma Moto. Every time he was introduced, it was hard for folks to suppress their laughter as the name literally meant "hot vagina" (in Kiswahili the noun goes first)

fsckboy 2y ago
seems like the Kumamoto oysters might prove a popular appetizer there
latentsea 2y ago
I guess Kumamoto prefecture is popular with Kenyan tourists then? I guess it'd be like if there was someone who worked at the Russian embassy in Japanese and was named Mankovich because it would be rendered as マンコビッチ pussy bitch.
ncpa-cpl 2y ago
In some varieties of Spanish Mr Kuma Moto would be Mr. Machete Motorcycle”

ijidak 2y ago

When viewing my resume, my name, Ayo Ijidakinro (Nigerian), is often mistaken for Japanese. Especially because I had on my resume that I speak some Japanese. When I show up for the interview there is surprise. The syllables are identical. A-yo I-ji-da-kin-ro ア-ヨイ-ジ-ダ-キ-ン-ロ Have always found it interesting.

ashirviskas 2y ago
That's interesting, because Kinro or キ-ン-ロ is an actual name in Japanese (or at least some Anime that I watch)
mastersummoner 2y ago
Ayo Edebiri has it easier I'm guessing; her last name sounds less ethnically ambiguous I'd say.
marethyu 2y ago
Your name doesn't sound Japanese to me unless it ends with u vowel so that your last name sounds like Ijidakinrō.

999900000999 2y ago

I want a historical fantasy explanation for this. Just seems like it would be a fun world to explore.

Almondsetat 2y ago

This article is just a list of examples. You will not find an answer

zekrioca 2y ago
It is interesting, the author even added a “Why?” In the article’s title, but couldn’t come with one.

thevillagechief 2y ago

There is a whole genre of puns in Swahili relating to Japanese names, some real some made up.

SonOfLilit 2y ago
In Hebrew too, most famously Ishimoto sounds like Ish (guy) 'im (with) Otto (car) so is considered a good name for a driver. I'll leave you to figure out why Sakimkaki is a good word for "diaper", and yes, I know that can't be japanese because of the m, but most Hebrew speakers don't.
ncpa-cpl 2y ago
Spanish too, as Japanese snd Spanish share many syllables and vowel sounds https://www.mundodeportivo.com/uncomo/ocio/articulo/chistes-de-como-se-dice-50888.html?amp=1#anchor_1 https://www.mundodeportivo.com/uncomo/ocio/articulo/chistes-... And Japanese names that sound similar to Spanish phrases: Yamamoto - Llama Moto - Fire Motorcycle Niigata - Ni gata - Not even a cat Kazamaura - Casa/Caza Maura - Marries or Hunts Maura Nomiya - … No mía - Not mine / Doesn’t pee And then there is: Kaga - … Kagasawa - … What I don’t know is if there are Spanish puns in Japanese?

adastra22 2y ago

> People who pay attention to politics are probably familiar with the late Senator Gyang Nyam Shom Pwajok. Names can’t get more Chinese than that! That does not even remotely sound Chinese. Korean, maybe.

routerl 2y ago
> Shok Jok. That name could pass for a Mandarin or Cantonese name. These sounds do not exist in Mandarin. This would never be, or sound like, a Mandarin name. And no mention is made of tones, which are critical in Mandarin. The article already smelled of a bovid's feces, but at this point I actually saw the bullshit.
- unscaled 2y ago
  These sounds sounds more like a Southern Chinese language, not Mandarin. Mandarin has highly simplified set of finals (essentially /n/, /ng/ and /r/) which cannot even combine freely with most vowels. But Southern Chinese languages preserve a more complex final system. I still don't think "Shok Jok" sounds very much Chinese (It mostly sounds American English[1] to me), but YMMV. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_jock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_jock
userbinator 2y ago
Gyang Nyam definitely sounds Korean (thanks to that old meme), but then Shom Pwajok is less discernable -- it's like a hint of Thai or some other southeast Asian language.
- IncreasePosts 2y ago
  I would have guessed Shom Pwajok was a Polish Jew.
yongjik 2y ago
While they could be valid Korean syllables, they don't sound like Korean names, either. The only words containing "gyang" or "nyam" I can think of are slangs or onomatopoeia, and I don't think I've seen "shom" or "pwa" in the wild.

29athrowaway 2y ago

A similar phenomenon https://youtu.be/uGkLjfPWqeI https://youtu.be/uGkLjfPWqeI

jbs789 2y ago

So do we know why? Apologies if I’ve missed this.

robxorb 2y ago
The article seems to say it's random chance, based upon one linguists opinion. Doesn't at all feel right statistically. Seems more likely there would be some kind of missing link. Could someone better informed possibly figure out the odds?
- kgeist 2y ago
  >Doesn't at all feel right statistically Why not? Many unrelated languages steer towards the open syllable rule. It's basically the only similarity between Japanese and African languages. Open syllables without complex consonant clusters are easier to pronounce. Say, Proto-Slavic phonetics mostly allowed only open syllables, although its ancestor and descendants allow more complex clusters. For example, Proto-Indoeuropean domos "house" became Proto-Slavic domu, and mater "mother" became mati. Let's list some Proto-Slavic words: noga "foot", ronka "hand", nosu "nose", oko "eye", podushiwa "foot sole", noguti "nail" etc. You can cherrypick many languages like that (Finnish, Maori, Basque, even French to some extent) It would be much more surprising if they found 2 unrelated languages and they both had same complex clusters a la Georgian (mtsvrtneli "trainer").
  - robxorb 2y ago
    Thanks, that all makes a lot of sense. As to why it felt off: identical patterns across as-yet unconnected distributions is usually an early indicator of undiscovered relation. Your suggestion of language steering toward open syllables may well be that relationship.
Ekaros 2y ago
All humans share same vocal cords, breathing and tongue and mouth shape. For there you can derive some amount of sounds that travel reasonably well in air. I would expect most of these sounds to follow similar rules. Sometimes there might be something like clicks, but in general similar sounds will be used. And certain styles will probably cluster as well. In the end you have handful of options and thousands of languages. So some must end up being similar.

buzer 2y ago

> Finnish is a little more flexible, and syllables can end with an n, r, l or t. No consonant clusters, in any of the languages. No syllables ending with consonants outside the restricted set (if any) What do you mean? There are words like Ahti (Ah), ankerias (as), isku (is) or lapsi (lap) which contain syllables that end in consonants other than n, r, l or t. There are also a lot of words with double consonants (like jarru, lasso, noppa, nurkka) where syllable get split at the middle.

slaser79 2y ago

Yes interesting elephant in Japanese is almost the same word in Shona (a bantu language of Zimbabwe) nzou vs zou and sound very similar. Many words have similar structures. Many shona names could be mistaken to be Japanese.

bouncycastle 2y ago
zou is actually the onyomi (Chinese origin) reading. I guess the sound has been morphed since Japanese doesn't have tones like Chinese.

aragonite 2y ago

Then there are real coincidences, like 'Muratori', which is both an Italian name [1] (Casey Muratori) and a real (though somewhat rare) Japanese name. [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muratori https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muratori [2] https://www.google.co.jp/search?q=muratori+%E6%9D%91%E9%B3%A5 https://www.google.co.jp/search?q=muratori+%E6%9D%91%E9%B3%A...

ZoomZoomZoom 2y ago
TIL. Just assumed it's more likely a "cool" pseudonym, considering a common fascination with everything Japanese in the nerd circles, than a diverse heritage. Turns out it's neither.
gfccggc 2y ago
Quick IT lesson: Muro means wall Muratore means wall builder (-atore means doer) Muratori means wall builders (male plural )
- Binginesic 2y ago
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Unbefleckt 2y ago

What language is African

seanhunter 2y ago
"African" isn't a language. But it does mean "from Africa". So saying Japanese words sound African is a perfectly sensible thing to say. Source: am African. I too am not a language.

xelxebar 2y ago

There's also this tome, which lists thousands of cognates between latin and Japanese: https://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BA80581101 https://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BA80581101 It's trying to make the claim that these are etymological connections, which is a bit sketchy, but the phonological similarities it has meticulously catalogued are surprisingly convincing!

FoeNyx 2y ago
There are a lot of obvious cognates between Japanese and Latin through recently borrowed English or Romance words, so I was wondering what was surprising about it. But it seems the author is talking about traditional Japanese words, and looking for ties in words and idioms like ("kokoro" & "corculum"), ("koi" & "cupio"), ("ganbare" & "quam vale"), ("omedetō" & "omen datum"). Seems a bit farfetched to me, but I'm no expert.

latentsea 2y ago

Everytime I listen to Waka Waka by Shakira in the chorus I always sing さあみんな、みんなさんこれは、穴はあぁあぁ

mastersummoner 2y ago

What about European Portuguese and Russian? For some reason they have some very similar sounds, to my ear.

awesomeideas 2y ago

>His lexicostatistical analysis found that less than 30 percent of the similar-sounding words between Plateau State languages and China’s Sino-Tibetan languages share similar meanings. Linguists call these kinds of similarities "accidental evidence." Ok, but that's still a very high percentage. Shouldn't that be surprising?

euroderf 2y ago
Perhaps of interest: STEDT https://stedt.berkeley.edu https://stedt.berkeley.edu

ronyeh 2y ago

Reminds me of when a Japanese town celebrated Obama becoming president. https://youtu.be/K3qEIzYLOwA https://youtu.be/K3qEIzYLOwA https://www.reuters.com/article/us-obama-japan/japans-obama-town-parties-for-inauguration-idUSTRE50J4A120090120/ https://www.reuters.com/article/us-obama-japan/japans-obama-... (Yes I know he’s not African.) But it’s fun that his surname can be easily pronounced in Japan and Hawaii (although it would probably be Opama).

eatonphil 2y ago
This situation was referenced in the article. :)

kazinator 2y ago

JP Hash: hashes strings into an output consisting of easy-to-type/remember Japanese syllables, ensuring there is an upper case letter, symbol and digit. https://addons.mozilla.org/en/firefox/addon/jp-hash/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en/firefox/addon/jp-hash/ https://www.kylheku.com/cgit/jp-hash/about/ https://www.kylheku.com/cgit/jp-hash/about/

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jojobas 2y ago

Given how many language families there are in Africa and how wide the sound gamut is between them I bet there's a close phonetic counterpart to any language somewhere in Africa.

rurban 2y ago

I doubt that Bantu has Mongol origins. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2296962-origins-of-japanese-and-turkish-language-family-traced-back-9000-years/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2296962-origins-of-japa...

rurban 2y ago

I doubt that Bantu has Mongol origins. They only might have in common the tendency to avoid consonant clusters, by inserting vocals. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2296962-origins-of-japanese-and-turkish-language-family-traced-back-9000-years/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2296962-origins-of-japa...

untitledfolder 2y ago

There is also the Dorobo tribe which had a unique practise going back thousands of years of stealing the catch of predators such as lions. [1] Which shares the same and the same meaning and reading as the Japanese word 泥棒(どろぼう、ドロボー、どろぼー）"dorobo", meaning thief, burglar, robber. [2] I believe its more than just coincidence. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3MTDFNf71I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3MTDFNf71I [2] https://jisho.org/word/泥棒 https://jisho.org/word/泥棒, https://jisho.org/word/%E6%B3%A5%E6%A3%92 https://jisho.org/word/%E6%B3%A5%E6%A3%92

a0-prw 2y ago

I think it's because we transcribe the languages discussed into the Latin alphabet. If you hear the languages spoken, they sound nothing like each other.

MrSkelter 2y ago

Yoruba is a tonal language like Japanese. There are a lot of similarities and Japanese isn’t nearly as alien to Yoruba speakers as it is to English speakers.