Comments on: Similarities between Japanese, Vietnamese, Chinese, and Korean

By: admin

admin — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 14:39:07 +0000

It’s natural to find loan words in neighboring countries, but we know from history why and when many Chinese words came into Japanese, Vietnamese, and Korean. And we know that it doesn’t mean the languages are related.

Vietnamese has likely borrowed some grammar from Chinese, such as word order for some words, and when counting nouns. Vietnamese also possibly became tonal because of Chinese. Other languages related to Vietnamese, like Khmer, aren’t tonal. However, Khmer spoken in Phnom Penh may be gaining some tones similar to Vietnamese.

By: jun

jun — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 09:20:17 +0000

This is really interesting article.
But if it had dealt with the grammatic similarities, it would be better.
If you could not find any similar words between the adjacent contries, it should be strutinized by the famous lingustic professors. Cuz it is so natural that you can find many similar words from your neighbor countries.
But grammars should be different by the reality which where their ancestor came from..

By: tom

tom — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 10:23:41 +0000

I think those differentiating words for blue and green are newer.

On a related note i find that Chinese people seem to interchange/mix-up dark green and brown

By: admin

admin — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 09:49:36 +0000

That is true, midori is a kind of green, but ‘ao’ can mean either, in the spectrum of green to blue.

By: Alexander

Alexander — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 01:00:13 +0000

There are separate words for “green” and “blue” in Japanese: “midori” and “ao”, respectively.

By: Junjie

Junjie — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 08:57:51 +0000

I’m also quite confused about qing meaning blue and green at the same time, but what about lan and lü? Are these two new words? Or is qing more something like “color of natural things”?