# Origin of Japanese



## Chika

Where did Japanese language come from?


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## Whodunit

今日は 千賀, 

The origin of Japanese is unknown. Linguists assume it could be derived from the Altaic [日本語] or Japonic languages [日本語], but it's not proven.


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## Chika

Some maniac people are trying to find relations 
between ancient Japanese language with old hebrew.
However the Japanese language is a group of "Indo-europian family"and the hebrew is not. 
Some Japanese dilects are quite resemble to Hebrew.


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## panjabigator

Chika said:
			
		

> Some Japanese dilects are quite resemble to Hebrew.



You're going to have to explain this one a little further!!  Can you provide some examples of similarities?  And which dialects in particular?


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## MarcB

Chika,
The theories Who cited are mentioned in many writtings. Other Theories further break it down to say that Japanese, Turkic languages and Korean are the closes relatives. Turkic originated on China's western border and Korean on the eastern. IMHO The nearest relative is Korean. Grammar and structure are quite similar and both languages have several words in common even if we do not consider Chinese loan words. Scholars believe Japnese people and languge originated on the Korean peninsula. The problem with Japanese is there are no ancient records which describe proto-Japanese and unlike other close languages Japanese is not inteligible to any other language speakers.


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## Whodunit

MarcB said:
			
		

> Chika,
> The theories Who cited are mentioned in many writtings. Other Theories further break it down to say that Japanese, Turkic languages and Korean are the closes relatives. Turkic originated on China's western border and Korean on the eastern. IMHO The nearest relative is Korean. Grammar and structure are quite similar and both languages have several words in common even if we do not consider Chinese loan words. Scholars believe Japnese people and languge originated on the Korean penisula. The problem with Japanese is there are no ancient records which describe proto-Japanese and unlike other close languages Japanese is not inteligible to any other language speakers.


 
Here is a good summary of all possible theories about the origin of our today's Japanese language. The last paragraph says it all.


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## Captain Haddock

The only credible theory is that Japanese is its own isolated language family (along with the Okinawan dialects). There's no resemblance between Japanese and Hebrew.

As Wikipedia notes, Japanese could be related to some extinct languages from the Korean peninsula (but not modern Korean).

Grammatically, Japanese is very similar to Korean; however, this is mostly just because they are both agglutinative topic-comment languages.


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## Outsider

You may enjoy this discussion: How likely are chance resemblances between languages?


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## Thomas F. O'Gara

The simple fact would appear that while Japanese is very likely related to some other languages, it is really not possible to prove it conclusively, mainly because it has been isolated for so long.

The Altaic theory has the most theoretical support, but it can't be conclusively proven.  Example:  Turkish kara - Japanese kuroi  - "black."  As Outsider indicates, chance resemblances are common between languages, particularly in vocabulary, so this proves nothing _per se.  _There's little to support grammatical similarities between Japanese and Altaic languages.


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## Tonchan

My humble opinion is that Japanese language developed isolated for a long time from its mother languages (some languages developed originally in the chinese-korean lands) but its roots are still shown in its gramatical structure. Then later it suffered a big and strong revitalizing change that strikingly enriched its vocabulary when chinese writting was adopted.


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## Aoyama

Yes, a few words about japanese and hebrew. Of course, *no* relationship, whatsoever. But a rapid glance at folk etymology and other myths might be useful and ...interesting. From the time Jesuits (and others) were trying to find Jews in China, some were also trying to find traces of judaism in Japan. The japanese syllabary (katakana and hiragana) bares vague ressemblance with hebrew (ka could be seen as a kaph, -sorry can't write here ivrit and nihongo on this PC-), a coincidence of course, accentuated when old inscriptions, half erased and barely readable are found. At the end of the 19th century, someone claimed to have found some inscriptions near a well in Japan, looking like hebrew. A JOKE. From there, funny theories emerged, one has it that the word *samurai* would come from *shomer* (guardian [of the Temple]), shomer becoming *shomerei Israel* , so, somewhere one could see a (wrong) similarity between the two words, with some kind of semitic root SMR ... Another joke. Some arabic scholar also claimed that japanese comes from arabic... A japanese scholar, using the word AKA (meaning _sacred water_ in sanskrit) and also used in japanese with that sense, built a theory that this word gave the latin word AQUA (with many pages of speculations ...), defying the laws of phonetics. Aqua in latin was pronounced a-qu-a (3 elements, qu being always vocalized in latin, as we know), it gave *eau* in french, aqua, agua, apa, aigue (provençal for eau) etc. NEVER aka ...
Now, in short, *japanese *is close to *korean* (though not as close as many believe), it bares some similarities with *turkish* and other *turkic* languages (being an agglutinative language).


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## Cereth

Aoyama-san, that was pretty interesting, never thought about hebrew and japanese not even related to a joke  thanks so much for sharing it. We all learn new things everyday.


Cereth.


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## big-melon

Major words in Japanes are adopted and transformed from Chinese in about 1 thousand years before, today we can saw so many similar between both languages.

But for original, I don't know it exactly.


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## Aoyama

That is very true, as japanese is "bilingual", mixing chinese with japanese. The process is complicated (though there are rules, phonetically and etymologically, a bit long to discuss here). But japanese and chinese are two different languages, belonging , each, to a different linguistical group. Korean has also acted as a "go-between" or a bridge between the two languages.


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## Hiro Sasaki

Aoyama said:
			
		

> Yes, a few words about japanese and hebrew. Of course, *no* relationship, whatsoever. But a rapid glance at folk etymology and other myths might be useful and ...interesting. From the time Jesuits (and others) were trying to find Jews in China, some were also trying to find traces of judaism in Japan. The japanese syllabary (katakana and hiragana) bares vague ressemblance with hebrew (ka could be seen as a kaph, -sorry can't write here ivrit and nihongo on this PC-), a coincidence of course, accentuated when old inscriptions, half erased and barely readable are found. At the end of the 19th century, someone claimed to have found some inscriptions near a well in Japan, looking like hebrew. A JOKE. From there, funny theories emerged, one has it that the word *samurai* would come from *shomer* (guardian [of the Temple]), shomer becoming *shomerei Israel* , so, somewhere one could see a (wrong) similarity between the two words, with some kind of semitic root SMR ... Another joke. Some arabic scholar also claimed that japanese comes from arabic... A japanese scholar, using the word AKA (meaning _sacred water_ in sanskrit) and also used in japanese with that sense, built a theory that this word gave the latin word AQUA (with many pages of speculations ...), defying the laws of phonetics. Aqua in latin was pronounced a-qu-a (3 elements, qu being always vocalized in latin, as we know), it gave *eau* in french, aqua, agua, apa, aigue (provençal for eau) etc. NEVER aka ...
> Now, in short, *japanese *is close to *korean* (though not as close as many believe), it bares some similarities with *turkish* and other *turkic* languages (being an agglutinative language).


 
Many opinions are far-stretched. The word samurai comes from the 
old japanese verb, saburau - saburou, " I am here near you at your 
services ". The original meaning has nothing to do with guardians nor
warriors. 

Hiro Sasaki


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## Anatoli

If you watched "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" one of the Greek characters explained the origin of "kimono": from Greek "winter": χειμώνας [çimonas] (himonas). In winter you put on clothes, don't you 


Anyway, seriously one Russian person from Kirghizstan, knowing both Russian and Kirghiz (one of the Turkic languages) said in Bishkek University they taught Japanese and explained the grammar on Kirghiz examples, and it made a lot of sense to students, since grammar is very similar in Turkic languages and Japanese/Korean.

I was exposed a little to Korean and I was amazed by grammatical similarities between Japanese and Korean - particles, word order, endings, politeness levels, etc. The endings and particles are not the same but the pattern is similar and you can map them.

"I go to school":

Japanese (私は) 学校へ 行きます。 ((*watashi*-_wa_) *gakkō*-_e_ *iki*_mas_)
Korean: (저는) 學校 (학교) 에 가요. ((*jeo*-_neun_) *haggyo*-_e_ *ga*_yo_.)

(The grammatical pattern is identical for Korean and Japanese:
(optional: I-_topic marker_) school - _direction marker_ go - _polite ending_.

The same phrase in Chinese Mandarin will be quite differently structured:
我去学校。 or 我到学校去。
Wǒ qù xuéxiào. or Wǒ dào xuéxiào qù.


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## Hiro Sasaki

Korean and Japanese have the similar grammar. Both languages belong to the Ural-Altai language family together with the Turkish, Hungurian languages, manchurian.  From the sixth century, many chinese words were borrowed into Japanese but it did not affect the grammar of the language. Some Japanese words have the old Korean origins. 

The origin of the Japanese language and its relations with the Ural-altai
languages have not been confirmed clearly.

Hiro Sasaki


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## Aoyama

Samurai from saburau/saburou, showing the change from *b* to *m *, when it is normally _the opposite_ , that is *m* to* b* , like *man/ban (san man yen/ banzai, banno yaku)* *moku/boku (mokuzo/bokuto) mi/bi/be(i) *etc. Unique example in *french *: samedi, from sa*be*di (sabato, sabado, shabbat)...


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## 50yen

In case anyone is still interested in this topic, I just wanted to say that I don’t believe it is fair to dismiss the Hebrew-Japanese connection as if it were a fact that there is no connection between the two. The theory that one of the 10 lost tribes of Israel ended up in Japan, was credible enough that NOVA thought it was reasonable  to use that theory in their broadcast. What supports this theory is mainly the similarities between the languages, and between  Judaism and Shinto. There is a book called “The Biblical Hebrew Origin of the Japanese people” by  Joseph Eidelberg; this book should be an interesting read for anyone willing to give this theory a shot. 

Here are some examples of  words that have the same meaning and are similar in  pronunciation  pointed out by Eidelberg:

Measure:  Japanese= hakaru / Hebrew= haqar
Shoulder:  Japanese= kata / Hebrew= qatheph
Today:  Japanese= kyou / Hebrew= qayom
Light in weight: karui / Hebrew= qal
You:  Japanese= anata or anta / Hebrew= atah or anta
Become silent:  Japanese= damaru / Hebrew= damam


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## Frank06

Hi,


50yen said:


> In case anyone is still interested in this topic, I just wanted to say that I don’t believe it is fair to dismiss the Hebrew-Japanese connection as if it were a fact that there is no connection between the two. The theory that one of the 10 lost tribes of Israel ended up in Japan, was credible enough that NOVA thought it was reasonable  to use that theory in their broadcast. What supports this theory is mainly the similarities between the languages, and between  Judaism and Shinto. There is a book called “The Biblical Hebrew Origin of the Japanese people” by  Joseph Eidelberg; this book should be an interesting read for anyone willing to give this theory a shot.
> 
> Here are some examples of  words that have the same meaning and are similar in  pronunciation  pointed out by Eidelberg:
> 
> Measure:  Japanese= hakaru / Hebrew= haqar
> Shoulder:  Japanese= kata / Hebrew= qatheph
> Today:  Japanese= kyou / Hebrew= qayom
> Light in weight: karui / Hebrew= qal
> You:  Japanese= anata or anta / Hebrew= atah or anta
> Become silent:  Japanese= damaru / Hebrew= damam



Please, I beg you, get informed. This kind of 'explanations' don't make sense at all. One can find so-called lexical similarities between *any two languages of your choice*. One can find 'similarities' between Chinese and Dutch, Persian and English, Latin and Swahili, based upon sheer similarity of lexical items.
The bad news is: It's nonsense, complete, utter nonsense. It's silly, it's un-scientific and -- excuse me my harsh words -- infantile and immature. This kind of idiosyncratic fringe nonsense is only believed by either complete nutters or people who don't have a single clue what historical linguistics is all about.
I'm sorry for these words, but I think somebody has to say it.

Groetjes, anyway,

Frank


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## 50yen

Frank, you really should read something more than once if your going to make assumptions. I think the thesis of my post was very clear: “ I don’t believe it is fair to dismiss the Hebrew-Japanese connection as if it were a fact that there is no connection”

I never said there was a connection between Hebrew and Japanese, and I never stated that the examples I got form Eidelberg’s book proved that there was any connection. If I did do those things, I deserve your scorn. The bad news (for you) is: I did not. You are right; It could all be coincidence, all 500+ words. There’s nothing wrong with finding similarities between languages, and than ENTERTAINING the thought of there being a connection.

At least two individuals on this Thread has stated that there is no connection between Hebrew and Japanese; that is something that has not been proved or disproved. All I was saying is that you should not say something as if it were factual when you have no way of proving it. Then I entertained the possibility that there may be a connection. That’s all that happened. Taking a position on a theory is a formula for healthy debate; on the other hand, making a judgment on one, and passing it off as fact is a formula for misinformation.


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## Flaminius

Hello 50yen,

I take your 6 Japanese-Hebrew pairs being intended to weigh the balance for a connection between Hebrew and Japanese.  Otherwise, I am hard-pressed to find any motives.

Such a list can be made between any two languages if one has patience to do so.  No, the list has no evidential capacity.  In other words this cannot be used to prove anything between Japanese and Hebrew.

To rephrase your statement;
There is an inherent flaw in finding haphazard similarities between languages for the sake of ENTERTAINING the thought of there being a connection.

Flaminius


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## 50yen

Hello Flaminius, 

You’re a bit feisty for someone in your respectable position; would you like to elaborate on that inherent flaw? I know that most Japanese people do not want to hear anyone make the suggestion that there is any relationship between Japanese people and a fallen tribe of Jewish peoples, but lets keep our cool boss.

You can take my original post for what it is: a clarification that it is not a proven fact that there is no connection between Hebrew and Japanese, and introducing the fact that there is a theory out there that says there is a connection between both the language and religion.

OR

You can believe that it was some pathetic attempt to convince people that there was a connection between the two languages by putting together a poorly planed list of words that the two languages had in common; which by the way, any fool can identify that it is not sufficient evidence for making a well founded argument for anything.

Again, if anyone is interested in this theory (and again it is a THEORY,) you should pick up a copy of the book “The Biblical Hebrew Origin of the Japanese People” by Joseph Eidelberg. You may also want to check out NOVA’s “Lost Tribes of Israel” broadcast, or check it out online at NOVA's website.


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## Captain Haddock

It's not a theory, it's a wild guess, however entertaining.

A theory is something that has withstood tests (i.e. has direct evidence) and is useful for making further predictions. A few coincidental word similarities, such as those that can be found between any two languages, don't begin to make a theory.

What's the main proposition being put forward anyway? That Hebrew and Japanese share a common linguistic ancestry? Or that some Hebrews managed to make it to Japan several thousand years ago? The first is, by all evidence, untrue. The second is extremely unlikely, and would require some kind of archaeological evidence (Hebrew script in Japan, Hebrew potsherds, etc.) to qualify as a theory.


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## Aoyama

> Such a list can be made between any two languages if one has patience to do so. No, the list has no evidential capacity. In other words this cannot be used to prove anything between Japanese and Hebrew.


The above is very true.
With all due respect, trying to establish a link between Hebrew and Japanese is a _joke_ . But then, jokes are worth listening to, to the end, to tell whether they are funny (or not).
An Arabic scholar tried to "demonstrate" the same thing between Arabic and Japanese ... Another joke.
Phonetical coincidence can be found everywhere ... Some more between Hebrew and Japanese :
*Dan *(in Hebrew, root for JUDGE : Dayan,Daniel), in [sino]-japanese *handan*
*Yam* ressembling *Umi *or *Mayim* (*Mei* in compound) ressembling *mizu*
A few others . See also (humbly) my post # 11.


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## germinal

Chika said:


> Where did Japanese language come from?


 

Apart from liguistic similarities mentioned above there is some interesting DNA research which connects a large section of the Japanese people with Tibet and Korea - both these peoples having an origin in NE Asia.


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## Frank06

Hi 50yen,



50yen said:


> Frank, you really should read something more than once if your going to make assumptions. I think the thesis of my post was very clear: “ I don’t believe it is fair to dismiss the Hebrew-Japanese connection as if it were a fact that there is no connection”



First of all, my apologies if I sounded too harsh in my previous letter.
Secondly, I think I understood your thesis: you find a few lexical similarities and you conclude from that it's _possible_ that Hebrew and Japanese are in one or another way connected with each other, and that it is impossible to dismiss a connection.
This kind of reasoning might be popular, but it doesn't really impress me .



> At least two individuals on this Thread has stated that there is no connection between Hebrew and Japanese; that is something that has not been proved or disproved. All I was saying is that you should not say something as if it were factual when you have no way of proving it. Then I entertained the possibility that there may be a connection. That’s all that happened. Taking a position on a theory is a formula for healthy debate; on the other hand, making a judgment on one, and passing it off as fact is a formula for misinformation.


I am confident enough in my assertions to state that the non-existence of a relation between Hebrew and Japanese is a *fact*, a plain and simple fact. All the rest, indeed, is entertainment.
It doesn't take much to arrive at this conclusion: grasping and undertstanding the very methodological basis of historical linguistics should be sufficient.

This article has been already mentioned in this thread. I'd also like to refer to this one (about pseudoscientific language comparison).
On Ask a Linguist one can find many articles about chance resemblances and their scientific value (which is, btw, zero, nihil, nada, nikse, nothing): here, here, and here.

On the other hand, the burden of proof lies upon your shoulders. But keep in mind that 
1. it takes more than a list of (no matter how many) lexical items. 
2. you have to look at the earlier/earliest history of both Japanese and Hebrew before coming up with any conclusions.
3. you should be aware of some basic principles of historical linguistics. Basic infomation on the general principles and methodology of historical linguistics can be found here, here, and here.
4. in general it takes more time for a linguist to come up with a methodologically sound and scientific theory than the time which is needed to read one single book and write a post to a message board.

Groetjes,

Frank


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## Aoyama

> Apart from liguistic similarities mentioned above there is some interesting DNA research which connects a large section of the Japanese people with Tibet and Korea - both these peoples having an origin in NE Asia.


Probably ...
I am surprised that no one yet has mentioned the _Abraham Chromosome_,supposedly common to Japanese and Jews ...
One could also talk about the "_Chosen People_" concept, that I, personally, find in both the Jews _and_ the Japanese.
But that may be another _story ..._


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## 50yen

Hi Frank, thank you for the friendlier tone.

I think I made clear what my intentions were. You initially took my 6 (technically 7) word pairs out of the context on my post, and accused me of  trying to establish a link between Hebrew and Japanese based solely on those words.  

If I gave that impression, I apologize. That’s not what I was doing, so please stop harassing me by insisting what my intentions were. I just wanted to through a theory out there, I had no intention of making an argument that the theory was true (which I know now is reckless behavior.) If I did, I could do a lot better than a few common words; in fact, since people seem to be interested in debating this theory, I think I will. I originally became interested in this theory by the similarities that Judaism and the Shinto faith shared, it was only after that that I read about the research being done to link the languages. I will return to argue the theory after I do some research.

I like to thank the people who decided to reply in an argumentative fashion, rather than rebuke me.
I never knew about that DNA link, thanks for the info

P.S. Frank, for what its worth: I did read the entire Thread before posting my first reply, and I was fully aware of the study on the probability of chance resemblance. If I’m not mistaken, I never contested that language similarity is not sufficient evidence to prove a connection, although you cannot use that study to completely write-off the possibility.

The problem I have with you is that you made a flawed assessment of my motives, and refuse to take responsibility. No amount of intellectual jargon coming form you will change that.


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## Frank06

Hi,

A quick search on the net reveals that if we would believe all the stories and publications about the Jewish Tribes which got Lost in the course of history, the Japanese would be the 735th Lost Tribe or something. 



50yen said:


> The problem I have with you is that you made a flawed assessment of my motives, and refuse to take responsibility. No amount of intellectual jargon coming form you will change that.



50yen, you are indeed not to be expected to get influenced by 'intellectual jargon' . Or, for that matter, by any referrence to proper historical and historical-linguistic research.

Good luck with your search. 

Groetjes,

Frank


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## SpiceMan

Frank06 said:


> Please, I beg you, get informed. This kind of 'explanations' don't make sense at all. One can find so-called lexical similarities between *any two languages of your choice*. One can find 'similarities' between Chinese and Dutch, Persian and English, Latin and Swahili, based upon sheer similarity of lexical items.


Or Chinese and English... or Chinese and Quecha. There's always enough chance. 

Then again, Spanish ciempiés has two morphemes: the first meaning a hundred, the second one meaning feet. And there's 百足 ! That surely means that Iberians fleeing from the cartaginian invasion must have reached Japan.


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## 50yen

Frank06 said:


> Hi,
> 
> A quick search on the net reveals that if we would believe all the stories and publications about the Jewish Tribes which got Lost in the course of history, the Japanese would be the 735th Lost Tribe or something.
> 
> 
> 
> 50yen, you are indeed not to be expected to get influenced by 'intellectual jargon' . Or, for that matter, by any referrence to proper historical and historical-linguistic research.
> 
> Good luck with your search.
> 
> Groetjes,
> 
> Frank




First of all, I don’t think I’m smart or anything, but I don’t think it is fair to have my intelligence questioned by someone who thinks its ok to speak in any tone as long as he apologizes in advance.

Second of all, wipe that insolent parenthesis smile of your face.

And lastly, the appropriateness of your attack on my lack of “proper historical and historical-linguistic research” is heavily dependent on your false assumption that I was attempting to argue that the theory was true. if you cannot understand that, I think you are overestimating your intellect; or at least your character.


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## Frank06

Hi,


50yen said:


> First of all, I don’t think I’m smart or anything, but I don’t think it is fair to have my intelligence questioned by someone who thinks its ok to speak in any tone as long as he apologizes in advance.
> Second of all, wipe that insolent parenthesis smile of your face.
> And lastly, the appropriateness of your attack on my lack of “proper historical and historical-linguistic research” is heavily dependent on your false assumption that I was attempting to argue that the theory was true. if you cannot understand that, I think you are overestimating your intellect; or at least your character.


Could you please contribute to the topic rather express your annoyance because some people are very skeptic about your claims that a relation between Hebrew and Japanese is not to be dismissed.
So far, 80% of your mails you wrote to express your anger (in absolute numbers, that's an impressive 4 out of 5). Lots of people, including me, used their energy to point out some fairly good reasons to dismiss _any connection_ between H and J. Maybe you could use your energy to substantiate your claims, whatever they might be.

Groetjes,

Frank


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## Aoyama

An exercise in futility, for sure, but a few corrections here :


> Today: 1Japanese= kyou / Hebrew= qayom
> 2Light in weight: karui / Hebrew= qal
> 3You: Japanese= anata or anta / Hebrew= atah or anta
> 4Become silent: Japanese= damaru / Hebrew= damam


 
1 : Today in Hebrew = hayom (no q)
3 : you = atah, OK, anta is Arabic or Aramaic (colloquial), never in Hebrew
4 : damam ? That one I don't know (but eager to).


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## 50yen

Aoyama said:


> An exercise in futility, for sure, but a few corrections here :
> 
> 
> 1 : Today in Hebrew = hayom (no q)
> 3 : you = atah, OK, anta is Arabic or Aramaic (colloquial), never in Hebrew
> 4 : damam ? That one I don't know (but eager to).



Anta is found in modern Arabic, but it was used in Hebrew before the Arabic language.
Damam is also no longer used, it is damah or daham in modern Hebrew and still retains the same meaning.
I cannot verify the word qayom, but I believe it is found in old Hebrew.

P.S. 
Sorry about the immature outburst Frank.


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## Aoyama

I admire your tenacity, and somewhere your knowledge of Hebrew. It may, perhaps, not be put at best use.


> I cannot verify the word *qayom*, but I believe it is found in old Hebrew


Just some food for thought (but that borders a thread about Hebrew, not Japanese, let's avoid drifting out of topic) :
the word for day is *yom* in Hebrew (yum in Arabic), the  definite article is *ha *(hayom=the day=today). Qa, to my humble knowledge, comes from nowhere ...
_Science sans conscience n'est que ruine de l'âme._
_Science without conscience is nothing but the ruin of soul. (F. Rabelais)_


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## Flaminius

Moderator Note:

Several posts have been deleted from this thread on account of off-topic remarks.  Please note the topic of the thread while writing your posts.

So far, this thread has established that an unsystematic list of similar words does not contribute to the discussion on the origin of Japanese.  If you wish to use a word list in order to introduce, mention or support a theory of Japanese being related to another language, please be advised to assess how scientific yours is before posting.


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## 50yen

Wikipedia has a decent section on the 10 lost tribes (with includes the Japan theory.) 

I mentioned before that there were similarities between Shinto and Judaism; there is an article called "Mystery of the Ten Lost Tribes" by Arimasa Kubo that makes  this connection, and is available in English at Moshiach Online as well as other websites.
Some seem farfetched, still, some of these may not be a coincidence, who knows.

Most of us seem to have an anal fixation for that probability study, so I won’t go into the linguistic similarities too much. It does not matter how similar the languages are, we can just deny all possibilities for the sake of probability.  That said, using the process of elimination lets take out all the loanwords in Japanese, and that takes out a big chunk of the language; better yet, lets Just take out all the words/names besides the ones that have no etymological meaning and we are left with just a few thousands. Compare these words with the words that were just eliminated, and we find that a disproportionately high amount of the remaining words corresponds to Hebrew.


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## Frank06

Hi,


50yen said:


> Most of us seem to have an anal fixation for that probability study, so I won’t go into the linguistic similarities too much. It does not matter how similar the languages are, we can just deny all possibilities for the sake of probability.  That said, using the process of elimination lets take out all the loanwords in Japanese, and that takes out a big chunk of the language; better yet, lets Just take out all the words/names besides the ones that have no etymological meaning and we are left with just a few thousands. Compare these words with the words that were just eliminated, and we find that a disproportionately high amount of the remaining words corresponds to Hebrew.



As long as you didn't have a look at the history of the words you want to discuss (including a look at the Old and Middle Japanese forms, for example), every discussion about similarities and connections, or possible connections or the impossibility to dismiss connections, is futile.
Well, surely this list (in German) will help you. You just have to look at the Hebrew (or language X) and seemingly similar words in Japanese. Then follow the 36 or something criteria used by Hoffmann in the article.

Good luck with it.

Frank


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## Aoyama

> As long as you didn't have a look at the history of the words you want to discuss (including a look at the Old and Middle Japanese forms, for example), every discussion about similarities and connections, or possible connections or the impossibility to dismiss connections, is futile


That is exactly right, without any 





> anal fixation


(my god !). One simple and good (and final) example of that is the supposed similarity between *anata* and *anta*. Use of *anta* dates back 2500 years, use of *anata* 4-500 years (or I stand to be corrected).
This being said, Japanese has no gender nor plural, has both verbs be and have (absent in semitic languages). Coincidental similarities do NOT prove anything. But we would all like and work eagerly towards Judeo-Japanese friendship and mutual understanding, for sure ...


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## Frank06

Hi,

I skipped the referrences to anal fixations and other fancy stuff.


50yen said:


> That said, using the process of elimination lets take out all the loanwords in Japanese, and that takes out a big chunk of the language; better yet, lets Just take out all the words/names besides the ones that have *no etymological meaning* and we are left with just a few thousands.


Says who? Demonstrate that, please.
After being busy with comparative historical linguistics for the last 20 years, I must say that I don't understand the method described above, neither the marked phrase: what's a word which doesn't have an "etymological meaning"? But that's probably my fault.



> Compare these words with the words that were just eliminated, and we find that a disproportionately high amount of the remaining words corresponds to Hebrew.


Says who? Please demonstrate.

*Edit: *As said before, the burden of proof lies upon your shoulders. Prooving a theory is something else than merely repeating it.

Groetjes,

Frank


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## konungursvia

Japanese is most certainly NOT in the Indo-European language group. It is considered a likely candidate for membership in the Altaic group, along with Korean, Mongolian, Uighur etc.


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## konungursvia

One thing many folks seem to be overlooking is that words are not always passed down inside languages as genes are in families. Personally I have read a great deal about philology and I have concluded that words are in fact something like TECHNOLOGIES which arise and spread, often around the world. Needless to say closely related languages have many similiarities, lexical and otherwise, but there are also words that spread with technologies and concepts, and there always have been. Consdider the thought experiment: two ancient tribes, totally dissimilar in language, and one invents fire and calls it "sog". As soon as the neighboring tribe learns of it, they will adopt the word "sog" for it as well, and the languages thereby appear a little iota closer, whereas in reality they are just as distant as ever. Therefore, morphological, phonetical and cultural characteristics are far more reliable than lexical ones for assessing languages' closeness. For example, in nearly all Indo-European languages, the oldest words for "five" and "fist" or "hand" or "punch" are very similar. This, along with other characterstics, can illuminate such questions better than "anata" sounding like "anta".


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## Aoyama

> Japanese is most certainly NOT in the Indo-European language group. It is considered a likely candidate for membership in the Altaic group, along with Korean, Mongolian, Uighur etc.


Right. And Japanese has certainly NOTHING to do with the semitic languages group either. In fact, even the relationship between Japanese and Korean (Mongolian and Uighur not included, some linguists, abandoning the old Uralo-Altaic reference, speak about a turkic-mongolian group, in which Japanese is remotedly -and arguably- included) is debatable. If it is true that Japanese and Korean bear many similarities (same word order, some words very close) many linguists believe that they do not belong to the same group of languages. Japanese being unique.


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## konungursvia

Well, this is not a popular fact among Japanese people, but they are not unique. A US blood group and genetic study over the last few years found the Japanese are 100% Korean. I read it in the NY Times or another respected American newspaper.


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## Aoyama

By Japanese, I meant the language ... 
 Being unique meaning that the way the language is built, the way it combines Chinese and native Japanese is also unique. Korean is also unique in its kind, its alphabet (writing system -hangul) completely different from that of Japanese but still inspired by Chinese calligraphical strokes.


> A US blood group and genetic study over the last few years found the Japanese are 100% Korean.


Or would the Koreans be 100% Japanese ... Considering the fact that there are 128 millions Japanese and 65 millions Koreans ...


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## konungursvia

Aoyama said:


> By Japanese, I meant the language ...
> Being unique meaning that the way the language is built, the way it combines Chinese and native Japanese is also unique. Korean is also unique in its kind, its alphabet (writing system -hangul) completely different from that of Japanese but still inspired by Chinese calligraphical strokes.
> 
> Or would the Koreans be 100% Japanese ... Considering the fact that there are 128 millions Japanese and 65 millions Koreans ...



 An academic distinction, but Yamato was populated by Ainu and other Caucasians until 2000 years ago, whereas Korea has been populated by Koreans for at least the last 5000 years. Not to say I don't prefer Japanese food and architecture, interior design, clothing, poetry, etc.


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## konungursvia

My meaning was not about race per se but of place of origin: If the Japanese migrated from South Korea 1500 to 2000 years ago, then we must look for similarities in morphology that might indicate they are in the same language group. This one, hopefully, will not be deleted by the over-zealous.


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## Captain Haddock

It seems very unlikely there is any relationship between Korean and Japanese. The grammars seem similar to a speaker of Indo-European languages, but the fact is Korean and Japanese just both happen to be agglutinating SOV languages. It's natural that these sorts of languages, which can be found all over the world, have many features that are similar.

As far as I can tell, no one's demonstrated any systematic derivation of non-Chinese vocabulary from a common proto-language, or presented any other proof of common heritage. Ethnic similarities or not, Japanese appears to be an isolate (if you count Okinawan as Japanese). 

I do find it interesting the theory that Japanese is be related to an older, now-extinct language once spoken in Korea.


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## Flaminius

konungursvia said:


> Yamato was populated by Ainu and other Caucasians until 2000 years ago (...)


Ainu is not a Caucasian stock.  I have found a concise explanation in a Wiki article.
Yamato is the name of the federation of largely Yayoi tribes that rose to power during the 4-5th centuries in Central Japan.  A more appropriate term for the geographic area that comprises the territory of modern Japan is Japan Isles.

In the article referred to above, you will also see the myth of Japanese ethnic homogeneity collapse; "[a]fter a new wave of immigration, probably from the Korean Peninsula, some 2,300 years ago, of the Yayoi people, the "pure-blooded" Jomonese were pushed into northern Japan. Genetic data suggests that modern Japanese are descended from both the Yayoi and the Jomonese."  Neither the Japanese people nor the language has one single "place of origin."


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## ayante

Chika said:


> Some maniac people are trying to find relations
> between ancient Japanese language with old hebrew.
> However the Japanese language is a group of "Indo-europian family"and the hebrew is not.
> Some Japanese dilects are quite resemble to Hebrew.



Japanese from Indo-European? That's wrong. Neither Hebrew nor Japanese has been proven to be related in any way to Indo-European languages such as Latin, Celtic or Sanskrit. Japanese is said by some scholars to be related to the Altaic family which would include Korean, Turkish, etc. but the existence of the Altaic family itself is a matter of debate. Anyway, relations between Korean and Japanese are probably not genetic (no that they share a same origin or one comes from the other). Just that Korean peoples and Japanese peoples have had cultural interchange. However, there are some word roots that seem to be common between Goguryeo (an extinguished language spoken in the northern region of Korea centuries ago) and other languages including Japanese.

Isolation has done a good job making Japanese nearlly impossible to trace back.


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## 50yen

Hi Frank,
I let you have the last word and stopped visiting this site, but you left an additional post which I didn’t get. I know it’s outdated buy let me answer your questions anyway.
The words in question do not have any KNOWN etymological meaning in Japanese, and therefore are assumed to be the oldest. These correspond to old Hebrew at a higher rate. This is according to NOVA.
Now I don’t know how credible NOVA’s sources are, perhaps they are not. They probably got it from one of several independent researchers looking into this, and I assume they are keeping the time periods in mind, but due to lack of records, they would have to do a lot of guessing. Also, two unrelated languages can have a similar sound palette, which would lead to high frequencies of false cognates, and this may be the case with Japanese and Hebrew, because old Japanese sound more similar to Hebrew than Chinese that influenced later vocabulary. However, the correlation may be more than coincidence and I hope they keep looking into it.
“As said before, the burden of proof lies upon your shoulders. Prooving a theory is something else than merely repeating it.”
What burden? Do I look like an Anthropologist to you? Ok let me get my research team to look into the language similarities, and I’ll even conduct field work to substantiate the religious similarities because I just haaave to prove this….. Your rebuke against me relies on the false notion that I was trying to prove something. As I said many times before, I’m not trying to prove anything, I just think it’s possible: I don’t even think it is that likely, just that it’s possible. Where do you get the notion that people need to prove things to you just for suggesting there may be a small possibility of something?

Just in case there is any confusion, I don't think Japanese came from Hebrew, and I never said that. That I would agree is impossible. I just think it's possible that elements of Hebrew language and culture diffused into the region.


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## Aoyama

An old thread that pops up to life again ...


> I just think it's possible that elements of Hebrew language and culture diffused into the region.


NO ! One must be adamantly clear about assertions like this. Flaminius and Frank, as well as myself and others have said it, no proof, no grounds .


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## 50yen

Aoyama said:


> An old thread that pops up to life again ...
> 
> NO ! One must be adamantly clear about assertions like this. Flaminius and Frank, as well as myself and others have said it, no proof, no grounds .


So let me get this straight: people need to keep their mouth shut about what they think is possible unless they can prove it. By what authority? Last I checked this was a "forum," not peer review. And by the way, isn't that a logical fallacy? If I had proof, it wouldn't be a possibility anymore. There is proof that Hebrews used the Silk Road so why can't I assert that it's possible, although unlikely, they made it all the way to Japan.

How about this situation: there is no evidence whatsoever that people crossed the Baring Strait earlier than 30,000 BP but scientists still say it is possible. Should they shut up too?


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## Ajura

konungursvia said:


> Japanese is most certainly NOT in the Indo-European language group. It is considered a likely candidate for membership in the Altaic group, along with Korean, Mongolian, Uighur etc.


japanese is a language isolate for now


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## Aoyama

> There is proof that Hebrews used the Silk Road


"Hebrews" did not use the Silk Road. Jews did, in the 7-8th century AD, coming from Irak and Persia. Check "Kaifeng Jews" etc.


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## 50yen

Aoyama said:


> "Hebrews" did not use the Silk Road. Jews did, in the 7-8th century AD, coming from Irak and Persia. Check "Kaifeng Jews" etc.


Is that so. I thought "Jew" referred tho the followers of Judaism, and that Hebrew referred to the language and culture. But if you want to nitpick at terms I think it would be better to Just call them Semites. I also wouldn't dismiss earlier migrations.


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## Rallino

Oh this thread is pretty old. I saw that some guy wrote a sentence both in Japanese and Korean and showed the similarity. Well I remember that a turkish linguist did the same thing with Turkish:

*JP: Kusuri-ya-kara kusuri-o kaimashta.* 
*TR:* *Ecza-ne-den ecza-yi almishti.*
(He bought the medicine from the pharmacy)

And one can make many sentences that are remarkably similar. Honestly, after reading this sentence, I kind of admit, I believe that Turkic and Japanese languages are in the same family.

On the other hand I am not a linguist, nor did I make a thorough research about the topic so, as far as my opinions are concerned, I'm just a guy on the street


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## Aoyama

> *JP: Kusuri-ya-kara kusuri-o kaimashita*.*
> *TR:* *Ecza-ne-den ecza-yi almishti.*
> (He bought the medicine from the pharmacy)


Yes, there are undeniably striking syntactical resemblances between Turkish/Turkic (languages) and Japanese. There are also lexical resemblances (*koi *= carp /fish, *arare* = hail ?, a word meaning "sadness" in Turkish close to a Japanese word etc).

* the word is pronounced "kaimashta" but should be written "kaimashita" (bought).


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## Hiro Sasaki

Aoyama said:


> Yes, there are undeniably striking syntactical resemblances between Turkish/Turkic (languages) and Japanese. There are also lexical resemblances (*koi *= carp /fish, *arare* = hail ?, a word meaning "sadness" in Turkish close to a Japanese word etc).
> 
> * the word is pronounced "kaimashta" but should be written "kaimashita" (bought).


 
There are many farstretched and absurd opinions.

*JP: Kusuri-ya-kara kusuri-o kaimashita*.* This is a very modern 
expression. In the recent centuries, there was no significant flow of 
the turkish people to Japan, the language comes with the people, 
religions and cultures.
*TR:* *Ecza-ne-den ecza-yi almishti.*  We can not understand anything
of this expression. It took more than one thousand years for buddhism 
to reach Japan from India through China. Some philosophycal buddism-
related words reached Japan but they were not introduced into the 
Japanese language properly said. Only buddhist priests can understand 
the meanings. Even the chinese priest Genjō could not translate some 
Indian words into the chinese. If the meanings can not be understandable, 
how the foreign words can be borrowed ? 

Hiro Sasaki


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## Rallino

Hiro Sasaki said:


> There are many farstretched and absurd opinions.
> 
> *JP: Kusuri-ya-kara kusuri-o kaimashita*.* This is a very modern
> expression. In the recent centuries, there was no significant flow of
> the turkish people to Japan, the language comes with the people,
> religions and cultures.
> *TR:* *Ecza-ne-den ecza-yi almishti.*  We can not understand anything
> of this expression. It took more than one thousand years for buddhism
> to reach Japan from India through China. Some philosophycal buddism-
> related words reached Japan but they were not introduced into the
> Japanese language properly said. Only buddhist priests can understand
> the meanings. Even the chinese priest Genjō could not translate some
> Indian words into the chinese. If the meanings can not be understandable,
> how the foreign words can be borrowed ?
> 
> Hiro Sasaki



It's not example of "common words", but an example of showing the syntax and suffixes. 
Of course, the words are different, but the overall formula of the sentences in each language are pretty close to each other, don't you agree?

the suffix for "shop", the object marker etc.

And the similarity in past tense marker: *mashita* vs *mishti*

I think they're quite remarkable.


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## Aoyama

> There are many farstretched and absurd opinions.


That is true.
What is argued here is the _order of words (syntax)_ which is the same in this example, between Turkish and Japanese. It could also probably apply to Korean as well.
The words are obviously different (we are not talking about _lexical_ _similarities _), how could they not be, if you think of the distance between Turkey and Japan.


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## Flaminius

Hi, *50yen*.

You should really read _How likely are chance resemblances between languages?_ linked by *Outsider* already in the eighth post of this thread for its lucid explanation on how chance resemblances are common between any language pairs; this is the point that some of us have been trying to deliver without much success.

If chance resemblances are common between any language pairs, it follows that any pair, take Japanese-Tagalog for instance, can produce a list of "related" words on a par with, or even larger than, the one for Japanese-Hebrew. I might add that, with a minimal amount of imagination, one can extract Tagalog words that correspond to the same Japanese words in a Japanese-Hebrew list.



50yen said:


> As I said many times before, I’m not trying to prove anything, I just think it’s possible: I don’t even think it is that likely, just that it’s possible.



You say that you are merely pointing a possible connection (loans included), but I don't think we should start discussing such weak theories.  Why?  Because, then, we would end up looking at a very long table of words alluding to a "possible" Japanese-Tagalog-Hebrew-Aymaran-Swahili-Thai-Chinese-Greek-Hopi-Etruscan-Basque-Nahuatl connection.  Even if we limit ourselves to Japanese connections with single languages, we would have at least 100 languages whose cultures have similarities with the Japanese culture.  [It might not be too absurd to assume that about 80 of them should be considered before Hebrew.]



50yen said:


> The words in question do not have any KNOWN etymological meaning in Japanese, and therefore are assumed to be the oldest. These correspond to old Hebrew at a higher rate. This is according to NOVA.
> Now I don’t know how credible NOVA’s sources are, perhaps they are not. They probably got it from one of several independent researchers looking into this, and I assume they are keeping the time periods in mind, but due to lack of records, they would have to do a lot of guessing.


NOVA or their sources think the following word pairs are worthy of serious consideration: _Kor_: cold in Hebrew.
_Koru_:  to freeze in Japanese.

_Knesset_: Parliament in Hebrew.
_Kensei_:  Constitutional government in Japanese.​For the sake of merely demonstrating the absurdity of their "research", let me tell you that the former pair does not compare oldest attested forms.  The Japanese word comes from the older _kohoru_, which is believed to have derived from *_koporu_.  Are we going to discuss the similarity between Kor and Koporu?

For the latter, I have only a few words:
As if parliaments and constitutions existed for centuries...!



> As I said many times before, I’m not trying to prove anything, I just think it’s possible: I don’t even think it is that likely, just that it’s possible. Where do you get the notion that people need to prove things to you just for suggesting there may be a small possibility of something?
> 
> Just in case there is any confusion, I don't think Japanese came from Hebrew, and I never said that. That I would agree is impossible. I just think it's possible that elements of Hebrew language and culture diffused into the region.


Would it be too impudent if I ask why you think it's possible despite the many overwhelmingly unfavourable reasons?  If I am to understand the word _possible_ in the widest sense possible, okay, I have nothing to dispute your claims.  Then, why should I consider this Hebrew theory before other similarly possible theories that find Mongolian, Korean, Turkic, Austronesian, Manchurian, Persian influences in Japanese?

Experts or laity, we can use reason to distinguish informed hypotheses from fairy tales.  That it is impossible to falsify the latter does not make them any more credible.


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## Aoyama

> we would end up looking at a very long table of words alluding to a "possible" Japanese-Tagalog-Hebrew-Aymaran-Swahili-Thai-Chinese-Greek-Hopi-Etruscan-Basque-Nahuatl connection


mamma mia ! I did forget some things here ...
And then there may be Tamil also (sushi is supposed to come from Tamil ...).


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## 50yen

Hi Flaminius,

As I already stated before, I'm aware of the chance resemblance argument (I've also taken statistics,) and it is a strong argument against a Hebrew-Japanese connection. However there will always be a Beta value in this case, so there will always be a possibility. If there weren't significant religious similarities I would be more willing to dismiss it all together. I admit such cultural similarities may be coincidence as well, but I don't think it is such an absurd idea.

I agree that considering its unlikelihood, I don't think it should take any priority over those many other possibilities. I have no agenda or any reason to push this particular one, and it would be more fruitful to discuss more plausible ones here instead. The reason I originally posted was because someone, or a few people, insisted it was impossible, and I guess that struck a nerve. I don't like it when people close doors.


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## Aoyama

But then, what are the 





> significant religious similarities


 you are thinking about ?


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## 50yen

Aoyama said:


> But then, what are the  you are thinking about ?


I didn't start posting again to debate this. Like I said before, I have no agenda, and most certainly no religious one: I'm agnostic. But since you asked....

I'm guessing you already googled the similarities or something. The people proposing the connections most certainly do have an agenda, and many of them seem quite far-fetched. They are most likely all coincidence. The most striking one for me, however, is the token and phylactery.

It would be better for me if it is all coincidence, because otherwise it would be more fuel for the religious fanatics, even though it only proves that Jews got around a lot.

I know your looking to be entertained, but I'm kinda busy, so I would rather not get pulled into another discussion. Just a suggestion but shouldn't you be sending your complaints to NOVA instead of picking on little old me. They have a reputation to uphold don't they? Imagine all the misinformed people. You have credentials you can use don't you? I know Frank has a lot.


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## indigoduck

Aoyama said:


> The japanese syllabary (katakana and hiragana) bares vague ressemblance with hebrew (ka could be seen as a kaph, -sorry can't write here ivrit and nihongo on this PC-), a coincidence of course, accentuated when old inscriptions, half erased and barely readable are found.


 
The syllabary (Hiragana/Katakana) originated from Chinese characters (a type of cursive form or caligraphy art style - if you've ever seen someone writing Kanji cursively similar to the signing of names in english ... you'll see how it can become Kana)

Hiragana. (katakana below)

"Hiragana syllables developed from Chinese characters, as shown here . Hiragana were originally called _onnade_ or 'women's hand' as were used mainly by women - men wrote in kanji and katakana. By the 10th century, hiragana were used by everybody. The word hiragana means "oridinary syllabic script". 

Read more here 

Katakana.

The katakana syllabary was derived from abbreviated Chinese characters (see here) used by Buddhist to indicate the correct pronunciations of Chinese texts in the 9th century. At first there were many different symbols to represent one syllable of spoken Japanese, but over the years the system was streamlined. By the 14th century, there was a more or less one-to-one correspondence between spoken and written syllables. 

Read more here


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## indigoduck

Chika said:


> Where did Japanese language come from?


 
This is a complicated question, but it came from what the Japanese are famous for... "innovation" throughout the times

Step 1 - Pre-Chinese influence

What happened prior to chinese influence and the origin of KUN-YOMI of chinese characters ... read the other posts as the society on the japanese archipalego did not have a writing system to document their origins.

What happened between Step 1 and Step 2 - Why the chinese influence ?

Let me add my own bias since i'm chinese. This is pure legend in both China and in Japan. But honestly, it makes the most sense !

The japanese archipelago was probably dominated by a native tribe similar to the aboriginals throughout Asia who spoke the roots of the Japanese language. Why Japanese looks alike to Chinese in more ways than to the aboriginal tribes ? And why the advancement of civilization all so sudden from that point further ?

In general, i believe it is as follows (i believe these were the ancestors of japanese responsible for today's innovation in japan, followed by mixed genetics with the aboriginals living on the japanese archipelago at the time)

Japanese says the following, read more here (.jp site)
"Jofuku arrived in Japan, after receiving an order from the Emperor of the Chinese Qin Dynasty (221-206 AD) to discover the "medicine of youth". Many stories about Jofuku remain as the "Legend of Jofuku". A number of them involve regions around Saga City and Morodomi Town. "

Chinese says the following, read more here
"Jofuku, pronounced Xifu in Chinese, came to Japan during the Jomon Era in the 3rd century B.C. It is said that he landed near Shingu and brought with him much Chinese culture and technology.

Jofuku was at the time serving as a Taoist shaman to the Emperor Shikoutei of the Xin Dynasty in China about 2200 years ago. He was ordered by the emperor to set out in order to 'find the elixir of eternal life which is said to be on the mountain of Horai on the sea to the east'. He eventually arrived in Kumano and with him he brought about 3000 people, men, women, and children. Unfortunately for the emperor he never returned to China. The picture here shows the time of their landing. Jofuku is in the middle of the front row and behind him you can see a lot of the children who came with him. "

Step 2 - Chinese influence

Before the 4th century AD, the Japanese had no writing system of their own. During the 4th century they began to import and adapt the Chinese script, along with many other aspects of Chinese culture, probably via Korea. 

At first the Japanese wrote in Classical Chinese or in a Japanese-Chinese hybrid style. An example of the hybrid style is the _kojiki_ (Records of Antiquity) written in 712 AD. They then started to use Chinese characters to write Japanese in a style known as _man'yōgana_, literarly "Ten Thousand leaf syllabic script", which used the characters for their phonetic values. 

Over time a writing system emerged in which Chinese characters were used to write either words borrowed from Chinese or Japanese words with the same or similar meanings. Chinese characters were also used for their phonetic values to write grammatical elements and these characters were simplified and eventually became two syllabic scripts, hiragana and katakana. 

The following applies to the On-Yomi of chinese characters.
"Japanese is not related to Chinese, though it does contain a huge number of Chinese 'loan' words, in fact perhaps 50% of the words used in Japanese are of Chinese origin. The japanese also did coin-up many words of their own when japanese opened up to the west to science and technology while china remained a closed society. Today, a lot of those words were re-imported into the chinese language. Ie: Chikatetsu (instead of Underground Train)"

The ON-YOMI reading for chinese characters was taken directly from the chinese dialect that was prominent at the time. The chinese dialect that preserves the most (not 100%) of the characteristic of ancient chinese at that time is Hakka dialect. For example: the chinese characters for NI PON is pronounced NI PON in the Hakka dialect.

Step 3: Portuguese influence

"There are also a few words from Portuguese, Dutch and Spanish, such as _pan_ (bread), from the Portuguese _pão_. Such words arrived in Japan mainly during the 16th and 17th centuries, when missionaries and merchants started to visit the country."

Step 4: English Influence A

"Since the mid 18th century the Japanese have adopted a huge amount of _gairaigo_: foreign words mainly from English. These include _tēburu_ (table), _bīru_ (beer), _gurasu_ (glass), _aisu_ (ice), _takushī_ (taxi) and _hoteru_ (hotel)."

Step 5: English influence B

One notable feature of Japanese is the tendency to create new words by shortening and/or combining English words. Examples include _wāpuro_ (word processor), _sarariman_ ("salary man" = a male corporate employee), _OL_, pronounced _ōeru_ ("office lady" = a female corporate employee) and _masukomi_ (mass communications).


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## Aoyama

> The syllabary (Hiragana/Katakana) originated from Chinese characters (a type of cursive form or ca*l*ligraphy art style (...)


absolutely.
I am not the one trying to prove any valid resemblance between Hebrew script and kanas. I just wrote that a vague resemblance (due to coincidence _only_) can be seen between some Hebrew letters and some kanas. But, of course, by no mean would that _prove_ any valid link between the two languages.
The _roots_ (Chinese for Japanese, Phoenician for Hebrew) being a world apart ...


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## bamboobanga

i heard that excluding chinese influence, japanese language is a mixture of altaic and austronesian languages. how true is that?


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## Aoyama

There are some altaic elements in Japanese. As for Austronesian languages, I don't know. Some people find some links as far as Sri-Lanka (for the word sushi, for example), but all these are speculations ...


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## almostfreebird

Aoyama said:


> There are some altaic elements in Japanese. As for Austronesian languages, I don't know. Some people find some links as far as Sri-Lanka (for the word sushi, for example), but all these are speculations ...


What does "sushi" mean in Sri-Lanka language? I'm very curious.

Thanks in advance.


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## Aoyama

I'm not sure it's the word "sushi" itself (ateji, which can be written with one or two kanjis). More like the actual dish :
We can trace sushi's origin back to the 4th century BC in Southeast Asia. As a preserved food, the salted fish, fermented with rice, was an important source of protein. The cleaned and gutted fish were kept in rice so that the natural fermentation of the rice helped preserve the fish. This type of sushi is called nare-zushi, and was taken out of storage after a couple of months of fermentation, and then only the fish was consumed while the rice was discarded. 
(History of Sushi, see Google).
This dish still exists in Sri-Lanka (fermented fish preserved in rice), I have eaten it.


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## divisortheory

indigoduck said:


> Step 3: Portuguese influence
> 
> "There are also a few words from Portuguese, Dutch and Spanish, such as _pan_ (bread), from the Portuguese _pão_. Such words arrived in Japan mainly during the 16th and 17th centuries, when missionaries and merchants started to visit the country."



This is interesting.  I knew about the Portuguese missionaries, and always wondered if perhaps the word "arigatou" came from "abgirado".  But I never thought there might actually be a formal connection.  If there are lots of other similar words though, then maybe there's something to it.


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## Aoyama

The word is obrigado (obliged). Sounds a little like arigato but that is only a coincidence. 
But there are other words, where Portuguese influence is more obvious and proven :
tempura, konpeito (from confeito, French "confit", akin to "confectionary", sweets coated [confire] with sugar) etc.
Food for thought here (and elsewhere) : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_words_of_Portuguese_origin


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## gimochu

There is also a theory that Japanese was manufactured from the Korean language. It holds that that Yasumaro, the author of the Kojiki and the Nihongi, indicates how the Japanese vocabulary was created, using Korean as the starting point. The author points out that Japanese does not have its own counting numbers past 1 to 10, and that many basic words are missing from Japanese.  Notably, many of the how-to-say notations from the Kojiki and Nihongi were deleted on their translation into Japanese. I tried to a link to his book, but as I'm a new member, it won't allow me to do so. Try entering the following search terms in Google and you should get to the link for his book:  origin japanese language e-pyo chung   Alternatively just go to epchung dot com
Before dismissing this, just take a look and try to argue with it. I think that it makes sense.


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