Some of you may be familiar with the Japanese system of Kanbun Kundoku...

Yes, but the writing in question is representing a language. If they can take a document written in Classical Chinese, and read it out loud in Japanese, a genetically completely unrelated language, then surely we can do the same for equally-unrelated English.

The writing is not the language itself. The script comes from Chinese, yes, but it's being used to represent a language that, linguistically speaking, is in a completely different family. What you're doing is basically the same as insisting that Indonesian is related to Latin because it uses the Roman alphabet.

Literally why?

Mandarin has evolved around the Hanzi system and vice versa. They work well together. I mean yeah, you can use Hanzi for English, but it's like using the Latin alphabet for Mandarin. It just doesn't work as well.

Related
zompist.com/yingzi/yingzi.htm

Kanji is how you fucking write Japanese, which is based on Chinese. Nowhere have I said Kanji is how you speak Japanese.

What is wrong with you all? When you have finally been proven wrong you all take the easy route
>well writing isn't all there is to language
>even though this discussion revovles entirley what it means to write the language

>Indonesian is related to Latin because it uses the Roman alphabet.
How is this even remotely wrong?

>a genetically completely unrelated language
Holy shit, this is factually wrong. As I have said many god dam times.They have always, always been heavily related. If the writing has always been based on Chinese it's really not that big of a logical jump to assume their speaking followed suit.

Think of it like this. Yes maybe at one stage they had their own indepent way of speaking. This changed as soon as Chinese started showing up on their island though and they almost instantly adopted their way of speaking/writing.

Also I am actually now confused as to what you are asking, you realise it has been done? What is pinyin? Maybe not for English, but English does it for almost every other language.

There have actually been whole publications written in pinyin, although it's a fairly rare thing. There has never been anything published in English in Chinese characters.
Linguistically speaking, although Japanese has borrowed many words and idioms from Chinese, they are in fact in different language families; Chinese is Sino-Tibetan, Japanese is an isolate that some tentatively classify as Altaic. And in regards to Indonesian, it's wrong for the same reason: Latin is in the Indo-European family. Indonesian is in the Austronesian family.

>different language families
These familes are based off of Proto-Languages which even linguists cannot verify or agree upon.

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-language#Accuracy

>Chinese/Korean/Japanese are essentially the same languages
>being this wrong

Come on, fampai.

>thinking this is anything but shitposting
Feel free to prove me wrong, without the usage of unverifiable 'proto-languages'.

There is a reason why japs developped kana. Hanzi is good for chinese but as others have said in this thread, japanese is a very different language. Its like greeks adopting the phoenician script and modifying it because greek is an IE language and phoenician was semitic.

The exact form of, for example, Proto-Germanic is a little hard to be sure about, but compare, for example:
English: house German: Haus Dutch: huis
English: good German: gut Dutch: goed
English: man German: Mann Dutch: man
English: make German: machen Dutch: maken
and is there any doubt that the Germanic languages have some sort of relation? And even across the Romance and Slavic languages, you can see ties, like "eyns, dwa trey", "unus, duo, tres", "odin, dva, tri", etc. Looking, though, at the earliest written records of Japanese, it's "pitotu, putatu, mitu", as compared to contemporary Chinese "it, nzi, sam".

>Looking, though, at the earliest written records of Japanese, it's "pitotu, putatu, mitu", as compared to contemporary Chinese "it, nzi, sam".

>comparing an archaic language to a contemporary one

Literally, what?

Completly disregarding the fact that all this cannot be exactly verififed.

Kay'.

We can be pretty clear that the earliest records of Japanese show a language completely dissimilar to Chinese, though, and we can be pretty clear that the core of Japanese vocabulary and grammar are descended from that early Japanese.

>and we can be pretty clear that the core of Japanese vocabulary and grammar are descended from that early Japanese.

That's litertally wrong though. Kanji means "han" from the system of hànzì which it is based on. Kanji is not some new form of Japanese writing. If you want to write ANYTHING semi-professional in Japan, it has to be done in Kanji.

I mean I touched on this already.

>Think of it like this. Yes maybe at one stage they had their own indepent way of speaking. This changed as soon as Chinese started showing up on their island though and they almost instantly adopted their way of speaking/writing.

>If you want to write ANYTHING semi-professional in Japan, it has to be done in Kanji.

And kana for the grammatical words. Kanji for concrete words and roots and shit. Sharing a common writing system doesnt mean anything because speaking and writing are very different things.

And plenty of the words written in kanji are words that already existed before they used kanji and are just written in kanji now. If I take the Gettysburg Address and transcribe it in Chinese characters (with some sort of phonetic symbols for the grammatical morphemes), it doesn't make it any less written in an Indo-European language.

You can speculate all you want. It's an actual fact though that both the writing and speaking systems are based on chinese, at least the modern system we know today.

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Japanese

You cannot refute that, it's literally fact. I mean they literally compare the phonology to Chinese.

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Japanese#Phonology

You tried to generalize all languages, it doesn't work like that.

>EOPs arguing

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Japanese#Phonology
This even points to what I was saying earlier that Chinese/Korean and Japanese have the same roots, although unverified.

wew lad Japonic and Koreanic languages have separate origins so how can they both come from Sinitic?

>It's an actual fact though that both the writing and speaking systems are based on chinese, at least the modern system we know today.

The writing system IS based in the chinese script, nobody is doubting that.

>speaking system

Nigga what. Whats so fucking hard to understand about chinese and japanese being from different language families. Writing is not the language its just the representation. Japanese does have a lot of vocabulary coming from chinese because they were heavily influenced by them but that doesnt mean japanese is based on chinese. The structure of both languages is different and no amount of vocabulary is going to change that. Its like saying english is based on french because of the huge amount of loanwords from french.

>I mean they literally compare the phonology to Chinese.

Doesnt mean anything. Spanish and japanese have similar sounds yet they are not related at all.

They figure it out by comparing it to Chinese because in those days Japanese was written mostly in Man'yogana, which is Chinese characters used just for their sound.

>wew lad Japonic and Koreanic languages have separate origins so how can they both come from Sinitic?
wew lad you are using a compeleltely unverified and shut down idea.

Language families are based on proto-languages which we know almost nothing about.

How can you use such certaintiy when the knowledge you are using to uphold your certainty is uncertain?

Wew lad. You could have also read the wiki and aquired the knowledge yourself.
>Some scholars have suggested that there might be a link between Old Japanese and some of the extinct languages of the Korean peninsula, including the Gaya language, but the relation of Japanese to any language other than Ryūkyūan remains undemonstrated.

It's not MY idea. Just the things I am saying are being proven to be historically accurate.

>wanting to argue literally the same thing voer and over and over again.
For what reason?
Let's just agree to disagree :^). ALl you are literally saying is writing is not all there is to the language when I am saying their writing is based off of chinese so it's not illigocal to assume that even if at one point they had an original form of speech it is not the case anymore.

>Some scholars have suggested that there might be a link between Old Japanese and some of the extinct languages of the Korean peninsula
That doesn't sound like "proven" to me, that sounds like, "oh, some people think it might be that way."

>That doesn't sound like "proven"
Well are being proven =/= proven if you want to argue semantics.

>"oh, some people think it might be that way."
>implying you are not doing the exact same thing
xD

To add to this.

>Scholarly discussions about the origin of Japonic languages present an unresolved set of related issues.[5] The clearest connections seem to be with toponyms in southern Korea, which may be in Gaya (Kara) or other scarcely attested languages.

Again, as I have said over and over you cunts are using certaintiy to argue uncertaintiy.

Fuck off.

>wew lad you are using a compeleltely unverified and shut down idea.
No,you're just pulling shit out of your ass and expecting people to lap it up.

Excluding the meme "Altaic" theory no linguist worth their salt classifies Koreanic with Japonic let alone includes them in Sino-Tibetan.

>Wew lad. You could have also read the wiki and aquired the knowledge yourself.
Spoken like a true wiki scholar.

>Some scholars have suggested that there might be a link between Old Japanese and some of the extinct languages of the Korean peninsula, including the Gaya language, but the relation of Japanese to any language other than Ryūkyūan remains undemonstrated.
If you read the papers linguists suggest Japonic was gradually displaced by Koreanic not Koreanic and Japonic come from the same source.

Vovin is the only one that claims Japonic interacted with Tai Kadai.

>I am saying their writing is based off of chinese so it's not illigocal to assume that even if at one point they had an original form of speech it is not the case anymore.

Ok so their speech is not original anymore because they adopted a foreign writing system.

What?

>No,you're just pulling shit out of your ass and expecting people to lap it up.
Wrong.

>Spoken like a true wiki scholar.
Still refuting literally everything in this thread.
>wanting me to take anonymous #1462872 over veryfied wikipedia sources
>it's wrong simply because it's on wiki
Kek.

Literally everything I have read online points to the fact that they really have no concrete theory as to how it developed.

Not you though, you know for sure.

:^)

>Ok so their speech is not original anymore because they adopted a foreign writing system.
>What?

You understand speaking and writing evolve in tandem with each other.

Adopting another writing system means creating phonology to deal with these new characters that didn't exist before.

How is this so illogical? Have you studied any form of linguistics.

It's why Engrish is a language.

It doesn't necessarily involve any changes. Mongolian uses the Cyrillic alphabet only since fairly recently, and yet it sounds the same as it did before.

>only since fairly recently,
Well there you go. It's not like the Japanese adopted kanji very early on in their history.

>Wrong.
Quote a linguist. Vovin's works are available online.

>Still refuting literally everything in this thread.
Reread what you copy pasted.

The wiki article never claimed Koreanic and Japonic were genetically related only that Gaya and other polities may have been para Japonic/Japonic.

Note that none of what you quoted can link Sinitic with Koreanic or Japonic.

And of course Japanese has changed in the past thousand years, but so has every other language; if they hadn't we'd still be saying shit like "Fader ure, thu the eart on heofonum, thin nama gehalwod sith".

>speaking and writing evolve in tandem with each other.

Writing does hold back languages from changing as quickly as they would if they weren't written but they dont evolve in tandem. So yes maybe they needed more sounds but the speech is more or less the same as before.

>Quote a linguist. Vovin's works are available online.
Kek, I like how you disregraded the fact that you are an absoloute tool, no where have I 'pulled anything out of my ass', except where I literally said I did,

This means absolutely nothing.

>The wiki article never claimed Koreanic and Japonic were genetically related only that Gaya and other polities may have been para Japonic/Japonic.
Nowhere did I say it did.

>Note that none of what you quoted can link Sinitic with Koreanic or Japonic.

Except through Kanji it's explicitly linked to Chinese since Japanese early history. You are downgrading this argument to the sole usage of "speech", everyone has said many fucking times that writing is not all there is to a language even though I never even implied it was but all you can do is use speech to 'speak' for the whole languge disreagrding the links in writing and how language has evolved over time. This is so fucking completely wrong it's not even funny.

Get your popmpous retardation out of here.

>Vovin
>Using one singualr source as your argument.
Kek, at least the wiki gives you multiple sources.

>but they dont evolve in tandem.
Kek.

I suggest you study some language history and linguistics as a whole.

Explain to me how speech and writing can evolve independent of each other, does that even make any sense?

Pretty difficult to understand everything in pinyin, since there are so many homophones in Mandarin tbhfam

It's all about context, blood.

>no where have I 'pulled anything out of my ass', except where I literally said I did
>Chinese/Korean/Japanese are essentially the same languages
> their writing is based off of chinese so it's not illigocal to assume that even if at one point they had an original form of speech it is not the case anymore.
Being this deluded.

>Except through Kanji it's explicitly linked to Chinese since Japanese early history.
Japonic speakers didn't switch to Sinitic,if you can't tell the difference between a script and a language family then there's no helping you.

>Get your popmpous retardation out of here.
So when did Old Chinese displace Koreanic and Japonic?

Is Vietnamese a Indo European language?

>Kek, at least the wiki gives you multiple sources.
None of which supports your claims. Even the Gaya quote has no citations.

Because writing tends to get frozen. Speech changes, not very much but it does.

meant to quote

>>no where have I 'pulled anything out of my ass', except where I literally said I did
>>Chinese/Korean/Japanese are essentially the same languages
>> their writing is based off of chinese so it's not illigocal to assume that even if at one point they had an original form of speech it is not the case anymore.
>Being this deluded.

>this is anything but speculation which I admit it is
Kay'

>Japonic speakers didn't switch to Sinitic,if you can't tell the difference between a script and a language family then there's no helping you.
If you cannot see how speech and writing evolve with each other there is no saving you.

So when did Old Chinese displace Koreanic and Japonic?

Is Vietnamese a Indo European language?

This has nothing to do with anything, since you know, we are tlkaing about CHinsese and Japanese. Unless of course you as well want to make blanket statments and cover it over literally every language in the world.

>None of which supports your claims. Even the Gaya quote has no citations.
No where am I arguing with certainty though :^).

What are you even doing? Literally nothing. Like actually, literally nothing. YOu have made literally no point and at every chance you attempt to move the goal posts outside of Chinese/Korean/Japanese.

It's actually hilarious, keep going.

This post contains nothing of value, can't wait for you to dissect it line by line as if it does.

>YOu have made literally no point and at every chance you attempt to move the goal posts outside of Chinese/Korean/Japanese.
Have fun with your proto languages.

>This post contains nothing of value, can't wait for you to dissect it line by line as if it does.
I was only pretending to be retarded.

Isn't kanbun kuntoku just annotations on classical Chinese literature, ordering Chinese characters and filling voids with particles to match typical Japanese sentence structures (Subject Object Verb)?
If so, why other languages need it, especially since English is Subject Verb Object like Chinese?

No more difficult than it is to understand spoken. If anything, less difficult, since it's at least unambiguous what phonemes are represented.

It's not just the annotations, but also the process of reading Chinese text into Japanese itself, which can be done even without the annotations, although generally these days only specialists can do so.

I've only got anecdotal experience, but i get a headache when i attempt to read stuff in pure pinyin. There's a certain 'emptiness' to pinyin? :/

Maybe i'm an autist.

wow
such wisdom
much innovation
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloss_(annotation)

I think that may just be a matter of being unaccustomed to it. If yu trai tu rid Inglish riten laik dhis, yul probabli faind it hard tu kip ap for a prolangd taim tu.

Wow, aTang dynasty poem that I can actually understand. Usually classical Chinese is complete gibberish to me.

The fact the Tang Dynasty has cultural export today testifies for its' position in the chart.

I'm going to preemptively defend the U.S's position in the god bracket because I know you autists will fight it out, pasting a previous reply:

I made the chart, I'm not even American.

I feel Veeky Forums hates the U.S just because of its' contemporary international involvement and because its' contrarian.

The United States is by a long shot the most important and relevant state of the 20th century, and will be one of the most important and relevant ones in this one, as well. In the the 19th century, Europe produced the most 'culture' in literature and the arts, eclipsed entirely in the 20th century by the U.S. The world watches American movies and T.V shows, America watches little of the rest of the worlds'. In the same fashion as the other God and High tier civilisations, America is comprised of the worlds' brightest and attracts the worlds' brightest. This will not last for much longer, though

Can you pick up context?

If you didn't know, writing influences spoken language just like spoken language influences writing.

You're being retarded.

Writing influences language.

The Japanese spoken language is far more sinified today than it was in 100ad before Chinese writibg arrived.

(Citation needed)

>Writing is not the language its just the representation.

Wow you are an idiot.

Written language and spoken language evolve in tandem.

There's a reason Japanese and Chinese have 50,000+ loan words.

Ever noticed how well-educated Japanese can mostly understand traditional written Chinese?
Because their languages have evolved in tandem over time.

Much like Spanish and Italian, or English and German.

Yup. Also (ironically enough) look at the biographies of heaps of the most notable people during the Meiji reforms and the Japanese Empire. The aristocracy has always learned and revered the Chinese classics and traditional language, as much as they may deplore the Chinese country in their times' iteration. Same as the rest of Europe's attitude to the Greeks to an extent, I presume

They have a lot of words borrowed from Chinese, yes, but genetically they are still in two different language families.

>Ever noticed how well-educated Japanese can mostly understand traditional written Chinese?

By "traditional written Chinese", are you referring to Classical Chinese, or Modern Standard Mandarin written with traditional characters? Either way I think "mostly" is an exaggeration. I don't think even an educated Chinese would understand much Classical Chinese unless of course specifically educated in Classical Chinese. It's like a Frenchman reading Latin or something.

I don't think your point is invalid though. "Genetically unrelated" languages can become very similar because of influence. The French/Latin influence on English vocabulary is immense. I have tried reading Wikipedia in German and understood almost nothing, where as I understood the same article in Italian significantly better. I have close to none skills in either languages, but have actually dabbled in German, but not in Italian.

I think the reason Wikipedia is hard to read in German has to do with the fact that in English most of our basic, everyday vocabulary is Germanic and the specialized, technical, 'fancy' vocabulary (which there's more of on Wikipedia) is Latin, whereas German, though not completely devoid of Latin borrowings, prefers Germanic neologisms much more than we do. Incidentally, you ever read Uncleftish Beholding?
groups.google.com/forum/message/raw?msg=alt.language.artificial/ZL4e3fD7eW0/_7p8bKwLJWkJ

The only linguistic value that kanbun kuntoku provides is showing how old and middle Japanese used to be read, since it's essentially just on-the-fly translations either for personal use or for lecturing commoners. It provides no information about the Chinese reading of these characters.
With that said, I wonder if anything like that could ever be used for the understanding of Latin literature, since ( like Chinese to a Japanese) Latin words can be easily understood by a Romance speaker but the word order is all jumbled.

>(Citation needed)
>Korean has a few extinct relatives, which together with Korean itself form the Koreanic language family. Despite this, historical linguists classify Korean as a language isolate.[4][5][6][7][8][9]
>Japanese is a member of the Japonic languages family, which also includes the languages spoken throughout the Ryūkyū Islands. As these closely related languages are commonly treated as dialects of the same language, Japanese is often called a language isolate.
Sino Tibetan is not a linguistic isolate.

But writing is not the language you idiot. Most languages in the world are unwritten, are they non-languages now?

I would argue it also provides us with information about how the scholars of the time analyzed certain grammatical constructions, which is valuable since the tradition from within China had some lexicography but no real analysis of grammar.

Yes.

ITT: people trying to argue that English must be a dialect of Latin because it has a ton of Latin loanwords and it's written in the Latin alphabet

On a more serious note I'm pretty sure only one person in this thread actually knows Japanese and/or Chinese and the only reason anyone is talking back to him is because of the Dunning-Kruger Effect.

I don't know, use Google Translate or something.