No natural language (as opposed to conlangs) is free from exceptions and inconsistencies. I'll give you an example of inconsistecy in Japanese; The kango (Sino-Japanese) word "sō'ō" 相応 means along the lines of appropriate; worthy; suitable. Its native synonym "fusawashii" is written as 相応しい to reflect their similar meanings. On the contrary, the kango word "fukuzatsu" 複雑 means along the line of complex; complicated; intricate. There is a native synonym of this word, "yayakoshii", but it's simply written in full hiragana as ややこしい instead of something like *複雑しい.
@@jtmassecure4488lol. I speak Mando Canto and Japanese, learned 10 lessons and after that can speak naturally a bit. Japanese? No!!! I studied 10 years now and my reading comprehension still so bad.
Same. I was eating toast and kept thinking I was getting crumbs on the screen. I kept wiping, and they would come back even when I didn't take a bite. I was so mad when I realized
There's even more weird Kana, if you look at the Ainu language. For example, they got stuff like ツ゚, セ゚ and ㇱ. "tu" (unlike Japanese tsu), "tse" and "-s" respecitively.
@@KabalFromMK9 according to good old uncited Wikipedia articles, they are both interchangeable. Couldn't find better sources and the two book scans I've got lying around are only in Roman letters. On the other hand, I've never seen a distinction between r and l in Ainu. Where did you find that? :D
@@seseiSekias far as i can tell, ら゚ was introduced in the meiji era to distinguish l and r in loanwords. my only sources for this are english and japanese wikipedia, though the former has no source and the latter's is apparently invalid
@@KabalFromMK9 Alright, found the source. "Untersuchungen über den Bau der Aino-Sprache" by Dr. August Pfizmaier, 1851. It is very possible, that that's outdated lol Kinda hard to track, since Ainu writing isn't standardized.
Thank you for sharing these! I've ran into these before, but never understood how they're pronounced, or why they existed. As someone who studies Chinese, the Kanbun sounds really intriguing! I'd love to look closer at that poster you have!
I never knew characters like け゚ even existed. Now I have some newfound knowledge about my first language. But the "Yi" and "Wu" sounds? I don't think they even exist in Japanese. In fact, many Japanese people seem to struggle distinguishing between "Yee" and "Ee" sounds and "Woo" and "Oo" sounds even in English. Also, the 鼻濁音(bidakuon) are actually used in the Standard Japanese as well, although less people in the younger generations tend to use them. And as far as I know, they are never used at the beginning of a clause.
While it may be true that "yi" and "wu" never existed in Japanese, some linguists from the Meiji era did actually create artificial (if you prefer that term) kanas for yi and wu (and a new katakana for ye, as エ historically denoted ye) to fill in the gap.
Also, there's the obsolete Hiragana ゔ(v) which is the same as its Katakana counterpart, but it's obsolete since there are no Japanese words with "v" sounds. I also remember the use of ヴ(v) in an anime called "Magic Knight Rayearth". The protagonist Hikaru Shidou meets a doppelgänger named ノヴァ(Nova) who is the darkness inside of Hikaru's heart. There's also other kana such as ぢ/ヂ(dji) and づ/ヅ(dzu). They exist, but rarely are used. I've seen ぢ before, like the "Fun is infinite" page from Sonic CD, saying that its signed by まぢん(Majin) which is the childhood nickname of Masao Nishimura, or チヂミ(chijimi) which is a transliteration of a Korean dish. Also, there's あいづち(aidzuchi) which refers to Japanese expressions like はい("hai", yes) when listening to a conversation.
Well, let me ask you this, When you found out about Early Modern English grammar such as the pronoun "thou" and the verb ending -(s)t as in "thou hast", will that make English learning harder for you, even though virtually no one speaks like that nowadays and so you could simply forget about those things?
Fascinating--thanks much! I just want to add that the "ye" sound--one of three that you mentioned not having much at all to do with modern Japanese--must have had some relevance over the past century or so since so many Japanese-American personal or family names have been transliterated that way--for example "Sanaye" for "Sanae" or "Uyeda" for "Ueda." There are others as well that I don't recall at the moment. It would be interesting if you could comment on that. Anyway, thanks again for this clear-spoken, detailed explanation!
That was fascinating! Except for the obsolete kana, I hadn't seen any of these before. Thanks for putting the effort in to make this video - great work!
Nice video, my dude! There were a lot of entries I did not already know about and I've been studying language for a loooong time. Your final entry on Kanbun reminds me of the Taiwanese Bopomofo. They are not the same but they are interesting, too!
Thank you for this videov it solves the mystery of why some Japanese songs would have "watashi nga" in them etc. It's Tokyo dialect. I should have guessed that. But now I know so thank you ❤
Thanks for your video, its interesting. Also during my research on Kana i found another set Kana and its obscure one that is Taiwanese Kana. Set of Hiragana and Katakana for Taiwan languange during Japanese occupation 1895-1945
Omg how can you have just 4k subs... I know you reminded people to subscribe at the very end of the video, but, I'd suggest you say it earlier, such as at the very beginning or in the middle of the video, something very short like "if you wanna see more of this kind of content about japan dont forget to subscribe!", just so you remind viewers when they're actually paying close attention. Your content, at least, judging by this video is pure gold so, i was shocked to see that, besides 83k views, not many people subscribed.
And then there are sound changes and the Japanese government intervening in *that.* Sound changes are the reason why some Americans with Japanese ancestry have names like "Inouye," and Ebisu is sometimes spelled "Yebisu." There was a time in history when the Japanese wanted to eliminate づ by replacing them all with ず, because they "were the same sound." They're NOT, and づ can't be fully eliminated in compound words with words that have つ in them. (E.g. 三日月, where 月 is つき and not すき) There are also funky spellings of things in romanized Japanese, complicating the matter. E.g., Meidiya and Huzi-san.
tewi (alongside tenshi hinanawi) using the "wi" makes sense bc theyre both pretty old characters. unsure about tenshi but tewi is like. hundreds to thousands of years old (assuming she represents the white hare of inaba)
I've seen "we" being used in exactly 1 word, and it's a foreign word: Hueco Mundo (from Bleach) is written in Kana as "weko mundo". That said, though, I've heard of Ainu words using "we", but have no idea if they even use Kana.
I have a degree in japanese studies and I had never heard about some of these things before, so thank you a lot! Also, I remember seeing a る゛once in a manga, probably because the character was crying and his pronounciation was altered
Just binge watched your entire channel and noticed that your sub count went up by, like 200 in the span of two hours. Great stuff, I'm very much looking forward to seeing more of you!
hi, from japan here, there is one fun thing with YE hiragana, it is still used in Ise, Mie perfecture for products or restaurants that specialize in serving ise shrimp 伊勢えび🦐 and you can see that old hiragana almost everywhere there as a decoration or restaurant names since it sounds very much like word えび i just looove seening old hiraganas and they are so interesting and with new forgein words borrowed to japan, they actually could be useful in the future ps. there is japanese beer called yebisu as well, but i hear people call it ebisu (depending on a dialect)
intriguing video although i hear that the "v" sound doesn't actually exist in japanese, but is pronounced as a "b" sound; ヴ is only sometimes used for foreign words or names that have the v sound in their language
@@FreeBirdJPYT As another mentioned, the "fu" sound in sound in Japanese is pronounced as a bilabial fricative, and this is actually the reason why its so common to hear sound turn into a "bu", since "vu" is not only unnatural, but really easy to turn into a voiced bilabial plosive in fast speech. Additionally, things like "fi" also feel unnatural, so "bi" simply sounds better to the ear.
I am a Japanese speaker. While it is true that v technically does not exist in Japanese, I think it is acceptable to pronounce it as a plain /v/. The /b/~/β/ is more prevalent amongst older speakers who are not familiar with newer loanwords (loanwords imported earlier containing /v/ were typically written with /b/ such as ビタミン bitamin "vitamin"). I typically pronounce it as /ʋ/~/v̞/.
Assuming I ever actually officially start learning japanese, I would like to learn some of these just to see what sounds I can get away with or someting.
Japanese myself, but never knew that Tokyo-ben was its own thing. Kinda reminds me of how the Berliner Dialekt came about. Nowadays it's washed out by the immigrating people and only being spoken in the remote fringe.
Great video. If I'm allowed to nitpick one thing though, I'd say 漢文 is not the pronunciation for classical Chinese written in Kana, but classical Chinese itself made (kinda) readable within (also an older version of) the grammer of Japanese. That's what Japanese intellectualls did to try to comprehend classical Chinese back in the day, and hence is still considered to be a form of important education at least among Japanese teachers teaching Japanese. Pronunciation-wise it's not even attempted to reconstruct classical nor modern Chinese sounds, but is completly Japanese.
In Japanese, 漢文 kanbun simply means Classical Chinese. But, in the the context of the English language, we say "kanbun" when specifically referring to the Japanese method of reading Classical Chinese. It's kind of like how 漢字 kanji simply means Chinese (Han) characters, but when we say "kanji" we specifically referring to Chinese characters used in Japan. Is there a linguistic term for this?, when the word in the original denotes a broad, generic meaning, but when we borrow the word as an unadapted borrowing, it means a specific thing?
This was a surprisingly cool video! I only wish the editing was a tad bit slower at times, so you have time to read and process images and characters on the screen
Esoterically interesting. Usually I see Katakana ヴ" and rarely Hiragana ゔ since Katakana is used to transcribe foreign words that often require a "v" sound. Obviously "v" sound does not exist in native Japanese.
you make the ふ sound by dragging your teeth behind your bottom lip downwards, if its hu then its similar to blowing in english the "f" sound is made by putting your teeth on your bottom lip and blowing which makes a more intense sound
The ng- kana could be used for vietnamese and some dialects of chinese transliteration. Not saying they are, just that they could be. Though, i wonder if they have the katakana equivalent.
Someone already mentioned this but in the Ainu language (in Hokkaido), there's some unique kanas. For example the small letters (non-vowel), such as, ㇰ (-k), ㇷ゚ (-p) and ㇽ (-r). There's also small ha-hi-hu-he-ho to represent ending kh (-kh) so ㇵ, ㇶ, ㇷ, ㇸ and ㇹ. And a lot of other quirks such as the usage of "we" (ヱ) and "wi" (ヰ).
It makes sense for Ainu to use these variants because they are going to have sounds that don't exist in Japanese and if they are going to use the Japanese writing system, they have to have some way of writing them down. Many place names in Hokkaido are Japanese pronunciations of the original names in Ainu.
@@DinnerForkTongue ...If anyone happens to know if there's proximity between Ainu language and Russian due to some sort of geopolitics and sociohistoric heritage (???)
ヴ is probably the most known to Japanese speakers. It is sometimes written, but the v is rarely pronounced. People still say baiorin, berry guddo. Edit: oh and あ゛is well known as well from manga.
When I asked my Japanese teacher why Ga is sometimes said Nga he told me something along the lines of "it is beautiful speech" and that is how they might say it on news broadcasts. It coming from the Tokyo dialect makes sense, I'm sure that is a dominant dialect on TV.
I know people in Tohoku mask their accents because they are embarrassed to sound uncivilised, and most young people there now speak exactly the same as young people in Tokyo or Osaka. But the "nga" is more of an older person thing, young people don't use it often in my experience.
The nga thing is one of the first things I noticed when I watched NHK. I asked Japanese people about it at the time, but they had no idea what I was talking about.
Bidakuon, or nasal pronunciation (Nga etc), is not particularly Tokyo dialect, but more like Eastern Japan thing. Western Japan dialects tend to lack this. So people in eastern Japan tend to feel it sounds soft, classy, and beautiful because it’s been a part of their way of speaking. (Now this is my opinion. Maybe there’s other reasons.) Because Standard Japanese was created based on the speech spoken by samurai class, and the top samurai family resided in Tokyo, Standard Japanese sounds more like Tokyo dialect, but they are actually different. Anyway, as the population migrated from a place to place after mid-19th century, Ng pronunciation started to decline. Languages are alive and change as you know. Even in 1930s it was a topic among linguists and announcers at radio/tv stations. So the training of announcers used to include the Ng pronunciations. However the stations other than NHK seem to not so strict about it anymore. That’s why you’d notice more Ng pronunciations when you watch NHK. More young people don’t use Ng these days but it still exists. It’s just like silent k or p in English. They were probably used in the past but not anymore and we don’t exactly know why, except linguists probably.
A former gf came from a super wealthy family in choufu-shi (west tokyo where many politicians and shachos live) and they all spoke very nasally... Seemed quite in common with some upper class folk in the UK who occasionally also seem to have somewhat nasal accents.
10:38 There is also the possibility to add the maru to R-row characters to get an L-row. Now, Japanese does not distinguish such sounds at all, not even in modern transcription, but Catholic missionaries in the previous century did use such to teach the readings of chants in Latin
This was a pretty fun video! I'd always hear the "nga" sound and be wondering "why tho" 😂. I didn't realize it was a dialect EDIT: Glad to see that you hit your 1k subs goal pretty quick! It seems like this is your most watched video so far!
The "nga" sound was actually the original sound. The "ga" pronunciation is much newer. The Tokyo dialect and others that have kept "nga" are actually the conservative ones here. It is also why you’ll tend to hear the "nga" sound much more in older demographics.
11:32 it's kind of like writing chinese characters but reading in shakespeherian english? that is the closest metaphor i can think of. the text you have i think is in mixed kanbun and manyogana so it would be only readable by japanese aristocrats, not technically what i would call classic chinese, but it's pretty close
Handakuten is also used with R-syllables to represent l sounds:- ラ゚( la) リ゚( li) ル゚ (lu) レ゚( le)ロ゚( lo) Dakuten is also used with W-syllables to represent V-sounds(an alternative toう&ウwith Dakuten).
Added dakuten to kana is more popular thanks to manga, and added handakuten to kana has been almost strictly to express pronunciation, like symbols, so it’s not seen in everyday writings. If you want to type dakuten, just type “dakuten” on the keyboard with Japanese word processor function, and it’ll show you ゛as an option. So if you type あthen ゛without space between them you’ll get あ゛for example.
ヱ is occasionally used in names, more for stylistic reasons than anything else; e.g. クロエ and クロヱ have identical pronunciations, and the beer brand Yebisu is stylised as ヱビス (pronounced Ebisu).
They also used to use kanbun for "translating" other languages, including English. It looks pretty cursed. You can find some examples if you image search something like "英語 漢文"
@@rickyturner. No, since kanbun doesn't preserve the original pronunciation. It's more like annotating the source text in order to give the reader enough information to understand it, mainly by showing character order and readings/particles when necessary
Fun fact, the katakana エ was originally meant to write "ye". The old katakana for "e" was 𛀀, which may not display for some devices. For people whose device does not support the character, it looks like ラ but with the first (top) stroke being 丶instead of 一
I didn't know about the maru diacritic being used on the ka family! Nor about tenten being used to roughen up the vowel kana. Really interesting and informative video, I've found the Japanese writing system so interesting since I begun learning it, so getting to know more hentaigana is really exciting. Most of my attention has been diverted towards phonetics since I begun learning the language, and there's so many obscure intricacies your average joe, or even native speaker simply wouldn't pick up on, and its opened my mind to so many oddities in the the English language as well. Love this video and hope you have ideas for more like it in the future, I think I'll enjoy the content either way though.
i think the only other time i've seen the we kana used is in the name of a character, just like wi without going into the rabbit hole to keep it short, it's a character played by a streamer; the character's name is Chloe but instead of being written as クロエ "Kuroe" it was written as クロヱ "Kurowe" but still pronounced the exact same way the other time is the logo for Neon Genesis Evangelion where it looks like they wrote ヱヴァンゲリヲン "Wevangeriyon" but i could just be mistaking the stylized エ as ヱ since they are literally one hook and nudge away from being identical, and wevangeriyon doesn't make any sense though in both cases it's the katakana we, so that means i still have never seen hiragana we used anywhere in any words until this video
First time just got this video on recommended, watched it and loved it I even subbed because of the topic of it please bring more videos like this I loved it, I'm Japanese and I didn't even know some of those Kanas existed😅
I studied japanese in college (I've forgotten a lot of it) and we did learn が is pronounced /ga/, but also: we heard our professor say /ŋa/ when speaking quickly. I never used/saw people use the "ka" with the Maru. I always associated ”が” to sound either like /ga/ or /ŋa/
I'm Japanese, and no we do not pronounce Va. あ゛is basically pronounced the exact same as あ, but we use it to express screaming in comedies, mangas and texting friends. Like あああああ゛あ゛ぁぁ゛ぁ！！ is just saying Aaaah!! in english.
There's this Buddhist deity, the King of Hell, whose name is Enma, and the traditional way to write it (which is still used until today by the Kyoto temple centered around his medieval statue) is ゑんまさま. Interestingly enough, though the accurate modern transcription would be Enma, the temple's website romanizes it as Yenma, which falls very well in line with the 円 example you've given.
This was fascinating. Great job!
@@JJMcCullough I’ve been a fan of yours for a while. Happy to see you here and I appreciate the compliment ✌️
@@FreeBirdJPYT it’s inspired a future video!
@@JJMcCullough happy to help, and I’m excited to see it!
ohmigod its actually the real jjmccullough
Why do you have the Scottish flag behind you?
3:08 it's official, I can't escape Touhou
Tewi jumpscare
@@AM22Salabok literally
I haven't been able to for a decade
2hu mentioned
Annnnnd there is a Cirno fumo in the background all along.
Japanese is so cool. I find it generally to be a very consistent language, but with the occasional quirk, such as with these kana.
i love japanese, but consistent? 😅
No natural language (as opposed to conlangs) is free from exceptions and inconsistencies. I'll give you an example of inconsistecy in Japanese; The kango (Sino-Japanese) word "sō'ō" 相応 means along the lines of appropriate; worthy; suitable. Its native synonym "fusawashii" is written as 相応しい to reflect their similar meanings.
On the contrary, the kango word "fukuzatsu" 複雑 means along the line of complex; complicated; intricate. There is a native synonym of this word, "yayakoshii", but it's simply written in full hiragana as ややこしい instead of something like *複雑しい.
@@rynabunsYes it is consistent
@@jtmassecure4488lol. I speak Mando Canto and Japanese, learned 10 lessons and after that can speak naturally a bit. Japanese? No!!! I studied 10 years now and my reading comprehension still so bad.
@@SiimKogeryeah the more you know the more you start to see how ridiculously inconsistent it is
I kept trying to wipe the screen of my phone thinking that it was dirty but it was just the white background 💀
oh my god, same.... i spent like 5 minutes trying to wipe it
same with my monitor
Same. I was eating toast and kept thinking I was getting crumbs on the screen. I kept wiping, and they would come back even when I didn't take a bite. I was so mad when I realized
@@Mikelaxo lol I opened a can of beer and when I wiped and it didn’t go away I thought that it had already solidified somehow
The intelligence of the average youtube user is at an all time low
鼻濁音の表記を方言のみで使用していると言っていますが、正確には誤りです。アナウンサーや俳優、声優の養成所では発声のレッスンで必ず鼻濁音を教えられますよ。文頭以外のガ行は鼻濁音で発音するように訓練します。
There's even more weird Kana, if you look at the Ainu language. For example, they got stuff like ツ゚, セ゚ and ㇱ. "tu" (unlike Japanese tsu), "tse" and "-s" respecitively.
There's also ラ゜for la when a distinction between r and l is needed
Also, isn't "tu" written like "ト゜"?
@@KabalFromMK9 according to good old uncited Wikipedia articles, they are both interchangeable. Couldn't find better sources and the two book scans I've got lying around are only in Roman letters.
On the other hand, I've never seen a distinction between r and l in Ainu. Where did you find that? :D
@@seseiSekias far as i can tell, ら゚ was introduced in the meiji era to distinguish l and r in loanwords. my only sources for this are english and japanese wikipedia, though the former has no source and the latter's is apparently invalid
@@KabalFromMK9 Alright, found the source. "Untersuchungen über den Bau der Aino-Sprache" by Dr. August Pfizmaier, 1851. It is very possible, that that's outdated lol
Kinda hard to track, since Ainu writing isn't standardized.
hentaigana looks like ai trying to generate hiragana
lmao
I'm a fluent Japanese speaker who has lived in Japan and planning to live in Japan in the future. And yet I learned new things today.
教えてくれてありがとう!
I first saw one of these weird nonstandard kana in the film Spirited Away. There is one on the wall in the first shots of the spirit town market.
Thank you for sharing these! I've ran into these before, but never understood how they're pronounced, or why they existed. As someone who studies Chinese, the Kanbun sounds really intriguing! I'd love to look closer at that poster you have!
I never knew characters like け゚ even existed. Now I have some newfound knowledge about my first language.
But the "Yi" and "Wu" sounds? I don't think they even exist in Japanese. In fact, many Japanese people seem to struggle distinguishing between "Yee" and "Ee" sounds and "Woo" and "Oo" sounds even in English.
Also, the 鼻濁音(bidakuon) are actually used in the Standard Japanese as well, although less people in the younger generations tend to use them. And as far as I know, they are never used at the beginning of a clause.
While it may be true that "yi" and "wu" never existed in Japanese, some linguists from the Meiji era did actually create artificial (if you prefer that term) kanas for yi and wu (and a new katakana for ye, as エ historically denoted ye) to fill in the gap.
Also, there's the obsolete Hiragana ゔ(v) which is the same as its Katakana counterpart, but it's obsolete since there are no Japanese words with "v" sounds. I also remember the use of ヴ(v) in an anime called "Magic Knight Rayearth". The protagonist Hikaru Shidou meets a doppelgänger named ノヴァ(Nova) who is the darkness inside of Hikaru's heart. There's also other kana such as ぢ/ヂ(dji) and づ/ヅ(dzu). They exist, but rarely are used. I've seen ぢ before, like the "Fun is infinite" page from Sonic CD, saying that its signed by まぢん(Majin) which is the childhood nickname of Masao Nishimura, or チヂミ(chijimi) which is a transliteration of a Korean dish. Also, there's あいづち(aidzuchi) which refers to Japanese expressions like はい("hai", yes) when listening to a conversation.
続く"continue" is written in hiragana as つづく. It's a quite common word and I'm sure there's many others I don't think of off-hand.
I feel like 10:30 just scratches the surface of the obscure kana to transliterate western V sounds with va (ヷ), vi (ヸ), ve (ヹ), and vo (ヺ).
How Can You Even Type Those?
Goryakugana are just ligatures; change my mind
It is indeed a ligature, you can't have your mind changed on that lmao, that's like saying "3+3=6, change my mind"
way to make my japanese language learning even harder
Well, let me ask you this,
When you found out about Early Modern English grammar such as the pronoun "thou" and the verb ending -(s)t as in "thou hast", will that make English learning harder for you, even though virtually no one speaks like that nowadays and so you could simply forget about those things?
Interesting, no clue that you could put Maru on かきくけこ. I guess my teachers accent rubbed off on me 😂. Nice vid.
Good video, I was surprised by ヴ getting so brief a mention near the end, but then again I think it's common enough not to count as strange/unknown.
Thanks for sharing this!
@@muhammadnasrullah7166 thank you so much for the Superthanks! You will get a shout out with my patrons in the next video!
Fascinating--thanks much! I just want to add that the "ye" sound--one of three that you mentioned not having much at all to do with modern Japanese--must have had some relevance over the past century or so since so many Japanese-American personal or family names have been transliterated that way--for example "Sanaye" for "Sanae" or "Uyeda" for "Ueda." There are others as well that I don't recall at the moment. It would be interesting if you could comment on that. Anyway, thanks again for this clear-spoken, detailed explanation!
I love learning about the origins of things as many strange details start to make sense that otherwise would get misinterpreted by guesswork
That was fascinating! Except for the obsolete kana, I hadn't seen any of these before. Thanks for putting the effort in to make this video - great work!
that thumbnail is cursed
I always use get-youtube-thumbnail when the comment mentions something about thumbnail that i didn't spot before clicking on it
What is used more often these days in modern-trend 2024 Japan 🇯🇵, in typical Japanese classrooms ?
Nice video, my dude! There were a lot of entries I did not already know about and I've been studying language for a loooong time. Your final entry on Kanbun reminds me of the Taiwanese Bopomofo. They are not the same but they are interesting, too!
Thanks for introducing me to Bidakuon/ 鼻濁音 at 8:12. I can finally transliterate some Filipino words with the Ng letter to Japanese via Katakana.
11:25 That seems to be Japanese mythology written in Kanbun form
In the past, it was customary to write formal texts in 漢文.
Thank you for this videov it solves the mystery of why some Japanese songs would have "watashi nga" in them etc. It's Tokyo dialect. I should have guessed that. But now I know so thank you ❤
Thanks for your video, its interesting. Also during my research on Kana i found another set Kana and its obscure one that is Taiwanese Kana. Set of Hiragana and Katakana for Taiwan languange during Japanese occupation 1895-1945
I'd love to see more videos on linguistics, this one was good as! super interesting
i kept wiping my phone screen... then i realized the video has this dust on it 😂😂😂
Omg how can you have just 4k subs...
I know you reminded people to subscribe at the very end of the video, but, I'd suggest you say it earlier, such as at the very beginning or in the middle of the video, something very short like "if you wanna see more of this kind of content about japan dont forget to subscribe!", just so you remind viewers when they're actually paying close attention. Your content, at least, judging by this video is pure gold so, i was shocked to see that, besides 83k views, not many people subscribed.
And then there are sound changes and the Japanese government intervening in *that.*
Sound changes are the reason why some Americans with Japanese ancestry have names like "Inouye," and Ebisu is sometimes spelled "Yebisu." There was a time in history when the Japanese wanted to eliminate づ by replacing them all with ず, because they "were the same sound." They're NOT, and づ can't be fully eliminated in compound words with words that have つ in them. (E.g. 三日月, where 月 is つき and not すき)
There are also funky spellings of things in romanized Japanese, complicating the matter. E.g., Meidiya and Huzi-san.
tewi (alongside tenshi hinanawi) using the "wi" makes sense bc theyre both pretty old characters. unsure about tenshi but tewi is like. hundreds to thousands of years old (assuming she represents the white hare of inaba)
About the “ゔ “, I’ve see this once in a song title. It’s “ヴァンパイア”
Japanese here. I have never seen Katakana how to pronounce Wi Wu We Wo Vu in Katakana.
I've seen "we" being used in exactly 1 word, and it's a foreign word: Hueco Mundo (from Bleach) is written in Kana as "weko mundo". That said, though, I've heard of Ainu words using "we", but have no idea if they even use Kana.
Surprisingly I did know this because I accidentally stumbled across the Wikipedia page lol
Amazing stuff. Never knew that kana is this extensive
I have a degree in japanese studies and I had never heard about some of these things before, so thank you a lot! Also, I remember seeing a る゛once in a manga, probably because the character was crying and his pronounciation was altered
Just binge watched your entire channel and noticed that your sub count went up by, like 200 in the span of two hours. Great stuff, I'm very much looking forward to seeing more of you!
Yi (𛀆/𛄠), ye (𛀁/𛄡), and wu (𛄟/𛄟), all have unicode characters. You'll have difficulty finding fonts that support them, though.
hi, from japan here, there is one fun thing with YE hiragana, it is still used in Ise, Mie perfecture for products or restaurants that specialize in serving ise shrimp 伊勢えび🦐 and you can see that old hiragana almost everywhere there as a decoration or restaurant names since it sounds very much like word えび
i just looove seening old hiraganas and they are so interesting and with new forgein words borrowed to japan, they actually could be useful in the future
ps. there is japanese beer called yebisu as well, but i hear people call it ebisu (depending on a dialect)
Very interesting video. One 国字(kokuji, japanese-coined character) I recently encountered is 〆 (しめ).
I learned so much and ot made so much sense. Wow, I was really off base on some of this and now I know how much I completely sounded like an idiot.
It wasn't needlessly complex, donchu worry
I've seen the ヴ a few times on signs. First time I saw it I was super confused. Had to ask the wife what it was.
Some links along with the shoutouts would be helpful.
intriguing video
although i hear that the "v" sound doesn't actually exist in japanese, but is pronounced as a "b" sound; ヴ is only sometimes used for foreign words or names that have the v sound in their language
It can be pronounced as a V sound but usually it's a B. They mostly use that Kana to represent the writing
@@FreeBirdJPYT As another mentioned, the "fu" sound in sound in Japanese is pronounced as a bilabial fricative, and this is actually the reason why its so common to hear sound turn into a "bu", since "vu" is not only unnatural, but really easy to turn into a voiced bilabial plosive in fast speech. Additionally, things like "fi" also feel unnatural, so "bi" simply sounds better to the ear.
I am a Japanese speaker. While it is true that v technically does not exist in Japanese, I think it is acceptable to pronounce it as a plain /v/. The /b/~/β/ is more prevalent amongst older speakers who are not familiar with newer loanwords (loanwords imported earlier containing /v/ were typically written with /b/ such as ビタミン bitamin "vitamin"). I typically pronounce it as /ʋ/~/v̞/.
Assuming I ever actually officially start learning japanese, I would like to learn some of these just to see what sounds I can get away with or someting.
Great video!
Btw: I'm German and my first name (Uwe) would be written in Katakana as such: 「ウヴェ」
Japanese myself, but never knew that Tokyo-ben was its own thing. Kinda reminds me of how the Berliner Dialekt came about. Nowadays it's washed out by the immigrating people and only being spoken in the remote fringe.
I just noticed that u said that ur not suposed to pronounce the G in singer... but I always did and I always heard people pronounce the G in singer...
Great video. If I'm allowed to nitpick one thing though, I'd say 漢文 is not the pronunciation for classical Chinese written in Kana, but classical Chinese itself made (kinda) readable within (also an older version of) the grammer of Japanese. That's what Japanese intellectualls did to try to comprehend classical Chinese back in the day, and hence is still considered to be a form of important education at least among Japanese teachers teaching Japanese. Pronunciation-wise it's not even attempted to reconstruct classical nor modern Chinese sounds, but is completly Japanese.
In Japanese, 漢文 kanbun simply means Classical Chinese. But, in the the context of the English language, we say "kanbun" when specifically referring to the Japanese method of reading Classical Chinese.
It's kind of like how 漢字 kanji simply means Chinese (Han) characters, but when we say "kanji" we specifically referring to Chinese characters used in Japan.
Is there a linguistic term for this?, when the word in the original denotes a broad, generic meaning, but when we borrow the word as an unadapted borrowing, it means a specific thing?
I learned about ゔ because I stumbled upon the word ヴァンパイア🦇
Cirno is silently judging you in the back there.
This was a surprisingly cool video! I only wish the editing was a tad bit slower at times, so you have time to read and process images and characters on the screen
あ" a rougher a sound
my japanese girlfriend and i were talking about a lot of these, shes never seen or heard of goryakugana, or Ye
Any chance of finding out where you got the poster you briefly showed off? It looks great.
@@WildSeven19 I bought it at a Japanese specialty store, I forget what it was called.
@@FreeBirdJPYT Cool, thanks. That's a place to start.
CIRNO FUMO SPOTTED
Esoterically interesting. Usually I see Katakana ヴ" and rarely Hiragana ゔ since Katakana is used to transcribe foreign words that often require a "v" sound. Obviously "v" sound does not exist in native Japanese.
I don't know if I've learned something but I enjoyed the video
7:43 ふ doesn't involve teeth, I think, just lips.
you make the ふ sound by dragging your teeth behind your bottom lip downwards, if its hu then its similar to blowing
in english the "f" sound is made by putting your teeth on your bottom lip and blowing which makes a more intense sound
I once saw a japanese person with the name Bien, written びゑん
1:28 "Obosete Kana"
this should not be a video from a 2.77k youtuber. it's missing two zeroes, which im sure you'll get soon enough
The ng- kana could be used for vietnamese and some dialects of chinese transliteration. Not saying they are, just that they could be. Though, i wonder if they have the katakana equivalent.
Awesome video! Earned a sub.
When すごい sounds like it is being pronounced like すんごい, is that tokyo-ben? If so, すこ゜い😅
My full name has a ton of these small Katakana, because my last name is mostly vowels, and my first name has a lot of letters not in Japanese lol.
ゑ can be found in some restaurants’ name, but I’m not sure how exactly should that he pronounced (we or e)
I've definitely seen ゐ out in the world in games.
another example of ヱ is in the alternative adaptation of "evangelion" (ヱヴァンゲリヲン). it might be exclusive to the rebuild movies?
Exactly, that's exclusive to the Rebuild.
My mother's bottom name had the kyuukana「ゑ」.
Someone already mentioned this but in the Ainu language (in Hokkaido), there's some unique kanas. For example the small letters (non-vowel), such as, ㇰ (-k), ㇷ゚ (-p) and ㇽ (-r). There's also small ha-hi-hu-he-ho to represent ending kh (-kh) so ㇵ, ㇶ, ㇷ, ㇸ and ㇹ. And a lot of other quirks such as the usage of "we" (ヱ) and "wi" (ヰ).
Good mention, I remember seeing this at an Ainu museum
Woooow, so that's where you find those "we" and "wi"
It makes sense for Ainu to use these variants because they are going to have sounds that don't exist in Japanese and if they are going to use the Japanese writing system, they have to have some way of writing them down. Many place names in Hokkaido are Japanese pronunciations of the original names in Ainu.
Interesting how these emulate sounds you hear a lot in Russian.
@@DinnerForkTongue ...If anyone happens to know if there's proximity between Ainu language and Russian due to some sort of geopolitics and sociohistoric heritage (???)
ヴ is probably the most known to Japanese speakers. It is sometimes written, but the v is rarely pronounced. People still say baiorin, berry guddo. Edit: oh and あ゛is well known as well from manga.
新世紀エヴァンゲリオン
Hell, I learned it from my first youtube video teaching Kana (by Japanesepod101)
@@dooshmasta「エバンゲリオン」or 「エワンゲリオン」
I was going to mention Evangelion but a reply already did
@@SenhorKoringa エヴァ
When I asked my Japanese teacher why Ga is sometimes said Nga he told me something along the lines of "it is beautiful speech" and that is how they might say it on news broadcasts. It coming from the Tokyo dialect makes sense, I'm sure that is a dominant dialect on TV.
I know people in Tohoku mask their accents because they are embarrassed to sound uncivilised, and most young people there now speak exactly the same as young people in Tokyo or Osaka. But the "nga" is more of an older person thing, young people don't use it often in my experience.
@@TTKDMS I'm just talking about the use of some Osaka-ben slang, like meccha and uchi wa etc.
The nga thing is one of the first things I noticed when I watched NHK. I asked Japanese people about it at the time, but they had no idea what I was talking about.
Bidakuon, or nasal pronunciation (Nga etc), is not particularly Tokyo dialect, but more like Eastern Japan thing. Western Japan dialects tend to lack this. So people in eastern Japan tend to feel it sounds soft, classy, and beautiful because it’s been a part of their way of speaking. (Now this is my opinion. Maybe there’s other reasons.) Because Standard Japanese was created based on the speech spoken by samurai class, and the top samurai family resided in Tokyo, Standard Japanese sounds more like Tokyo dialect, but they are actually different.
Anyway, as the population migrated from a place to place after mid-19th century, Ng pronunciation started to decline. Languages are alive and change as you know. Even in 1930s it was a topic among linguists and announcers at radio/tv stations. So the training of announcers used to include the Ng pronunciations. However the stations other than NHK seem to not so strict about it anymore. That’s why you’d notice more Ng pronunciations when you watch NHK. More young people don’t use Ng these days but it still exists. It’s just like silent k or p in English. They were probably used in the past but not anymore and we don’t exactly know why, except linguists probably.
A former gf came from a super wealthy family in choufu-shi (west tokyo where many politicians and shachos live) and they all spoke very nasally... Seemed quite in common with some upper class folk in the UK who occasionally also seem to have somewhat nasal accents.
10:38 There is also the possibility to add the maru to R-row characters to get an L-row. Now, Japanese does not distinguish such sounds at all, not even in modern transcription, but Catholic missionaries in the previous century did use such to teach the readings of chants in Latin
I heard it's also used in classical music realm in Japan to get Latin choirs right
ラ゚ラ゚ティーナ
Me: Cries in ラ゚ティン
@@SirusStarTV😭😭😭
This was a pretty fun video! I'd always hear the "nga" sound and be wondering "why tho" 😂. I didn't realize it was a dialect
EDIT: Glad to see that you hit your 1k subs goal pretty quick! It seems like this is your most watched video so far!
Sungoi ne
@@NihongoWakannai un
Standard japanese pronounces the g very far back in the mouth. That's why you'll sometimes hear だが pronounced like だんが as well.
The "nga" sound was actually the original sound. The "ga" pronunciation is much newer. The Tokyo dialect and others that have kept "nga" are actually the conservative ones here. It is also why you’ll tend to hear the "nga" sound much more in older demographics.
@@deithlan hell yeah, more lore
11:32 it's kind of like writing chinese characters but reading in shakespeherian english? that is the closest metaphor i can think of. the text you have i think is in mixed kanbun and manyogana so it would be only readable by japanese aristocrats, not technically what i would call classic chinese, but it's pretty close
It isn't. A lot of Japanese thing it is, but in reality the chants they read are utter nonsense gibberish in all languages.
It’s kind of writing French but pronounce it in southern accent
@@bang5284 what, like a kiwi?
More like the English pronunciation of Latin.
Handakuten is also used with R-syllables to represent l sounds:-
ラ゚( la) リ゚( li) ル゚ (lu) レ゚( le)ロ゚(
lo)
Dakuten is also used with W-syllables to represent V-sounds(an alternative toう&ウwith Dakuten).
THE LALILULELO!
i learned that from wikipedia
How To Type Those?
@@mderooij7851 copy text(ラリルレロ with Handakuten).
Added dakuten to kana is more popular thanks to manga, and added handakuten to kana has been almost strictly to express pronunciation, like symbols, so it’s not seen in everyday writings. If you want to type dakuten, just type “dakuten” on the keyboard with Japanese word processor function, and it’ll show you ゛as an option. So if you type あthen ゛without space between them you’ll get あ゛for example.
I'll be honest, when I heard "hentaikana", I had to do a double take, because I was thinking somethimg very different...
same
ヱ is occasionally used in names, more for stylistic reasons than anything else; e.g. クロエ and クロヱ have identical pronunciations, and the beer brand Yebisu is stylised as ヱビス (pronounced Ebisu).
that characer looks so cool.. it looks like 고 !
That character is used in the title of Evangelion, isn't it? I was wondering what that kana was!
For Vocaloid fans, that character was used and known from a popular Vocaloid Song named "イ *ヱ* スマン", which translates "Yesman" by Niru Kajitsu.
@@tsukodome6132 vocaloid fans!! always wondered why it was written that way but never actually bothered to research why lol, thanks for the info
@@magicwomanm only in the rebuilds
THE CIRNO PLUSH
Strongest plush
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⠉⠉⢹⡇⠀⠀⠀⢀⣞⠡⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⡝⣦⠀⠀⠀⠀⢿⣿⣿⣹
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@@FreeBirdJPYT gotta bring back ascii art
@@OmegaTaishu REALEST
@@FreeBirdJPYT OH MY GOD REAL LIVE STATEMENT
They also used to use kanbun for "translating" other languages, including English. It looks pretty cursed. You can find some examples if you image search something like "英語 漢文"
Transliterating would be the word you’re looking for
Yup
@@rickyturner. No, since kanbun doesn't preserve the original pronunciation. It's more like annotating the source text in order to give the reader enough information to understand it, mainly by showing character order and readings/particles when necessary
Kanbun kundoku is the whole process
That's classical Chinese annotated and then tl'd into Japanese
@@doesthisusername
1:30 it says "obosete" 🤔
love the thumbnail concept
I wanted something that was just slightly off
@@FreeBirdJPYT Why was it here
Fun fact, the katakana エ was originally meant to write "ye". The old katakana for "e" was 𛀀, which may not display for some devices.
For people whose device does not support the character, it looks like ラ but with the first (top) stroke being 丶instead of 一
I also find it funny when someone talks talks about a character and it's just a hatched box
yea i see a box with a question mark in the middle
@@Mikelaxo hence the disclaimer. Let me just describe it, it's kind of like ラ but the first top stroke is a 丶 instead of 一
@@okand6156 For those with device that does not display the characters, it's kind of like ラ but the first stroke is 丶instead of 一
@@KabalFromMK9 so this kanji 之 but without the lower stroke?
i got jumpscared by the thumbnail
I didn't know about the maru diacritic being used on the ka family! Nor about tenten being used to roughen up the vowel kana. Really interesting and informative video, I've found the Japanese writing system so interesting since I begun learning it, so getting to know more hentaigana is really exciting.
Most of my attention has been diverted towards phonetics since I begun learning the language, and there's so many obscure intricacies your average joe, or even native speaker simply wouldn't pick up on, and its opened my mind to so many oddities in the the English language as well.
Love this video and hope you have ideas for more like it in the future, I think I'll enjoy the content either way though.
i think the only other time i've seen the we kana used is in the name of a character, just like wi
without going into the rabbit hole to keep it short, it's a character played by a streamer; the character's name is Chloe but instead of being written as クロエ "Kuroe" it was written as クロヱ "Kurowe" but still pronounced the exact same way
the other time is the logo for Neon Genesis Evangelion where it looks like they wrote ヱヴァンゲリヲン "Wevangeriyon"
but i could just be mistaking the stylized エ as ヱ since they are literally one hook and nudge away from being identical, and wevangeriyon doesn't make any sense
though in both cases it's the katakana we, so that means i still have never seen hiragana we used anywhere in any words until this video
a little correction, it's "wevangeriwon"
Stinky orca?
@@kokorochacarero8003 ah, looks like i've been busted
in old books, there were uweda and uyehara for today's ueda and uehara :)
I legit seen the usage of that あ with dakuon in the Doujinshi, indicating the character is making weird noises 💀
Japanese teachers never teach these things.
Thank you very much for your informative video.
Thanks for the explanation on dakuten added to あいうえお。I've wondered about that for years, but always forgot to ask my teachers.
They added shiny kana to Japanese 💀
First time just got this video on recommended, watched it and loved it I even subbed because of the topic of it please bring more videos like this I loved it, I'm Japanese and I didn't even know some of those Kanas existed😅
動画を見てありがとうございます～＾＾
面白い日本トピックの動画を作るのが大好きだから、未来にもっと動画を作るのをけいかくしています！
I studied japanese in college (I've forgotten a lot of it) and we did learn が is pronounced /ga/, but also: we heard our professor say /ŋa/ when speaking quickly. I never used/saw people use the "ka" with the Maru. I always associated ”が” to sound either like /ga/ or /ŋa/
this is a great video, thank you. i always wondered how do i pronounce あ゛
It Should Be Pronounced “Va”.
@@mderooij7851 va is ヴァ
I'm Japanese, and no we do not pronounce Va. あ゛is basically pronounced the exact same as あ, but we use it to express screaming in comedies, mangas and texting friends. Like あああああ゛あ゛ぁぁ゛ぁ！！ is just saying Aaaah!! in english.
@@mderooij7851 "Va" is written as ヴァ
overall great video! glad that i helped :)
There's this Buddhist deity, the King of Hell, whose name is Enma, and the traditional way to write it (which is still used until today by the Kyoto temple centered around his medieval statue) is ゑんまさま. Interestingly enough, though the accurate modern transcription would be Enma, the temple's website romanizes it as Yenma, which falls very well in line with the 円 example you've given.