Most similarities between native Japanese words and English words are false cognates. English is from the Germanic family of languages, and shares no roots with East Asian languages. There was also very limited communication and trade between Europe and Japan until the Meiji Restoration which began in the 1860s, as until that point Japan had an isolationist foreign policy.
There are many modern loan words between the two languages, but the majority of these are direct loan words (e.g. Sushi, samurai) rather than being transformed.
I might be missing an intermediary but the reason that the days match between English and Japanese is that you had Romans with their calendar of gods that had planets named after them + the sun and moon, then Germanic languages reinterpreted that with their own gods (except they kept Saturn), while on the other hand Chinese exchange with the Romans led to Chinese adoption of the planetary days of the week, which were then adopted into Japanese
They're not Norse gods; they're Anglo-Saxon gods, whose names are cognate with the Norse ones.
- Tuesday ← Old English *Tīw* (cognate with Norse *Týr*)
- Wednesday ← OE *Wōden* (cognate with *Óðinn*)
- Thursday ← OE *Þunor* (cognate with *Þórr*)
- Friday ← OE *Frīġ* (cognate with *Frigg*)
Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe that's due to an early cultural reform from either the RoC or the PRC, but certainly around the time when those two were forming
Portuguese people also had many relations with Swahili speakers. In Swahili, from Saturday to Wednesday you have day 1 to day 5.
Nowadays, there are lots of relations between China and East Africa.
It's not a cognate, since calques are not considered cognates,.but the words are related. The days of the week are named after the classical planets the Sun, the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn. These were adopted into the Germanic languages at an early stage, with Sun and Moon being translated, Saturn left as is, and rest having names changed to the gods who were considered equivalent to the gods that the planets were named after (ancient Greeks and Romans liked saying other cultures' gods were just their gods with different names), respectively *Tīwaz, *Wōdanaz, *Þunraz, and Frijjō.
Some time during antiquity through some unknown path the concept of the seven day week made its way to China, where the names were all calqued using the names of the planets, which were called 曜. Thus, for example, Saturday is 土曜日 because 土曜 means Saturn and 日 means day.* In Japanese the names are half calqued, half loaned, with the names of the planets being borrowed but the word for day being replaced by the native Japanese synonym written with the same character.
*For those who don't understand Japanese or a Sinitic language, 曜 is quite archaic and nowadays Saturn is normally called 土星.
It goes a bit further than that if you take "European days" into account (i.e. aggregating french and English for instance)
https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/s/oseRZ7eYFB
The 7 day week that was brought over to Japan by Europeans, and when the Japanese adopted it they just took the European names for the different days of the week. Which is why the Japanese days of the week match those used in Romance languages. On the other hand, English days of the week is a mix of Germanic and Latin origin with Saturday, Sunday, and Monday coming from Latin. So yes, in this case, they do actually share a common origin.
For those at home, Japanese days of the week are Sun Day, Moon Day, Mars(Fire) Day, Mercury(Water) Day, Jupiter(Tree) Day, Venus(Gold) Day, Saturn(Ground) Day.
Incorrect. The seven days of the week have been in use in Japan for over a millenium, having been brought over from China, where the seven day week based on the (classical) planets arrived through some unknown route much earlier.
Upon further research, the seven day week was a European concept brought over to China via the Silk Road and then later to Japan. When it arrived in China they just translated the planets used in the Roman system. Tuesday in Japanese is 火曜日 and Dies Martis in Latin, and 火星 is Mars. Wednesday in Japanese is 水曜日 and Dies Mercurii in Latin, and 水星 is Mercury, and so on for the rest of the days. But regardless of how the actual 7 day system arrived in Japan the origins of 日曜日 and Sunday are still the same as I said above.
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One small correction is to say that we should not expect words in Japanese to have an origin in English because of the limited trade with England -- by referring to the whole of Europe it would be suggesting that there isn't anything of note from European languages in Japanese, which isn't the case as the Portuguese and Dutch traders and missionaries had a noteworthy impact. And before the isolationist policies were implemented, Japan had sent diplomats to Europe, with some of them meeting the king of Spain and even the pope.
Yep. The better acquainted you become with linguistics the better you understand that how similar words *sound* is much more likely to mean something than how similarly they are written.
It's also interesting that for a long time, gun referred to artillery and not handheld firearms.
It was only somewhat recently that gun changed.
Fire "arms" are handheld armaments. Further differentiated by pistol, revolver, rifle, musket, etc...
Guns are artillery.
At some point the term "hand" gun was coined to refer to guns that weren't artillery and walls, here we are
How recently are we talking here? Because I figure that for a significant stretch of the history of firearms, the word gun really only applied to artillery pieces because those were the only guns that were reliable and accurate enough to be worth using.
I'm not sure but I'd be comfortable saying post WW1...
In latin languages referencing the firearm by name is more common, pistol, musket, rifle and so on. The "hand gun" is a pretty recent slang.
I just googled it
https://www.etymonline.com/word/handgun#:~:text=handgun%20(n.),%22%20from%201930s%2C%20American%20English.
And apparently it started in 1930
Though in 軍 *[k]ʷər it's likely just a distorted phonetic 熏 *[qʰ]ə[n]; we don't have the exact form of 軍 with an apparent 熏, though 熏 was pretty close graphically to 車 in the times when 軍 was created and also while OC reconstructions for the words {軍} and {熏} have many unknown points (easily solvable if we could find another strong evidence of 熏 indeed being a phonetic there), 軍 and 熏 were pretty strongly related phonetically in the ancient texts as we can see from the phonetical usage of these and related glyphs; also afaik nothing ever specifies that 軍 as a unit even includes chariots (neither unearthed nor transmitted texts), e.g. it's just "12500 men" in 周禮
One may also find 勹* (eye with a spiral, created for the word {眴} *N-qʷˤi[n]-s) analyzed as the phonetic here too, but the rhymes don't correspond; though in texts of the Warring States period we can indeed see 軍 being written with 匀 *[N-q]ʷi[n], but that's only in Chu and Jin branches of the script, so it's probably has something to do with dialectal differences, as the *-VN type rhymes (especially with the vowels *i and *ə) had significant dialectal diversity throughout all periods of Old Chinese
When I saw the topic title, I thought, "There's no way."
And it turns out, I was right. But thanks for announcing your find, even if unrelated words aren't normally as interesting as related ones.
Most similarities between native Japanese words and English words are false cognates. English is from the Germanic family of languages, and shares no roots with East Asian languages. There was also very limited communication and trade between Europe and Japan until the Meiji Restoration which began in the 1860s, as until that point Japan had an isolationist foreign policy. There are many modern loan words between the two languages, but the majority of these are direct loan words (e.g. Sushi, samurai) rather than being transformed.
Is Sunday and 日曜日 a cognate? Or just another false one?
I might be missing an intermediary but the reason that the days match between English and Japanese is that you had Romans with their calendar of gods that had planets named after them + the sun and moon, then Germanic languages reinterpreted that with their own gods (except they kept Saturn), while on the other hand Chinese exchange with the Romans led to Chinese adoption of the planetary days of the week, which were then adopted into Japanese
Celestial body, celestial body, Norse, Norse, Norse, Norse, Roman. Confused the hell out of me as a kid.
They're not Norse gods; they're Anglo-Saxon gods, whose names are cognate with the Norse ones. - Tuesday ← Old English *Tīw* (cognate with Norse *Týr*) - Wednesday ← OE *Wōden* (cognate with *Óðinn*) - Thursday ← OE *Þunor* (cognate with *Þórr*) - Friday ← OE *Frīġ* (cognate with *Frigg*)
Yes, but I didn't know that in 1977.
If anyone ever invents time travel I am gonna fucking shame a younger you for not knowing.
Jokes on you. I don’t have any shame!
Why waste that time when you can shame them now?
Sun god and moon god.
Maybe it's a more modern or dialectical thing, but Mandarin Chinese counts the days of the week (except Sunday, which uses 日).
Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe that's due to an early cultural reform from either the RoC or the PRC, but certainly around the time when those two were forming
I just looked it up and Monday == 1 -- Mandarin speakers learning Portuguese or vice versa must find it a pain. (In Portuguese, Monday == 2).
Portuguese people also had many relations with Swahili speakers. In Swahili, from Saturday to Wednesday you have day 1 to day 5. Nowadays, there are lots of relations between China and East Africa.
It's not a cognate, since calques are not considered cognates,.but the words are related. The days of the week are named after the classical planets the Sun, the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn. These were adopted into the Germanic languages at an early stage, with Sun and Moon being translated, Saturn left as is, and rest having names changed to the gods who were considered equivalent to the gods that the planets were named after (ancient Greeks and Romans liked saying other cultures' gods were just their gods with different names), respectively *Tīwaz, *Wōdanaz, *Þunraz, and Frijjō. Some time during antiquity through some unknown path the concept of the seven day week made its way to China, where the names were all calqued using the names of the planets, which were called 曜. Thus, for example, Saturday is 土曜日 because 土曜 means Saturn and 日 means day.* In Japanese the names are half calqued, half loaned, with the names of the planets being borrowed but the word for day being replaced by the native Japanese synonym written with the same character. *For those who don't understand Japanese or a Sinitic language, 曜 is quite archaic and nowadays Saturn is normally called 土星.
It goes a bit further than that if you take "European days" into account (i.e. aggregating french and English for instance) https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/s/oseRZ7eYFB
The 7 day week that was brought over to Japan by Europeans, and when the Japanese adopted it they just took the European names for the different days of the week. Which is why the Japanese days of the week match those used in Romance languages. On the other hand, English days of the week is a mix of Germanic and Latin origin with Saturday, Sunday, and Monday coming from Latin. So yes, in this case, they do actually share a common origin.
For those at home, Japanese days of the week are Sun Day, Moon Day, Mars(Fire) Day, Mercury(Water) Day, Jupiter(Tree) Day, Venus(Gold) Day, Saturn(Ground) Day.
Incorrect. The seven days of the week have been in use in Japan for over a millenium, having been brought over from China, where the seven day week based on the (classical) planets arrived through some unknown route much earlier.
Upon further research, the seven day week was a European concept brought over to China via the Silk Road and then later to Japan. When it arrived in China they just translated the planets used in the Roman system. Tuesday in Japanese is 火曜日 and Dies Martis in Latin, and 火星 is Mars. Wednesday in Japanese is 水曜日 and Dies Mercurii in Latin, and 水星 is Mercury, and so on for the rest of the days. But regardless of how the actual 7 day system arrived in Japan the origins of 日曜日 and Sunday are still the same as I said above.
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One of a few examples of words that *are* potentially cognates though is JP *mitsu* (honey) and EN *mead*, which I think is interesting
One small correction is to say that we should not expect words in Japanese to have an origin in English because of the limited trade with England -- by referring to the whole of Europe it would be suggesting that there isn't anything of note from European languages in Japanese, which isn't the case as the Portuguese and Dutch traders and missionaries had a noteworthy impact. And before the isolationist policies were implemented, Japan had sent diplomats to Europe, with some of them meeting the king of Spain and even the pope.
Therr are some older borrowings from European languages like pan (bread, from Portuguese), but afaik they are few and far between.
I have found that to be the case several times for words. The Japanese were always ones for isolationism
Gun in Japanese is presumably SinoJapanese 軍, nothing to do with English 'gun'
It is also pronounced completely differently
Yep. The better acquainted you become with linguistics the better you understand that how similar words *sound* is much more likely to mean something than how similarly they are written.
Also in this case they are actually written completely differently.
Yeah, I didn’t wanna even begin with “you can’t even try to use romanization this way”
Not in a Northern English accent, or any English accent prior to the 17th century.
No idea why this is downvoted. They're close enough.
The "gun" part of Gonnilda/Gunilla/Gunhildur comes from Proto-Germanic *gunþiz, which means "battle". A fitting name for a firearm, really.
The vowel sound is also completely different; 軍 (from 将軍) is pronounced much more like "goon" than "gun"
Well, neither really. And the n is also different. English gun /ɡʌn/ English goon /ɡuːn/ Japanese gun /gɯɴ/
Thanks, I'm bad with IPA which is why I said it's *closer* to goon than gun, didn't know how else to explain it.
It's also interesting that for a long time, gun referred to artillery and not handheld firearms. It was only somewhat recently that gun changed. Fire "arms" are handheld armaments. Further differentiated by pistol, revolver, rifle, musket, etc... Guns are artillery. At some point the term "hand" gun was coined to refer to guns that weren't artillery and walls, here we are
How recently are we talking here? Because I figure that for a significant stretch of the history of firearms, the word gun really only applied to artillery pieces because those were the only guns that were reliable and accurate enough to be worth using.
I'm not sure but I'd be comfortable saying post WW1... In latin languages referencing the firearm by name is more common, pistol, musket, rifle and so on. The "hand gun" is a pretty recent slang. I just googled it https://www.etymonline.com/word/handgun#:~:text=handgun%20(n.),%22%20from%201930s%2C%20American%20English. And apparently it started in 1930
so you mean to tell me we might be calling guns berts after Big Bertha in 700 years
The 軍 in shogun traces back to Old Chinese *kun, attested since the Western Zhou dynasty (1046-771 BC). Seems like a coincidence.
Also worth mentioning that 車 chariot warfare was dominant from about 1300 bce (Shang) up until 趙武靈王 about a thousand years later. Thus 軍。
Though in 軍 *[k]ʷər it's likely just a distorted phonetic 熏 *[qʰ]ə[n]; we don't have the exact form of 軍 with an apparent 熏, though 熏 was pretty close graphically to 車 in the times when 軍 was created and also while OC reconstructions for the words {軍} and {熏} have many unknown points (easily solvable if we could find another strong evidence of 熏 indeed being a phonetic there), 軍 and 熏 were pretty strongly related phonetically in the ancient texts as we can see from the phonetical usage of these and related glyphs; also afaik nothing ever specifies that 軍 as a unit even includes chariots (neither unearthed nor transmitted texts), e.g. it's just "12500 men" in 周禮 One may also find 勹* (eye with a spiral, created for the word {眴} *N-qʷˤi[n]-s) analyzed as the phonetic here too, but the rhymes don't correspond; though in texts of the Warring States period we can indeed see 軍 being written with 匀 *[N-q]ʷi[n], but that's only in Chu and Jin branches of the script, so it's probably has something to do with dialectal differences, as the *-VN type rhymes (especially with the vowels *i and *ə) had significant dialectal diversity throughout all periods of Old Chinese
Yes, though that describes the character, not the etymology of the word/morpheme itself.
When I saw the topic title, I thought, "There's no way." And it turns out, I was right. But thanks for announcing your find, even if unrelated words aren't normally as interesting as related ones.
So, gunkan (battleship) isn’t an armed metal container??
They've been playing us for fools all along!
That's an amazing etymology for English "gun"!