Japanese & Hawaiian Are Weirdly Similar

if you love name explain then please consider leaving a super thanks in the comments of this video it's a great way to make a one-time donation to the channel and help support name explain the nation of Japan and the US state of Hawaii are similar in a lot of ways both home to breathtaking natural beauty highlighted by mountains luscious Greenery and erupted volcanoes as well as both being home to Unique cultures that thrived in isolation from the rest of the world yet there's another way in which they're connected and it's a little bit odd to say the least there's this really Link in their languages now okay before you think I'm going to try and clickbait you off some nonsense I know these languages are not related Hawaiian is a Polynesian language and part of the wider austronesian language family while Japanese is part of its own japonic language family which contains a few other smaller languages do not fear I'm not going to try and give you some crackpot Theory where I try and say they actually connected or anything like that but there's something weirdly similar between these two languages I just need to talk about it I have wanted to highlight this for some time now over the is I've made multiple videos about Japan and the Japanese language and a couple videos about Hawaii and the Hawaiian language I've even talked about the link between these two before in an incredibly Niche video looking at how one of Japan's biggest cultural icons ended up shouting the name of a Hawaiian King every time he uses his signature move every time I've ended up in a Wikipedia wormhole in relation to either the Land of the Rising Sun or the Aloha State I've been taken aback by the strange similarity between the two languages and I'm seemingly not the only one as upon researching this video I uncovered various articles and foreign posts asking about it too so I promise you I'm I'm not going crazy so if they aren't related then how are they similar well to give an example let's look at the two names of kahoku and kiha these are both cement names and they look and sound somewhat similar to one another it would be easy to presume that they are from the same country and language but of course that isn't the case kahoku is actually the name of a in Japan while kakha is the name of a town found in Hawaii yeah y despite sounding like they come from the same language they're from two completely different ones and this isn't the only example of town name sounding similar between the two take the Japanese maawa and the Hawaiian makina or even the Japanese hanawa and the Hawaiian Hana there's even words like I which sound the same in Japanese and Hawaiian but mean completely different things love in Japanese and food in Hawaiian though personally I feel love and food are one and the same even the most well-known piece of Hawaiian their greeting of Aloha sounds somewhat similar ilar to the Japanese greeting of Ohio okay granted they aren't identical but they sound way more alike than bonjour and Gant which are both from the same larger language family as I told you I'm not going crazy here there really is this weird similarity between the two languages which is only confounded by the fact they're not only not part of the same family but they are literally separated by the largest ocean on the planet what on Earth is going on with these two languages there well the reason they sound so similar to one another is because the thing they do have in common is a simp similar phology phology is the part of language which is all about sound to study phology is the study the sounds a language makes as well as the similar sounds and speech patterns that occur within a language and across a variety of languages each language has its own phology some way more distinctive than others some languages can be recognized by their phology alone I'm sure we've all heard an Italian impression where the person isn't actually speaking any Italian but just making sounds that sound Italian that's phology at play oh man I should make a video about Italian phology someone add that to the list please but phology can explain to us why languages sound similar to one another even if they aren't related and that's what's happening here with Japanese and Hawaiian this similarity and phology between the two languages means that both Japanese and Hawaiian have very similar rules and features when it comes to their sounds in example both languages have the exact same set of five vowel sounds with a making an a like sounding both e making an e like sounding both I making an e like sounding both o making an O like sound in both and you making an O like sound in both other features they share are things like words never ending in a consonant in evil language syllables being only one or two letters long and syllables always having to end with a vow sound it's these rules which explain to us why both Japanese and Hawaiian words have that b b ba ba ba sound to them for lack of a better word what this means is that a Japanese speaker with a good understanding of the Latin alphabet and romanization should be able to read a Hawaiian word fairly easily even if they aren't exactly sure what the word means and vice versa for a Hawaiian speaker reading romanized Japanese though to stress again these languages aren't interchangeable with one another nor mutually intelligible like how the languages of Scandinavia are an example they're not mutually intelligible because once again these languages are not related yet while the languages might not have a shared history the lands in which these languages derive from have an incredibly interesting shared history of one another there is an extensive history of Japanese migration to Hawaii even to this day Hawaii is the US state with the highest population of Japanese people the earliest known of migrants from Japan to Hawaii were recorded in 1868 though it's highly likely Japanese people visited the land Prius in some way shape or form it was in this year that around 150 Japanese people made their way to Hawaii this was during the first year of Japan's Mai era and these first settlers were known as the Ganon mono meaning firste people at this time it was actually illegal for Japanese people to travel abroad meaning these first migrants were actually illegal nevertheless the two places formed a good relationship this means that there have actually been Japanese people living in Hawaii before Hawaii was even a US state as that happened in 1959 it was just a couple decades later when Japanese migration really took off in 1885 around 1,000 Japanese people made their way to the land the main thing that drove this migration was money Japanese people heard of great work opportunities on sugarcane plantations in Hawaii people from Hawaii were even even sent to Japan to try and persuade young men to come over and work many Japanese men worked intense jobs cutting sugar cane and many Japanese women became picture Brides meaning they were married after men who had only seen a photo of them while it was tiring work the Japanese people integrated well in Hawaii with many Japanese Customs traditions and Foods becoming a mainstate in the land Buddhism became popular there with the Buddhist Festival of Oban becoming a huge deal in Hawaii even to this day likewise many Japanese restaurants and stores opened up too as well as Japanese language schools even simple things like mcky the Japanese sweet tree has taken on a life of its own in Hawaii this smooth integration however took a turn during the second world war with the Japanese attack on PO Harbor in Hawaii this led to many of the Japanese people in the USA being looked down upon and tensions between Japanese Americans and other races living in the land ran high this anti-japanese sentiment was Rife on the mainland USA especially on the west coast Hawai wasn't as bad seemingly the Japanese that had integrated themselves into American society quite well by this point yet still many saw them has potential enemies on the islands thankfully anti-japanese sentiment in Hawaii and across the USA seems to be dwindling today Japanese people one of the biggest ethnic groups in Hawaii and at some point in its history the largest group and Beyond Japanese people living in Hawaii a huge amount go there on holiday it's become one of the most popular tourist destinations for Japanese people with the Nation holding the islands in a special place in their heart having a deep love for This Island state there's a couple reasons why I wanted to talk about the shared history between Japan and Hawaii first off it's really interesting secondly it helped head out this video and thirdly it has led the Japanese influence on the language used in Hawaii while Hawaii now mainly speaks English with Hawaiian words thrown in many Japanese words have found themselves at home there even beyond the Japanese words that have cemented themselves in wider English like karaoke and manga Wikipedia has a whole list of Japanese alone words used in Hawaii featuring words like Benjo meaning toilet Teo meaning octopus and even Jan Kempo the Japanese term for rock paper scissors I even found this glossery of ha Wii Japanese first published in 1990 which features words like abocado for avocado hu for house and nasubi for eggplant this shows us that the Japanese language has most certainly had an impact on haai but those phological similarities between the languages definitely predate that 19th century arrival of Japanese people in Hawaii so while we've established that there are some really odd similarities between the two languages what we really need to ask ourselves is why how did these two languages so far remove from one another end up sounding so alike well in all honesty there probably isn't no real answer the idea of people from either of these two places visiting the other in a distant past on a tiny seaf fairing vessel crossing the Pacific and integrating their languages together sounds really neat as does the idea of some kind of mysterious secret language we don't know know about connecting the two of them and in turn revealing they are all part of some huge language family we don't really know about but in reality it's probably just a coincidence a sheer fluke of language there's only so many sounds the human mouth is able to make so it's not surprising that two languages ended up sounding similar to one another and followed similar phological rules and besides the two languages aren't entirely the same in example Japanese has no l sound while Hawaiian is full of them they also have different word or ERS with Japanese going subject object verb and Hawaiian going verb subject object but the largest difference has to be their amount of native speakers there are thought to be around just 2,000 native Hawaiian speakers while there are about 120 million native Japanese speakers Hawaiian really needs to up its game or Japanese really needs to calm down but anyway while nowhere near related to one another or even identical to one another these two languages who respective cultures and peoples have had a long loving shared relationship are undoubtedly really weirdly similar or maybe I'm just reading too much into it who knows name explain depends on viewers like yourself supporting the channel financially on patreon so a huge thank you to everyone who does donating just $1 a month helps the channel amazingly and gets you bonuses including adree videos exclusive content the power to request ideas to be made into actual name explain videos and your name at the end of the video with all these awesome people visit patreon.com slame explain or click the link down below to find out how you too can support the channel thank you thanks for reaching the end of the video why not watch another And subscribe to keep up to date on all things name explain you can find myself on Instagram while name explain 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Channel: Name Explain

Views: 29,168

Keywords: Name Explain, Etymology, Langugae, Word Origins, Educational video, japan, japanese, hawaii, hawaiian

Id: EMVTn8tAIUE

Length: 11min 2sec (662 seconds)

Published: Fri May 24 2024