Prowler wrote:Tbh, I've always noticed a slight similarity between both Korean and Japanese but not to this extent. I've always had this idea that Japanese was pretty much an isolated language, but turns out it shares some features or concepts with Korean to some degree.
There are
a lot of similarities between them, but it always confuses me when people can't tell them apart because they just sound so different and have such different vocabularies and all that. That once led to my embarrassing attempt to point out to IpseDixit some "rules of thumb" on how to differentiate them, only for literally not a single one of the differences to actually be waterproof... and I apparently misspelled "tones" as "toes" in the follow-up post about differences between Korean and Mandarin.
But yeah, it sometimes surprises me how similar Korean seems to Japanese. Like, mostly the false friends. Whenever I hear Korean, I swear I hear some Japanese genitals.
linguoboy wrote:vijayjohn wrote:Japanese grammar is also very similar to Classical Chinese grammar (but much less similar to the grammar of any variety of Chinese that's spoken today).
I've never heard this asserted before and--as someone who's informally studied both varieties--I don't find the grammar similar at all. So I'm wondering what prompts you to say this.
The only similarity I know of is that Classical Chinese had the same kind of topic marking, and I guess in general particles, as Japanese.
Prowler wrote:Tbh I'm not even sure how diverse/varied Chinese is. It seems like a lot of people either describe Mandarin and Cantonese as two different dialects or as two different languages.
I think that's just because the official position in China (and Macao, Hong Kong, Taiwan, etc. AFAIK) is that they're one language even though they're too different to consider mere dialects of one language by pretty much any standard.
Prowler wrote:A lot of people outside of Japan and Korea listen to pop music from those countries but I never really hear or read anything about Chinese pop music.
Yeah, I've noticed the same and sometimes feel kinda bad about not listening to much Chinese music; I just haven't been able to find much that sounds as enjoyable as Japanese music. There are also only a few Korean artists/bands I've listened to more than once. Japanese music just seems more varied, like there's a lot of Japanese metal, experimental music, jazz, etc. while Korean music seems to be 99% pop and hip hop; pop and hip hop can be nice, but it often feels like Korean pop and hip hop aren't as interesting as Japanese pop and hip hop.
I mean, in all honesty my impression is that with Japanese pop it's possible to suspend disbelief regarding its purely commercial intent and enjoy the music (and there's at least an illusion of musicality), whereas with Korean pop it comes across as so blatantly made for no other purpose than to make money that it's much harder to enjoy (and there isn't even an illusion of musicality, pop stars are just "symbols"). Also, real instruments are still common in Japanese pop while Korean pop seems 99% electronic; when it comes to the electronic stuff, there's more experimentation with different sounds and effects and stuff in Japan. Not to mention influence from genres outside pop (and hip hop and electronic music), which isn't that out of the ordinary in Japanese pop, but I've yet to hear in any Korean pop.
Of course, it's possible that that's only my impression because I've listened to
much more Japanese pop than Korean pop and the Korean pop I've listened to has always been the most mainstream stuff possible with like one or two exceptions. I'm also not saying Korean pop is bad, a lot of it is definitely well-made and enjoyable as its own thing in the right mood. And sex sells, so of course the Korean lewdness is a factor in why Korean pop is popular around the world... same as with American pop.
But Chinese music... I don't know, I tried to find some once but just couldn't find much. It was weird. I tried to search on Youtube and VK but only found a couple of songs by random artists; it was really bizarre, since China is so huge and it should be easy to find Chinese music. But apparently it's not. Maybe there's some kind of counter-censorship, or was at the time...? No idea, honestly, and I haven't been arsed enough to try again.
Prowler wrote:And usually when I hear of well-known Chinese movies, 99% of them seem to be from Hong Kong, NOT from Mainland China.
Same, although personally I've tried to watch mainland Chinese films once in a while. Some are actually great (although I can't remember any that were
actually great right now off the top of my head), but others...