No, sir. Please allow me to correct you before making any further ignorant claims so that no-one is misled into thinking similarly. Chinese is NOT the foundation of these languages.

Japanese and Korean are their own languages; these words had applied meanings since the beginning of these cultures. They existed long before the existence of modern Hanzì and were believed to have their own scripts in their native ancient civilisations which were not too popular and became lost. A similar story exists in Arabia – many who did not have wealth were unable to be taught the Arabic script and known as illiterates. Only fortunate and rich people were able to be schooled. The same applies to Japan, because majority people were farmers, textile or blacksmiths, artisans or singers; because they were quite poor they could not be taught or schooled the native writing scripts that were taught to the few royals and nobles for communication. Over time there were many wars and destruction (burning of palaces, schools, vaults) so it all got burned down, erasing it from the national mind as most people did not know it. Likewise if Arabs who taught or learned their scripts became fewer, over centuries and a thousand year(s), it is bound to be forgotten in the sea of sand.

These are mere strokes in characters. They themselves do not justify the language, only to hold a meaning when used in conjuction to words. Japanese itself for example is much more complex than Chinese, as all characters would have a base of 3, 4 or 5 readings and can even go beyond 7. Chinese is concrete and the most difficult part is simply a consistent pronunciation to not differentiate it with different words of similar intonations. Other than that it is merely remembering the strokes of each character. The writer was not trying to show different writing but different pronunciation: the Chinese being different from the other two and the Korean pronunciation originating from the Japanese. Most Chinese combinations differ as that is the only script. In truth, the origin of Hanzì is a mystery as the Chinese invaded many nearby regions (Tibet, East Turk, etc.) and the major contributors to the Chinese dynasties and culture were the Mongolians as well as the influence they brought along, and later added South Mongolia.

In the end, Asian languages from the Near East onwards are usually difficult for 98% of westerners, of whom try to simplify these complex languages in a manner befitting to them without realising that they are corrupting stylisation and choice of the native people. For example, Jp character can be pronounced both “T” and “To” with the latter being the prime in native words. The problem is westerners only oversimplify it to the latter without understanding as the language holds little specific tones, it can legitimately be written in many different ways without being cringy.

I hope that clears any underlying confusion and misunderstanding 🙂

Exactly! A large portion of ‘Chinese words’ (pronunciation) are actually Japanese and originate in Japan
Through reverse travel and trade, Korean absorbed many Japanese words and consequently into Chinese. Chinese often make the mistake to assume that most words originate in China, this is false. Japan has been a pioneer in over 10% of Chinese vocabulary and pronunciations – this is called the Sinification or Sinofication of words (meaning adopt into Chinese by using native sounds and pronunciation). And because of this, it is often ignored and passed off as Chinese

This was written long ago but I happened upon it. If you are learning Korean very seriously, or are a native Korean speaker who didn’t study hanja very carefully in school, it will absolutely help you a great deal to learn hanja if you ever wish to learn to *read* Japanese especially but also Chinese. The author is correct that the pronunciation differences of the same characters in difference ‘CJK’ language is too different for knowing one language to help much in understanding the spoken word in the others. However I think she exaggerates a bit how different the characters are in the three. The character sets used in Japanese and Korean are the same for most characters, and the ones that aren’t don’t take that long to pick up. Simplified Chinese is much more different but the traditional set used in Taiwan and by overseas Chinese is virtually the same as the Korean set. Meanings are different but a pretty small % of the time. I have been able to learn to read Japanese reasonably well and (traditional character) Chinese somewhat by knowing hanja with a small percentage of the effort it would take starting from scratch. Of course in Japanese you must also learn kana but that’s nothing like the task of learning 100’s of characters. Also not mentioned in the article, many ‘Chinese derived’ words in Japanese were coined in Japan and then absorbed into Korean in the colonial period (1910-45), some made their way into Chinese usage. On certain subjects (for example 20th century military history, a special interest of mine) technical terms are almost all the same in Korean and Japanese.

You claim to be a linguist but have never heard of CJK?

👍🏾

Finally, underneath your table you claim that “Japanese and Korean share a considerable number of lexical similarities than may not be applicable to Chinese”, but you fail to mention that most of those words have a common origin in Chinese. They were borrowed from Chinese into the other two languages, hence their similarly. Also, “kaban” handbag is originally a Japanese word that was borrowed into Korean. When discussing relationships between vocabulary in different languages, it is VITALLY important to distinguish between loans and cognates.

Great write up! However, the theory that Korean is an Altaic language has been debunked. In the academic linguistics world, it is defined as a language isolate, and it’s roots are simply the Koreanic language family.