Japanese words and names sound African (2022)

Nit: pokatokaino is unlikely to be Japanese, since word-initial p has morphed into h during the centuries. But it works if you turn it into, say, t.

Anyway, I think there's another factor: the common alphabet we transliterate these languages to is quite limited. I suspect the similarities become less obvious if you use something like the IPA, which has better universal correspondence between sounds and letters (i.e. doesn't reduce every sound to the same ~26 symbols).

Something amusing about Japanese vs Xhosa (a Bantu language) is that their words for yes and no are reversed:

Japanese Hai = yes, Xhosa - Hai is a no

Japanese eeye = no, Xhosa - ewe is yes

Speaking of similar sound system of Finnish and Japenese, I think we should highlight the discredited language family claim of Uralic-Altaic, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ural-Altaic_languages You can still find tons of other theories of "what else could be related to Uralic"... So far, no African languages were included in these theories. But that's probably just a question of time and politics (and definitely not linguistic research...)

> This basic pattern (consonant + vowel + maybe limited option for final consonant) is very common; it's the most common arrangement among the worlds languages. Far more common than languages like English which allow monstrosities like "strengths" (which is 6 consonants and one vowel).

It's a fun spectrum!

Italian is often given as an example of this, but Italian does allow more complex consonant clusters at the beginning of a syllable than Hawaiian or Japanese (e.g. gra-do, glo-bo, pneu-ma-ti-co). You see echoes of the Italian proclivity towards final vowels in English-language stereotypes of Italian accents, where a schwa (an 'uh' sound) is added after word final consonants ("I want-uh" etc.).

Czech, on the other end of the spectrum, happily allows for things like zmrz-li-na and - famously - strč prst skrz krk (yes, that spelling is phonetic - the rs are syllabic). Interestingly though, Czech evolved out of late Proto-Slavic, and PS had a rule that no syllable end with a consonant (the law of open syllables). This made late Proto-Slavic look more like modern Italian. So, e.g. prst in Czech was prĭ-stŭ in Old Church Slavonic, and krk was krŭ-kŭ.

> Pokatokaino

According to Google Translate, that would be "shortcuts" in Maori. (Reverse, "Pokatata".) Nice!

Your general gist is correct: languages with CV (consonant-vowel) phonotactics[1] with a simple vowel systems tend to develop similar features, possibly through convergent evolution:

- agglutinative syntax (i.e. combining long sequences of words and suffixes to form complex meanings) - vowel harmony (seems to exist in the earliest attested forms of Old Japanese, but not anymore) - palatalization before front vowels (i, e) - further simplification of the vowel system

My only nitpick is that Bantu languages are not relevant here. The author is explicitly focusing on Nigerian languages (although he titled that "Japanese words and name sound African"... Africa is a big continent with just as much language diversity as Asia, if not more). While there are some Bantu languages in Nigeria, they aren't as prominent there as they are in East, Central and South Africa. The author mentions Yoruba, Igbo, Fula, Hausa, Edo and several others - none of them is a Bantu language, although some are related. Even though you can put all of the languages above (except for Hausa) into the hypothetical Niger-Congo macro-family, together with the Bantu languages, they are quite far away by this point.

The other issue is that Bantu languages are probably not the best example for "Japanese-sounding" languages. They feature very frequent use of prenasalized consonants. While prenasalization almost certainly existed in Old Japanese[2] and is still retained in some northeastern dialects, this is not something people would identify with "Japanese-sounding" nowadays. Not to mention southern Bantu languages like Zulu and Xhosa that feature heavy usage of click consonants - these are completely alien to Japanese phonology.

But this doesn't detract at all from your argument. Languages with similar structure, will often sound similar. I think the other anecdote the author mentions (Plateau State languages sounding Sino-Tiban) also checks out. I am not familiar with any of these languages, but it seems many of them are tonal and based around heavy use of complex monosyllabic morphemes with complex combinations of initial consonant + medial glides(?) + diphthongs + final consonants. This is exactly what so strongly distinguishes the phonology and phonotactics of Sino-Tibetan languages.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonotactics

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendaku#Origin

Pokatokaino is indeed not a Finnish word, but contains multiple: Pokat - slang for sunglasses, Kato - slang version of katso (look), Toka - slang version of toinen (ordinal second), Kaino - timid/coy.

Finnish has umlauts though, so quite a lot of words don’t sound like the mentioned languages so much.

Yep it's just the coincidence of a simple sound system and finding patterns where none exist. For example saying ba means horse in Japanese isn't exactly correct, horse is uma, ba is just the closest sound that exists which allows Japanese people to pronounce Chinese words like 馬力 circa whenever that word was added to the language, if they took it today it would be ma.

It's the equivalent of Latin or Greek words and affixes in English.

Regarding the similarities between Hawaiian and Japanese: There are theories among linguists that there is a connection between Austronesian languages and Japanese. These theories don’t seem to be infeasible, but are currently lacking sufficient supporting evidence.

That's interesting.

From an English perspective katakana (a system for writing words foreign to Japan, which can't write English very well) seems broken, but I guess from what you say that it's probably effective for most languages

> Finnish is also oddly similar-sounding

For a long time I ignorantly assumed that Marimekko was a Japanese brand.

Just curious: what path lead you to know this stuff?

I thought Japanese was unpitched

Gyang Nyam definitely sounds Korean (thanks to that old meme), but then Shom Pwajok is less discernable -- it's like a hint of Thai or some other southeast Asian language.

While they could be valid Korean syllables, they don't sound like Korean names, either. The only words containing "gyang" or "nyam" I can think of are slangs or onomatopoeia, and I don't think I've seen "shom" or "pwa" in the wild.

> Shok Jok. That name could pass for a Mandarin or Cantonese name.

These sounds do not exist in Mandarin. This would never be, or sound like, a Mandarin name. And no mention is made of tones, which are critical in Mandarin.

The article already smelled of a bovid's feces, but at this point I actually saw the bullshit.

Yeah, this felt like a Gell-Mann moment

Quick IT lesson:

Muro means wall

Muratore means wall builder (-atore means doer)

Muratori means wall builders (male plural )

TIL. Just assumed it's more likely a "cool" pseudonym, considering a common fascination with everything Japanese in the nerd circles, than a diverse heritage. Turns out it's neither.

Your name doesn't sound Japanese to me unless it ends with u vowel so that your last name sounds like Ijidakinrō.

That's interesting, because Kinro or キ-ン-ロ is an actual name in Japanese (or at least some Anime that I watch)

Ayo Edebiri has it easier I'm guessing; her last name sounds less ethnically ambiguous I'd say.