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Why didn’t Korean and Japanese become tonal? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| morganie Newbie United States Joined 5222 days ago 31 posts - 41 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 1 of 38 25 August 2010 at 2:52am | IP Logged | ||
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Why didn't they become tonal? After borrowing the thousands of Chinese characters which are quite homophonic even with the tones, stripping them of any tones, and trying to use them somehow in their languages, they didn't turn tonal and don't show any signs of becoming so. Why didn't this massive influence of Chinese turn these languages tonal? Edited by morganie on 25 August 2010 at 2:53am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| CaucusWolf Senior Member United States Joined 5070 days ago 191 posts - 234 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Arabic (Written), Japanese | Message 2 of 38 25 August 2010 at 4:29am | IP Logged | ||
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You could also ask why do they use the characters to begin with. It's true that these languages originated from China but so did many languages from Latin. Many languages took the Latin alphabet but added accent marks etc. Japanese,Korean and especially Vietnamese (which uses a Latin derived writing system) changed overtime.
I also believe that these differences make each culture unique and interesting. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5564 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 3 of 38 25 August 2010 at 4:43am | IP Logged | ||
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When did the Chinese ... dialects develop tone anyways?
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| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5179 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 4 of 38 25 August 2010 at 5:05am | IP Logged | ||
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I can't think of an example where a language borrowing words from another brought
significant changes to its phonological system. Unless the language has tones, when the words are borrowed, native speakers can't control the tone, so they can't assimilate them. Same goes for gender. Words are not necessarily acquired directly from native speakers of the other language either, so much information is lost along the way. Moreover, Japanese has a pitch system already and I believe some Korean dialects also do. At some point in time, we can only suppose that most, if not all, Korean and Japanese dialects had pitch. Edited by Arekkusu on 25 August 2010 at 5:10am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6566 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 5 of 38 25 August 2010 at 5:11am | IP Logged | ||
Short answer: loanwords are always adjusted to fit the phonology of the borrowing language. 9 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5179 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 6 of 38 25 August 2010 at 5:17am | IP Logged | ||
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Now that is not to say that changes over time because of borrowing do not occur.
In Québec French, i becomes lax in closed syllables, making words like bean sound like bin. And that is exactly what happened to the word bean when it was introduced into QF (meaning baked beans). However, more recently, the word cheap made it's way into the language and at that time, the distinction between cheap and chip (potato chips) had become possible. The same is also true of poule (lax) and pool (tense). Edited by Arekkusu on 25 August 2010 at 6:00pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Warp3 Senior Member United States forum_posts.asp?TID= Joined 5333 days ago 1419 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese | Message 7 of 38 25 August 2010 at 5:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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From what I've read, Korean used to have long and short vowels (as in sound duration, not like English long/short vowels), so many words that are currently homophones, weren't originally such. However, this aspect is pretty much gone in modern Korean.
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| Skauld Tetraglot Newbie Greece sokail-t3h-noobie.de Joined 5174 days ago 3 posts - 7 votes Speaks: Greek*, Japanese, FrenchB2, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Swedish, Norwegian | Message 8 of 38 02 October 2010 at 5:46am | IP Logged | ||
If by "It's true that these languages originated from China" you mean that Japanese and Korean (and Vietnamese as you add in your next sentence) are languages derived or in any case genetically related to the Chinese macrolanguage (and I think you mean that, taking into consideration that you draw an analogy with languages originated from Latin), I can assure you this couldn't have been further from the truth. It's true that Chinese has been a majour influence to these languages, yet this is the only relation they have. Other than that, they belong to completely different language families. If you mean that Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese originated in the geographical area now occupied by China, I think it's also false, without me being perfectly sure though. Korean and perhaps Japanese are more likely to have originated somewhere in the northern borders of modern day China, or even further northwards. And this of course doesn't mean that they derive from Russian, just because Russia happens to be there... ;) Similarities between cultures and especially languages are more often than not a result of the needs of commerce, of interminglings of populations and of course of plain old... influence. ;) Edited by Skauld on 06 October 2010 at 1:08am 5 persons have voted this message useful |
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