I think traditional Chinese is easier for Japanese people to read than simplified Chinese, probably because we "imported" Chinese letters a long time ago. But in reality, we don't really understand Chinese except for some simple words. So if you want to communicate with Japanese people, you will have to learn Japanese. So if you want to learn Japanese with me, I will send you some Japanese lessons where I teach you the kind of Japanese that real-life Japanese people speak. Click here and subscribe bit.ly/3hYOWAG

"Kidnap a cow to dye your face." - Ancient Chinese proverb

1:58 *_"To kidnap a cow and dye your face?"_* That's kinda scary lol

I loved how seriously and professionally the two ladies took the challenge. Very admirable and charming.

Just to clarify, “rain falls and the ground hardens” (ame futte ji katamaru (雨降って地固まる) is an expression meaning something like “adversity makes us stronger.” You can think of it like after the rain, the ground gets harder/stronger. So the first two thought it was some kind of expression in which a cow gets stuck in the mud!

The two older women's reactions were most endearing, they really seemed interested in understanding the meanings.

Those two older ladies were so stylish!!

I m chinese, and I went to Japan during middle school. I had nearly no english speaking skills. Me and my other Chinese friend got into an accident on a skiing resort near Tokyo. My friend broke his leg, and I was able to communicate with the first responders with only a pen and a paper. My friend was able to make a full recovery afterwards. The thing I noticed was that Japanese can understand some Chinese characters, and chinese can understand some kanji.

4:30 he said "今天学校放火"?

"TO KIDNAP A COW AND DYE YOUR FACE"

As someone who can understand both Japanese and Chinese, this was really amusing. It was also interesting to see the correlations that Japanese people draw from Chinese characters to Japanese characters. Thank you for the hard work Yuta-san!

I am Japanese, but I enjoyed watching this video.I have never studied Chinese, but secondly, I was able to understand the meaning by looking at the letters.Each kanji used in Japan has its own meaning.Chinese and Japanese have several kanji characters in common.Therefore, even if you don't understand grammar, you can somehow convey your image by looking at kanji. This video is very interesting ☺️(I am using a translator.I'm sorry if there is a sentence that is difficult to understand.)

I would love to see more videos like this. It really brings grasp of bridging the language with a challenging middle ground.

That two middle age ladies were so adorable. Especially when the one of them said: "Stop pointing mic at me" 🤣

The intuitive way of reading Chinese as a Japanese: re-order all the Hanzi, find the same, if not, a similar Kanji, and make it sounds reasonable. The intuitive way of reading Japanese as a Chinese: ignore all the hiragana and katakana, re-order the Kanji, find the same, if not, a similar Hanzi, and make it sounds reasonable.

I can speak Chinese, and I found it easier to study Japanese with Chinese background, especially if you know the origins of most characters in classical Chinese, like how 走 now means walk but in olden times it means to run, which is what it means in Japanese now 走る. I also find it interesting that some Kanji use traditional Chinese while others use simplified Chinese and yet a few more use neither. Overall it's really interesting to see the interrelationships :)

One of the only good thing being a Chinese student in Japan is you have a better proficiency in kanjis compared to other Japanese students; you can flex your vocabularies in essays pretty easily

When the old people see a Chinese message about the Japanese flag, they immediately think it's about the war lol.

The aunties (older ladies) looks cool.

as a brazilian who doesn't speak neither japanese nor chinese I find this so interesting

As an English speaker, this is how I feel reading a language like Swedish or Norwegian. It's got a lot of the Anglo-Saxon roots that English came from so I can kind of piece together meaning from similar words. Even though it's related, German is actually a lot harder to understand because of the agglutination and the words seemed to have evolved more over time than in Swedish or Norwegian.

It seems a lot like English speakers trying to read German. Some things make perfect sense and others are completely unintelligible

That one dude was all like, "yeah, I know Chinese, what up."

This video is very important. It helps people from abroad to understand how different Asian languages actually are, and so are their cultures. Even Japanese people hardly understand Chinese pronunciation despite having similar ieroghyphs.

As a Turkish who can speak both Japanese and Mandarin, I really enjoyed the video❤️ thank you

2:42 dude literally gets almost the whole sentence meaning straight and then says Chinese is impossible wtf

日本の方：中国語は漢字ばかりで難しい。 中国の方：日本語は漢字以外にも平仮名と片仮名が混ざっていますので難しい。 ｗｗｗｗｗｗｗｗ

The first two guys were really putting the effort in trying and it’s awesome. The older ladies really knew their Kanji and can basically guess everything even though it’s simplified Chinese characters.

The reason why the text in Mandarin sounds very different from Japanese eg Japan is Riben vs Nihon or Nippon is because Mandarin has evolved a lot since Old / Middle Chinese. Meanwhile in southern China we have many different Chinese dialects which have better preserved the original Old / Middle Chinese pronunciation of these words. In Hokkien dialect for instance we pronounce 日本 as Jit Pun, 时间 as shigan, 新闻 as shinbun (very similar to Japanese), 学校 as hakkyo (same as Korean), 运动 as undong (again same as Korean), and there are other dialects like Shanghainese which pronounce it nyi pun which is very close to Nippon.

4:30 he actually said 今天学校放火 in mandarin which means: The school set on fire today! 😂

Im a Chinese descendant living in Canada. One day a Japanese friend of my parents from the local language learning centre came over and only my dad was home, who spoke zero English. Somehow they communicated with only a pen and some paper, and the friend helped with some gardening work together for the better part of a day; all only with Kanji on paper.

Their reaction surprised me, because I remember once my family went to Tokyo and the shop owner didn’t understand English, so we written in Chinese for the product that we want and they were able to understand the meaning

I loved this! And I love the woman with the glasses with the very cool asymmetrical haircut, she was just way too cool for school! And smart and wise

日本語、中国語、韓国語、ベトナム語(越南語)発音は似ている言葉がたくさんあるよ Emotion 日本: 感動 ( kandou) 中国: 感动 (gǎndòng) 韓国: 감동 (gamdong,感動） 越南: cảm động (感动、camdong) 理由、結婚、準備なども同じですよ Edited in 2021/08/30: Thanks for many likes. But I just want to share about the relationship of Kanji in East Asia languages. Please not toxic. 我的评论只是想说不同语言汉字之间的关系。不要吵架！

Foreigners visiting in Japan: just talking in Japanese is fine, don’t show me kanji sentences Japanese visiting in China: just showing kanji sentences is fine, don’t talk to me in Chinese

本当にありがとうゆたさん！😆💕✨ever since I started learning kanji (your recommondation, to learn by just reading really does magic, I learned 20 new kanji in two weeks) I was always wondering if japanese and chinese kanji can be read by both in the same context, and I had a slightly feeling it didn't, now ihad an amazing insight 🤣 あなたはすごいいです👌🏼✨️

This is so fun for me to watch since I'm studying both chinese and japanese

I like how the older ladies were trying to learn as they interpreted. Just their general attitude towards learning is somewhat inspiring

The two older women were great

Chinese and Japanese are from different language families and as such their grammatical structure is very different. However, there is still significant overlap between Chinese and Japanese not only in written script, but also in some pronunciations, and this is quite evident when testing small language snippets. Its probably impossible to have a Chinese and Japanese speaker hold a conversation with each other in their native languages when neither understands the other language, but for very simple phrases (e.g location signs, basic stuff like "I will eat beef noodles today") the meaning can be mostly ascertained. Interestingly, Chinese grammar has significant similarities with English, of all languages. Apparently they are both analytical and "common" languages (no extensive honorific systems), which means they have similar sentence structures. To learn English or Chinese when you is already fluent in one of them is as simple as learning the words and replacing them in the sentence, or so I've heard. The difficulty is Chinese language being tonal (ridiculously hard to pronounce sometimes) and the English language having more exceptions to many of its rules than adherents, leading to a jumbled mess. At 5:30, the woman says "library" in Japanese. Incidentally, it sounds like a very accented way of saying "library" in Chinese, and would probably be understandable to a Chinese speaker. Yet, the woman didn't recognise all the Chinese characters for "library". So this is an example of where ancient Chinese pronunciation that went over to Japan survived the ages, but the meaning of the written characters did not. In other cases, it was the reverse; the same character had the same meaning in Hanzi/Kanji, but the pronunciation is completely different.

Thanks for your video dude ! Before watching this, I was thinking that Japanese and Chinese people could understand each other or at least read each other’s sentences with that stuff of kun and on yomi. Now I know that’s not the case. Thanks !

The guy in brown shirt pronounced the “there’s no school today “ perfectly except the way he said the last word 假 made the sentence a totally different meaning which is “ the school set (on) fire today” in Chinese lol, like, that actually makes sense, logically speaking

I’m Chinese and looking at their analysis of the words I think they all make sense 😂

i like these kind of videos plz upload more

以前的华人看日语只读中文（かんじ）

If anybody is curious, the traditional character for noodles is 麵, which was simplified in Japan to 麺. In China, it was simplified to 面, which also means face (i.e. two previously distinct characters got merged together in simplified Chinese). “Library” written using traditional characters is 圖書館, in Japanese 図書館, in simplified characters 图书馆, i.e. 圖 was simplified by having the interior replaced with 冬, the character for winter. Also, some characters are simplified in both China and Japan, e.g. 學 -> 学, some are simplified in both places but differently (see above), and a handful were only simplified in Japan. Though it is true that kanji are overall closer to traditional Chinese characters.

I'm the opposite I use Chinese to try and understand japanese lines sometimes

Chinese viewer : loves the comparison and understanding. Trying to understand the Japanese point of view of the simplified text Westerner : those old women were cool My favourite was the tempura comment as I remember years ago asking a Japanese friend sitting outside a Japanese restaurant, what does that Japanese text say? I recognised the 天 character and it read "tempura" and wondered why they would say the term "sky" in a food dish. Made sense after I understood onyomi..

Many of the common words were actually coined by the Japanese and then borrowed into Chinese and Korean, particularly for Western concepts. 圖書館 is one such example.

This is like filipinos trying to read and understand spanish

If the Chinese characters is written in Traditional Chinese characters, I think Japanese people can more understand...(拉面 = 拉麵)（太阳 = 太陽）

My friend is Chinese and I am Japanese. We’re both born in America so we independently study our own languages. When she writes Chinese sentences I can somewhat understand… but not really. It’s a fun guessing game lol

2:31 This is in fact also a correct way to interpret this sentence. Well done

To share an interesting fact, at 5:23, the cool looking lady asked the question: why is winter （冬） inside of a box in "图”? I have the same question, so I look it up. Apparently, the shape of "冬” is not the same as the character "冬” （winter). The inside of “图” derives from the cursive, caoshu script in Chinese calligraphy, and the “冬” here was originally a simplified, cursive version of "啚”， and so, "圖” became “图” through simplification. Anyway, thank you for making this video. It is very fun and educational.

if you think in a japanese context some of the sentences do make sense, even in mandarin, like 面 in chinese means noodle and face, depending on the context used. The japanese use 面 more for the face meaning, while they use the traditional chinese version 麺 to mean noodle. The thing about chinese is that some word's meaning change depending on the context of the sentence rather than using the individual meaning of each word. Most of the kanji words used do make sense in mandarin too but just not commonly used by the chinese, like instead of using the chinese 放假, the japanese use 休暇 which makes sense since 休 also means rest but the way it is used is not common among the chinese. what is interesting is seeing different japanese people interpret the chinese sentences differently, like they almost got it.

As someone who can speak both Chinese and Japanese I found this video hilarious! Great job!

it'd be great if you make one more with traditional Chinese characters and Cantonese pronunciation (since they both resemble the Japanese more), also I think you could include the meaning of each words and the Jyutping(phonetic spelling of each character) for reference. If you need help, I can offer help for free!!! Very interesting video!

インタビューのマダム2人組ちょっと好き

Traditional Chinese: 圖書館 象徵 太陽 Simplified Chinese: 图书馆 象征 太阳 Maybe Traditional Chinese is easier for Japanese to understand than Simplified Chinese.

Amazing video 🎉🎉🎉🎉

We Chinese can read both traditional Chinese characters and simplified Chinese characters.So I think it's easier for us to read Japanese.Just like my friends went to Japan, they just don't understand any Japanese, but they can read the kanji.

a random observation: as a cantonese and mandarin speaker, i feel like onyomi readings of kanji resembles cantonese more than it does mandarin. pretty cool to see you've done one of these videos for both dialects! EDIT: Thank you so much for the replies! They were very educational. Just clarifying, I'm aware there are Chinese dialects that are closer to Japanese than Canto. I merely compared those two because those are the ones I speak, and are the ones Yuta have done videos on. :)

牛杂 is not exclusively intestines. The 杂 means assorted innards, so includes other visceral organs like kidneys and liver.

2:56: Cute thing, when you printed "天” charakter for Chinese, it still had longer stroke as in the variant present in Japanese (upper horizontal stroke longer than the lower one, it is the other way around in Chinese)

You need to learn 中文文言文 (Chinese Old Language which is spoken during the dynasty time in China) to understand some Japanese. The Chinese that they speak are called "白话文 " Chinese Modern Language Like "走" (in Chinese pronounce "Zou") means "walking " in Chinese modern language , in Chinese Old Language, it means "running", just like Japanese "走る" or other example like "明日" (in Chinese pronounce "Ming Ri") means "tomorrow", which is the same like Japanese, but in Chinese modern language, they write “明天“

In most cases, you should have shown traditional Chinese characters to the Japanese for them to better understand the meaning. They understand"牛雜拉麵" better than"牛杂拉面" because they probably know 麵 is for noodles or any food made from wheat, whereas 面 is something related to face.

This is so much fun watching as a native Chinese whose also trying to learn Kanji

1:29 wow that left old lady's voice is so amazing!!!

the aunties (elder ladies ) in this vidoe are so adorable 💓 togather they look like sisters or best friends IDK 😅

It would be interesting to see the reverse: chinese people trying to guess a sentence written in kanji.

Interesting to see what happens, as some Chinese and Japanese kanji words are the same, but most meanings have changed and pronunciation is now radically different.

Good to see that chinese and japanese have some knowledge about each other languages, it's the same here with our south american "hermanos", we kinda understand portuguese and spanish when we talk with each other, in some borderline cities people developed the so called "portunol" that is a mixed of the two languages 🤭🤭🤭

Being Chinese, watching this I laughed so many times. I know language barriers are normal and shouldn’t be laughed at, but I almost cried when they mistook beef with ramen for “rain falling and the ground hardens”.

So when Japanese read Chinese, they read it differently, they translate it differently, they pronounce it differently & they mis/understand it differently. Very interesting

I love the old lady’s voice it’s so deep

So interesting! I studied both Mandarin and Japanese, I'm a Chinese American heritage speaker of Mandarin although cannot read and write well. There's definitely similarities between kanji usage in both but it honestly can get confusing if you learn both at the same time. Still, this shows Japanese people would be able to learn Mandarin way more easily than other nationalities.

Actually, we Chinese also think Japanese is hard to learn. But learning Japanese is way easier for Chinese than other foreigners cause there are many Kanji(Chinese characters) in Japanese.

as a chinese, this video really makes my day :3

It is a great video, and quite entertaining

I think it's fascinating. I have been studying kanji and I think the closest thing we have in western languages is Greek/Latin. If someone uses greek words, there is a chance people can understand across all of Europe. We, largely, don't know anything about the Greek or Latin languages, but we can understand certain "universal" words (like universal). Even if we don't understand the word, we can piece together the meaning if we know some of the parts. Clearly, this is what is going on here, where people understand bits of the sentences in a language they don't speak.

Hi I'm from Taiwan, when I was in a camp at high school in Japan, a Japanese student on our team wrote 掃除 and showed me and I immediately understood that it was time for cleaning, I was surprised that the kanji was basically the same

This video is actually sociologically interesting, the two older ladies are the only ones that didn't get the "break" sentence, and they thought the sentence about the japanese flag would be anti war propaganda

This is very interesting!

As someone who speaks chinese(and can barely read it), this was hella fun

I love how they look at the signs and discuss like "this could mean that", while I look at the signs and they mean absolutely NOTHING to me 😂 they might as well be reading tea leaves 😂😂

"To kidnap a cow and dye your face" That's something a non Chinese speaker would get tattooed thinking it meant peace hope love or something lol

7:30 they’re cool, they’re the moment.

Mandarin pronouciation is a pretty recent sound shift that is way to distinct from the era when Japanese borrowed the kanji. Try wu dialect/shanghainese at pronuncing these characters with traditional writing would greatly help them recognize

It's something like Russians trying to read and understand Bulgarian or Serbian, or a Persian trying to read and understand Arabic.

1:30 Wow, the woman on the left sounds so dignified. I stan. She looks like she'd be the big boss at a fashion magazine. 😳

中国人ですけど、なかなか面白い動画でしたね。お疲れ様です。やっぱ関西の方々が情熱的なんですね。あの2人の女性もめっちゃ面白かったです！続けて頑張って下さい！楽しみにしてまーす。

i just started practicing japanese and just finished learning hiragana. And the two old ladies made me actually wonder what kind of stuff they can see in these "symbols". Im really looking forward for the moment i'm able to read/understand atleast some kind of japanese. :)

It's amazing how far these languages have diverged from each other yet how much similarity there still remains. Great video!

this was just fascinating! i love how in some cases the approximate meaning still can be figured out just by the core meaning of the signs. such a different approach to reading when compared to plain phonetic letter based scripts. really love it!

This is quite relatable for English speakers, as the language, much like Japanese, has a writing system which better suits an unrelated language that it has also borrowed many words from. This is akin to an English speaker trying to understand a Romance language purely through the written form.

This is so interesting, when I remember growing up as an African , we used to think Chinese, Koreans and Japanese could easily read and understand each other linguistically but when I grew up, I realized the differences! It’s hilarious watching this presentation now!

It's fascinating to learn these things about other cultures. Thank you for the video Yuta!

This is what it's like trying to learn Kanji lmao. "What is 'winter' inside of a box?" Incredible.

its best if u could show both traditional and simplified chinese and also Romanized pinyin all together, that way it might be easier to recognize and pronounce for japanese

The old lady in the right side looks really distinct, really impotent. I can't look at her without feel a profound feeling of respect. She looks like confident person.