Re:Studying the demise of historic civilisations
by jcranmer on Tuesday March 05, 2019 @08:54AM
(#19310484)
Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian are all directly derived from Vulgar Latin. Japanese is a linguistic isolate, perhaps distantly related to Korean (which is also a linguistic isolate). Japanese borrowed the Chinese writing system, and a little bit of vocabulary; calling Japanese a variation of Chinese is akin to saying English and German are a variation of Latin.
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Re:Studying the demise of historic civilisations
by cmrdporcupine on Tuesday March 05, 2019 @01:40PM
(#19312935)
It's even further remote than saying English and German are a variation of Latin, as at least the Germanic languages are in the same family of Indo-European languages. Japanese and Chinese are not related in any way we know of.
It'd be more like saying Finnish or Hungarian are a variation of Latin or German. Some small amount of shared vocabulary (and maybe phonetics) due to proximity, but no more.