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A comment on Japanese Words and Names Sound African. Why?. Parent comment

Re:Japanese Words and Names Sound African. Why? by RachelF on Sunday June 16, 2024 @03:40PM (#40699507)
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

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Re:Japanese Words and Names Sound African. Why? by lukan on Sunday June 16, 2024 @03:56PM (#40699645)
Amusing as long as you don't agree to something stupid I guess ..

Are they pronounced very similar?

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Re:Japanese Words and Names Sound African. Why? by ncpa-cpl on Monday June 17, 2024 @01:49PM (#40708702)
I have seen something similar with Korean and Dutch

Korean: Ne = yes

Dutch: Nee = no

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Re:Japanese Words and Names Sound African. Why? by euroderf on Monday June 17, 2024 @02:38PM (#40709389)
The "n" sound denoting negative seems deeply ingrained in English (and also in this native English speaker). So Finnish "niin" for affirmative took a very long time to get used to, and to actually begin using. It just felt wrong.
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Re:Japanese Words and Names Sound African. Why? by scotteric on Monday June 17, 2024 @04:46PM (#40710858)
It goes even deeper than just English. No descends from the Indo-European negation phoneme *ne. You see similar 'n' sound negative words in pretty much every IE language group.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-Eur...

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