Linguistic
difference and its implications
-Language
as a key to the different origins of culture
: China
vs. Korea and Japan
If you are
interested to grasp a good picture of the three countries in terms of their
culture, history and the social fabric, I believe you need to start by getting a firm idea on the differences of their languages, especially about the strong
demarcation between the Chinese and the block of Korean and Japanese. The
common notion on the cultures of the three countries that they belong to the so-called
“Chinese Character Cultural Sphere” can be quite misleading and has impeded many learners and scholars in their early years
from getting an objective and unbiased view on the North Asian societies and
cultures. The linguistic distance between Chinese and the other two, Korean and Japanese, is bigger by far than between any two you
can come up with in the Western hemisphere, so that the notion that the term “Chinese
Character Culture Sphere” presents is highly superficial and can be more off
the mark than to say that German and British cultures fall under Italian
culture because they depend heavily on the Latin vocabulary.
“The Chinese language has had many
influences on other countries. Two notable countries would be Korea and
Japan. Both countries have similar writing techniques and have
adapted their language to Chinese characteristics.”
The
above paragraph is a typical description on the influence of the Chinese language
on the two countries, random picked from the home page of a Western translation
service company. Amazingly, no single sentence in the paragraph is accurate and
the truth is quite the contrary of what such typical descriptions are apt,
perhaps intended, to lead the people into believing. To say the least, the
first sentence is contaminated with the confusion of characters with language. And Korea and Japan never developed a similar writing system, nor they once attempted
to adapt their languages to Chinese characteristic. Like a little bit of French
grammar in the French you use, such as ‘fait accompli’ or ‘Respondez
s’il vous plait’ , did not affect your
English at all, Korean and Japanese languages remained intact throughout
their heavy use of Chinese characters, nor was there any conscious or
unconscious attempt to assimilate to the Chinese. You see Japanese newspapers
or Internet sites, you will find a lot of Chinese characters interspersed with
Japanese’ Hiragana. By contrast, in Korea you would not be able to find Chinese
characters any longer in the media, though it does not change the fact that many
words have the Chinese origin. But the more important fact one should not fail to
note is that except for the borrowing of the Chinese words, the underlying
languages of
Korean and Japanese, in their grammar and vocabulary, are so different from the
Chinese that you can safely say Chinese is farther than English from the two
languages in terms of grammar to begin with. First of all, the Chinese has the SVO structure like
English, but different from English it is a typical isolating language with no
inflection at all, for instance, no inflection for the plural, no inflection
for verb tense, no suffix for derivatives, while the Korean and Japanese have the
common SOV structure characterizing the transeurasian language family, carries one
of the most developed forms of inflectional system that comprises nearly all
categories of grammatical components. On top of their bipolar locations in the
grammatical chart, the difference in pronunciation is none the less extreme. In
addition to the differences in the way consonants and vowels are pronounced, each
Chinese word has to go with one of the four tones, without which its meaning is
lost. In contrast there is no tone designated to words in the Japanese and
Korean. Thus, whereas in the post-renaissance Europe it was not rare the intellectuals
could communicate in multiple languages thanks to the affinity of the European languages,
Korean literati class and Japanese bureaucrats could communicate with Chinese only
with the help of interpreter or by writing.
There is a group of
some extreme Japanese scholars claiming that the Japanese is an independent
language that had originated within the archipelago by the people who
originated from their land, and the apparent similarity to the Korean language
came about because the Japanese had influenced the Korean language over time. No
agreement possibly in sight, they are often cited as two independent languages under
the transeurasian language family. But the closeness of the two languages is
such that the components of a sentence in two languages are matchable
in the same order, word for word,
inflection for inflection, suffix for suffix, with few exceptions. Just for an
example, one of the difficulties Japanese learners face would be the enigmatic
difference in nuance of the particles, such as ‘-wa’ and ‘-ga’, following
the subject of a sentence. The Korean has the particles with exactly the same
nuance, ‘-eun’ and ‘-I’ or '- ga'. In Korean the combination of the verbs ‘do and see’ means
‘try to do’, just like in Japanese. The Japanese arguments on the separateness
of the two rely solely on the etymological approach. While there sure can be a separable
group of discrete Japanese words, the existence of a certain heterogeneous
portion should not be used to deny their common derivation because no language
is monolithic in its constitution. And the waves of immigration of farmers from Korea were not a single event from a single cultural and linguistic group, but persisted for a period of a millenium forming a different layers of linguistic contributions from the peninsula. No language is monolithic in constitution. Japanese is not an exception there as
much as Korean is not. The separation by sea for the time of two millennia is
enough to make the two languages with a common origin with a slighty different composition deviate so much as to
sound quite different and uncommunicable with each other. Even within Korea
people from the peninsula could not understand the unmitigated Jeju Island
dialect.
Sometimes a word
evolves into a different nuance and use in a language, the original meaning
taken up by some other alternative expression, while the same meaning and use is
maintained in the other language all along. Two linguists from each of the two countries 1) worked together to identify the words with the same origin for
years and came up with 5,000 matching words with the same root in the two
languages, most of which they found to be essential and heavily used expressions
in everyday life in both countries. Their work result failed to find a
publisher in Japan, but came to be published in Korea in 2004 with the title
“Anata is Korean” featuring 1400 words out of the 5,000 for the public readers.
Their opinion on the genealogy of the two languages is well expressed in the way
they call them, Peninsula Korean and Archipelago Korean. Their such view on the
genetics of the two languages is in line with the perspective of Dr. Mark J.
Hudson, former professor in anthropology specializing in Northeast Asia, who
concluded in his book “Ruins of Identity” that Japanese has developed into its current
form from a proto-Korean the immigrant farmers from the peninsula around third century BC brought and spread in
Japan in the process of their agricultural colonization. 2) All in
all, apart from the scholastic arguments about the derivation of the two
languages, what one can say for sure is that the Korean is the closest language
on earth to Japanese while no other language is the closer to Korean than
Japanese, and that by far.
Now back to the significance of the linguistic
differences, Chinese vs. Japanese and Korean. Apart from the distinctions in
grammatic structure and phonology, another salient distinction conveying no
less cultural gravity would be in the disparity in the richness of
honorific expressions. While Japanese and Korean are known to have the most
elaborate speech system in terms of respect levels, unrivaled by any other
languages, comprising titles, nouns, pronouns, verbs and even adjectives,
Chinese application of the respect-sensitive expressions is limited to some
pronouns, i.e., ni or nin for “you”, and titles, such as Master, Teacher and
Senior. There are roughly three ways of speech pertaining to the level of
respect in both languages of Korea and Japan: casual speech, polite speech and
respectful speech. There are subtle differences between the modern Korean and
Japanese in applying the relevant hierarchy for conversation, Koreans being
more sensitive to the age while Japanese have come to be more influenced by the
personal distance and social status between the interlocutors. In modern days
the plain language seems to be more widely used in Japan than in Korea. In
Korea the children mostly speak to their parents in casual speech, but shift to
the respectful one as they grow up, especially son to father, while in
Japan they keep using the casual. Also, modern Japanese use the casual speech
often with their seniors in expression of closeness in the community and
workplace while the use of respectful language is expected even for one-year
senior in Korea until they get close enough for the younger to be allowed to
drop the honorifics. Still the respectful language is required strictly for the
persons of high status in social and organizational hierarchy and for the
customers in business in both countries and the polite speech is standard in
the public and official circumstances, such as public broadcasting, and with a
stranger.
Another
linguistic characteristic common to the Korean and Japanese but used only
exceptionally in China is the use of the vocative suffix when you call someone.
In this case too, the Japanese is on the lenient side in the application of the
suffix with more exceptions than in Korea. Koreans never fail to attach “-ya”
to the name when they call someone equal or junior to them while Japanese use
“-chan”. In Korea you are expected to attach “-nim” to the senior position in
the company, for example, Bujang-nim, when you call your department manager,
even in written message, while in Japan the suffix “-san” is often dropped from
the “Bucho-San”. This heavy use of the vocative suffix in both languages carry
a certain esoteric sentiment that two peoples share. Let me take an example of
a big hit song in Japan released in 1980 titled “Koibuito-yo”, which can be
translated as My Love. The vocative suffix “-yo” in the song title is not used
much in modern Japanese except in poetic and dramatic narrations, while it seems
to share the root with the commonly used Korean expression “-ya”, which changes
to “-iyo” in Korean for poetic or eloquent effect. It was a big hit in Korea
too though the Japanese music was under embargo then. When Chinese translated
the song, they attached “-a” sound to “Lianren”, lover in Chinese, to match the
suffix to the result of producing a nuance similar to “Oh, My love!”, but never
to reproduce the sentiment the original suffix delivers to Japanese and Korean
audience. Going sideways a bit, the song’s title “Koibito-yo” can be translated
in the traceable old Korean as “Kobunnim-iyo” or Kounnim-iyo”.
What the extreme
distance in the language tells us is the simple truth that the two countries
Korea and Japan have a totally different cultural background from China. This
simple truth has been buried so far very successfully under the shallow blanket
that such terms as “Chinese Character Cultural Sphere” and “Confucian Cultural
Sphere” made. Science began to dig up the truth that might eventually tell us a
story quite different from, or, at some critical aspects, the contrary of what had
been taught and led us to believe as the history of “China and its neighboring
Barbarians”. We know already many differences in the way of life among the
peoples in the region. We only failed to ascribe them to the different roots. They
dwell differently, they cook and eat differently, they greet differently.
Koreans and Japanese houses always had the raised floor, about two feet above
the ground. They take off shoes at the entrance of the building while Chinese
houses typically did not have raised floor and they lived in the house with
their shoes on.3)
Chinese use oil heavily in their kitchen for frying. Koreans and Japanese do
not use the wok found in Chinese kitchen. Frying is the basic way of cooking in
China while Korean and Japanese foods are boiled, steamed, seasoned or
fermented with oil being used minimally as condiment.4)
The basic form of greeting for both Japanese
and Koreans was the kneel-down head-to-floor bow in the past as you can see in
the historic dramas in the countries, as sign of respect, even between the
equals. The bows you see Koreans and Japanese do these days are much abbreviated
form. Chinese did the big bow only to the kings or high masters as sign of obedience,
so they are seldom found these days to lower their head to others. At this juncture it would be worthwhile to go over the
reasons why the departure from the notion of the “Chinese Character Cultural
Sphere” is critical for the scientific and unbiased perspective in approaching
the Northeast Asian cultures. First, the term itself puts the two countries
under the Chinese culture, likely to contaminate the learners with the wrong
impression that they did have no civilization of their own before they came
under Chinese culture, or if any, inferior ones. Unfortunately, that wrong
notion was shared, even promoted, by many literati scholars of the past in both
countries, more so in Korea, until the science chimed in with its
archaeological and linguistic approaches to help trace back and reconstruct the
discrete cultural origins of the Northeast Asian civilizations. Actually, the
term itself is in line with the view the ancient Chinese had or attempted to
force upon themselves and its neighboring countries and peoples by naming and calling them "barbarians" consistently from 2,500 years ago.
They have been successful. The newly invented term is just an extension of the
“Barbarian” denigration. It should be noted here also that there is a
scholastic question how much “Chinese” the Shang people, the creator of the oracle
characters that Hanji is believed to have evolved from, along with its other
siblings, were.
Secondly, such expression is apt to lead the people to
overlook the significance of the underlying linguistic distinction between the
Chinese and the block of the Korean and Japanese, which not just testifies to the
separate cultural origins by itself, but also conveys a lot of important
cultural ramifications that led to deviation of the social culture by way of
distinctive social behaviors, notably stemming from different protocols in
verbal communications, passed down generations preserved in the framework of
the language fully loaded with the social trust, values, institutions and
sentiments. While the use of Chinese Characters for more than a millennium does
not seem to have worked much to make Koreans and Japanese closer to Chinese
socio-culturally, their languages can be said to have been so successful in
preserving their social culture and values distinctive from the Chinese ones.
The problem of the term “Chinese Character Cultural Sphere” is that it blinds
the people to the underlying linguistic differences, which seem to carry a much
bigger implications in understanding the history and cultures of the Northeast
Asian societies.
Thirdly, the peril from the
political abuse of such incorrect expressions. The term carries claim for the
exaggerated Chinese cultural ownership or the perception of the Chinese
superiority, often called Synocentrism, that seems to be promoted by the CCP
government targeting the new generation of patriotic youth domestically and
relatively vulnerable countries internationally. Now the Synocentrism seems to
have been pushed over too far as for the Chinese Little Pink, or Xiao Fen Hong,
to go indiscriminate in their on-line claim for cultural proprietorship on
everything good in the heritage of the mankind, from pizza to kimchi, from soccer to ski,
to have originated from China as if no civilization had existed on earth before
China and China has been “an island entirely upon itself” all along. It has so
far worked to the detriment of Chinese national interest, responsible
considerably for the recent spike of international hostility towards China, but
it will certainly not be helpful in promoting the world peace in the long run either.
And this blurry and equivocal term “Chinese Character Cultural Sphere” is one
of the remnant misleaders that have been feeding the pillar of myth called
Synocentrism, not just for the non-Chinese world but for themselves.
1)
Prof.
Kiyoshi Shimizu of Japan and Prof. Myung Mi Park of Korea.
2)
His
such view will be further backed by the multidisciplinary study carried out in
collaboration with scholars around the
world while he was with Max Planck Institute.
3) Change
began recently in China as more and more people live in apartment.
4) The
Japanese Tempura was introduced in 16th century by Portuguese.
- contributed by Sy Jo
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