Japanese, Chinese, and English mixed language and script

« previous post | next post »

In several recent posts, we've been exposed to a few Japanese speakers who tried to write their language without recourse to kana (the two Japanese syllabaries), i.e., kanji only.  I myself thought it was ridiculous / laughable and didn't work well at all.

Now we come across an even more quixotic quest, one where some folks combine Japanese, Chinese, and English languages (lexicons and grammars) and scripts to create a hybrid linguistic amalgam.

Below, I will show several examples of what the resultant combinations look like.  I will not translate or transcribe the sample texts, because — even if you don't know all three languages and scripts, you will be able to get an idea of how this experiment works .  I will only give a paraphrase of what portions of the texts mean, especially the fourth one, because it is the most overt in declaring its modus operandi.

In actuality, that was my original intention, but I ended up paraphrasing all of the passages, although I'm not entirely certain that I caught the nyuansu ニュアンス ("nuance") of each and every word.

For all the samples, I have endeavored to smooth out the three languages and three scripts into a single English rendering.

You are a genius!  I will try to use this language from today!

This is an extremely good idea, can use English to expand more vocabulary items that I can use to make communication between different countries easier; it is no longer a dream for the whole world to unify their language to communicate!

I also think it's geniusl

This is the reason (i.e., is because) the grammar for / of) Chinese and English is quite similar.

I've decided to start writing my English with some kanji in it, just to see what happens. The furigana will be a bit willful at first, but that's all right.  Nothing starts off perfect.  Personally, I think it's not too bad.  I can read what I've written here without too much difficulty, but some people might not like it.

I can read this essay easily.

Very good suggestion!

From now on, this grammar will be general.

I agree.  You're a genius.

I think it's simple to change Japanese into Chinese.

China's kanji are harder to understand than Japan's.

It's difficult to express in subtle differences.

This is the fatal defect of vocabulary items in all the languages in the world.

 A vocabulary item is like a sieve.

A sieve is not fine and not minute.

I've studied a little bit of Chinese

And I've discovered that many terms in Chinese and in Japanese are the same, but grammar and adverbs* are completely different.

So my proposal is to borrow some adverbs from English, then Chinese and Japanese will be able to communicate at a middle school level of English and kanji.

*By "adverb," I think the author may mean modifier or, more likely, parts of speech, grammar.

I think the proposers of this project are half serious.

Selected readings

[Thanks to Yizhi Geng]



1 Comment »

  1. Akito said,

    February 2, 2025 @ 9:29 pm

    Essentially, English grammar (syntax, morphology) with content words (nouns, verb stems, etc.) thrown in, so it must be easy to follow for Englilsh speakers with some knowledge of Chinese/Japanese. How would they react to a text where these roles are reversed?

RSS feed for comments on this post

Leave a Comment