by Christina Anikari » Fri Mar 21, 2008 11:54 am
Japanese isn't related to Chinese though. Supposing you accept all the Japanese dialects as being dialects and not closely related, but separate, languages Japanese is only really related to one language that being Ryukyu or Okinawan. Apart from that some similarities in grammar and vocabulary can be found between Japanese and Korean and Japanese and Uighur, neither of those being in anyway related to Chinese. Korean is about as big a mystery as Japanese, whereas Uighur is a Turkish language. And these links and even very close and might be as caused by coincidence as by any real relationship between the languages. The only similarity between Chinese and Japanese is the use of the same characters, though there are differences, especially between continental Chinese and Japanese.