Did Japanese come from Ningbo dialect?

Whether you are a local or a foreigner, you must have heard of the saying that Ningbo dialect sounds very similar to Japanese? In ancient times, Ningbo had an extremely close relationship with Japan. It was not only a transit point for envoys from the Tang Dynasty to Chang'an, but also the port of arrival and departure for Song-Japanese trade and tomorrow's trade ships. It has always been China's largest gateway in maritime trade. So, "Japanese" is Is it possible to pass it from Ningbo?

To determine whether two languages ??are related, we mainly look at grammatical correspondence, basic vocabulary correspondence and phonetic correspondence. In terms of grammar and basic vocabulary, Ningbo dialect is very different from Japanese. There's also a big difference between the two in terms of what they "sound like" phonetically. Taking the contemporary urban accent recorded in "Haishu District Chronicles" as an example, Ningbo dialect has 1,090 syllables, while Japanese has only more than 100 syllables. Ningbo dialect also has more vowels than Japanese, with 11 vowels, while Japanese only has 5 vowels.

There is another joke about Ningbo dialect, you can experience it by yourself

(Haishu dialect rhyme)

(Fifty-syllable picture)

The number of syllables in the two languages ??is very different, and Japanese has no tones.

Some people would use syllables similar to Japanese such as "dig in the mud"? konnichiwa and "sumimasen" to prove the relationship between the two. However, the corresponding Japanese meaning of konnichiwa is "hello". sumimasen means "I'm sorry". Although the sound is similar, the meaning is completely different. To prove that the two sounds are related, similar syllables should have the same or similar meaning. The same type of examples exists in Ningbo dialect and English. It cannot be said that English is also passed down from Ningbo dialect. "Sanfen saeven" is similar to "seven", "ding ding"? is similar to "bell ding", and "star" sing (1930s pronunciation)" is similar to "singing sing".

Although it cannot be said that Japanese was transmitted from Ningbo dialect, from a linguistic point of view, Ningbo dialect is indeed related to the pronunciation of Japanese Chinese characters (note, it is the pronunciation of Chinese characters). Both inherit the ancient Wu language and the medieval Some characteristics of the Chinese language.

Wuyin is a type of phonetic pronunciation of Japanese Chinese characters. It is generally believed that the pronunciation of these Chinese characters was introduced to Japan from the Southern Dynasties directly or through the Korean Peninsula during the Southern and Northern Dynasties in the fifth to sixth centuries. The general area ruled by the Southern Dynasties was It is the area south of the Yangtze River in today's China. The capital and ruling center are in the Yangtze River Delta region, which is today's Wu-speaking area.

First of all, both Ningbo dialect and Japanese Wuyin retain voiced sounds. Ancient Chinese has a contrast between voiced and voiced, but in modern Chinese only languages ??such as Wu and Lao Xiang retain intact fully voiced initial consonants. Mandarin and most Chinese dialects do not have voiced sounds. In Mandarin, b[p], d[t], and g[k] are actually voiceless sounds. For the convenience of writing, they are marked with voiced letters. Japanese still has voiced sounds, and Japanese Wu sounds retain the distinction between voiced and voiceless sounds in Middle Chinese. For example, "ding" dyau and "Qi" go still retain their voiced pronunciation.

In addition, the pronunciation of Chinese characters in Ningbo dialect and Japanese is the second-class open character, which is pronounced as a laryngeal dental sound. Like Middle Chinese, both are still not palatalized, while Mandarin has been palatalized and pronounced as a lingual sound. For example, "false" is ko in Ningbo dialect, ke in Japanese Wuyin, and jia in Mandarin. However, the above two characteristics are also unique to the northern Wu dialect and are not unique to Ningbo dialect.

In addition to inheriting the characteristics of ancient Wu and medieval Chinese, the pronunciation development trajectories of the two are surprisingly similar, resulting in the similarity of the sounds of some entire groups of Chinese characters.

First, the initials of Wu Yin are still pronounced n, "two" ni, and "人" nin. The corresponding pronunciations in Ningbo dialect are nyi and nyin respectively.

Second, the rhymes and finals of the third and fourth characters in "Xiaoshe" are close to those of Ningbo dialect. For example, "Chao" jou, "Shao" shou, the pronunciation is very close to the contemporary Ningbo dialect io (in Japanese Romaji, add u after o to indicate a long sound, and remove the intermediary sound after the initial consonants ch, sh, j to conform to Western writing habits ). Coincidentally, since Japanese and Ningbo dialect both retain the intermediary sound of the third-class characters of Zhizuo, compared with Mandarin and Northern Wu dialects (such as Shanghainese), which have lost the intermedial sound, words such as "Chao" and "Shao", Ningbo dialect sounds close to Japanese.

The third word is Zhen She Kai Kai, both of which have the same rhyme. Especially for the Zhi group characters, both of them not only retain the medial sound, but also have the final in, so the pronunciation of many characters in Wu and Ningbo dialects happens to be the same, such as "shen" and "chen" jin.

Fourth, the rhymes and finals of Liushe are similar, such as "xiu" shu, which is very close to shiu in Ningbo dialect.

Fifth, both of them speak very fast, which causes the finals to become monophonic and the nasal sounds to disappear. The ancient diphthong finals in words such as "高" and "好" are all pronounced as monophthongs in Ningbo dialect, as are Japanese Chinese characters. The Chinese characters ending in ng in medieval times have basically disappeared from the pronunciation of Japanese Chinese characters. In modern times, the ng ending in Ningbo dialect first weakened into a nasal sound, and then some new styles disappeared completely. For example, "Jiang" is pronounced kou in Japanese and ko in Xinxinpai in Ningbo dialect. The only difference between the finals of the two is the Japanese pronunciation.

Some differences in the pronunciation of Ningbo dialect and Japanese Chinese characters may make it easier for Ningbo people to learn Japanese than in other dialect areas. However, Japanese and Chinese (Ningbo dialect) essentially do not belong to the same language family. Some people think that Ningbo dialect is very similar to Japanese, and even say that Japanese was passed down from Ningbo dialect. The reasons for this erroneous conclusion are that one is not familiar with linguistics, and the other is that one is not familiar with both languages.

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