I get to be among the first to share the story of Khitan with a wider English-speaking audience! So if you liked Etruscan...

@tistedmentality3715

4 жыл бұрын

Please do another video on the Etruscan or an update of it if possible.

@VonDenevue

4 жыл бұрын

have you ever heard about the Ubykh language? It's dead too but more recent (last native speaker died in 1992). May catch your interest

@faithwright7958

4 жыл бұрын

@@VonDenevue He mentioned Ubykh in a video on the languages of the Caucasus.

@VonDenevue

4 жыл бұрын

@@faithwright7958 uh, yeah sorry. seems like I forgot about it, thanks for reminding me

@faithwright7958

4 жыл бұрын

@@VonDenevue No problem.

As someone who’s studied Chinese, is familiar with how Chinese characters work, and has already learned hundreds of characters, looking at the Khitan characters is such a surreal experience; they undeniably resemble Chinese characters, but so many things are also just off about them, it’s bordering on uncanny. I can just stare at them for hours.

@cupcakkeisaslayqueen

2 ай бұрын

As someone who has not studied Chinese a single say, and remembers like 2 characters without any knowledge of their meaning or pronunciation, only looks, looking at Khitan is surreal too for me. It's just the same vibe, but not it at all. It's like looking at Georgian nuskhuri (which looks like a lost cousin of latin)

Fun fact: Kitay is a name of China in Russian.

@windywendi

4 жыл бұрын

@Jason Voorheese Maybe from the Golden Horde Khaganate. The Mongols lived north of Khitans(Liao) and used Khitan as the name for greater China

@Vitalis94

4 жыл бұрын

@Jason Voorheese About the Chinese or the Khitans? The Khitans they knew because the Western Liao dynasty fled to the steppes after they had fallen in China proper. Russians had contact with various nomads trough the ages, hell, many words even as basic as, say, the bag, come from Turkic languages because of said contact. So it's no wonder the Russians had contact with the Khitans. But as they were so far away, they named whole China after them, whilst contact with China proper was estabilished due to their expansion eastward in the 1600s.

@zedernaga9174

4 жыл бұрын

wrong, it was not the russians, kitay is a turkic loanword in russian.

@vidarrodinsson2237

4 жыл бұрын

@@zedernaga9174 It is quite senseless to say so. Like saying that the world for tea in Russian("chay") is a loanword from Turkic or\and Iranian languages. Not, it's a loanword from Chinese, but it came through Turkic and\or Iranian languages.

@J.o.s.h.u.a.

4 жыл бұрын

In Italian "Catai" is a literary and ancient name for China used in ancient poems and in ancient accounts of journeys to China (such as Marco Polo's).

As a Mongolian speaker, it’s fascinating to see such familiar words being written in what, at first, seems like Chinese characters. Thank you for these new insights!

@mailasun

4 жыл бұрын

Well, we Manchus even use the traditional Mongolian script. See if you can understand what I’m saying: ᠪᡳ ᠮᠠᠨᠵᡠ ᠨᡳᠶᠠᠯᠮᠠ ᠣᠴᡳ᠈ ᠮᠣᠩᡤᠣ ᠨᡳ᠍ᠶᠠᠯᠮᠠ ᠠᡣᡡ᠉

@henrywong2725

4 жыл бұрын

[insert ignorant comment made when I knew less than I did now]

@locacharliewong

4 жыл бұрын

As a Chinese, I'd say it's like mixing w Chinese character and modern Korean alphabet w speaking in Mongolian.

@Philolingua

4 жыл бұрын

@@mailasun You are Manchu, not Mongolian.

@yiwei7278

4 жыл бұрын

@@henrywong2725 LOL mate, you started it ideologically

papa NativLang is back

@amandykkarymsak4632

3 жыл бұрын

7:36 this is exactly how we pronounce khagan in kazakh language

All this talk about the extinct languages made me think of Tocharian. We need a video about them!

@RemoveChink

4 жыл бұрын

Why do you watch all the same videos i do :(

@Vitalis94

4 жыл бұрын

@@RemoveChink Haha, coincidence, I think? I don't seem to recall you, though. :c

@user-wb7ur4yp6z

4 жыл бұрын

Tocharian people and their oasis kingdoms were replaced by the Kara kanid in the 10/11 century and became the uyghurs of today.

@Vitalis94

4 жыл бұрын

@@user-wb7ur4yp6z Yes, I know. What I'm talking about here specifically, is that we need a video exlusively about them and their language, as the were eventually absorbed by the Uyghurs.

@iankelley9704

4 жыл бұрын

YES

As a native Chinese speaker, the small script gives me the impression of writing Korean Hangul with Japanese Hiragana. These scripts are clearly related to Chinese characters, just like Hiragana, but can combine with each other to make a single sound like Hangul. This video is really fascinating. If you want to know more about related stuff, look up the Tangut language online. The Tangut people founded their kingdom to the west of Khitan and the north-west of Song dynasty, and were destroyed by the Mongolian conquest too. Their script looks even more Chinese-ish for non-speakers, although it's more complex in appearance and having its own way of forming new characters.

10:07 just sounds 100% Mongolian if I ignore the pronunciation. Sounded like “Kidan guren usgetei”, literally means “the Great State of Khitan has a script” in Mongolian. In Mongolian, Khitans are called “Hyatan” or “Kidaan”.

@negative8495

4 жыл бұрын

Sounds kinda finnish

@s0ul216

4 жыл бұрын

@@negative8495 Finnish is mongol confirmed.

@Ezullof

4 жыл бұрын

Yeah the "para-mongolic" hypothesis is really not mainstream. Most articles I've seen say that Khitan is probably mongolic (though maybe not directly related to existing mongolic languages), though we just don't have enough evidence yet to be sure - but we have even less evidence to suggest that it's in fact "para-mongolic". The author of this channel always prefers obscure hypotheseis to the scientific consensus anyway.

@mailasun

4 жыл бұрын

That’s also very Manchurian. In Manchu it would be “ki dani gurun i hergen de” ᡴᡳ ᡩᠠᠨᡳ ᡤᡠᡵᡠᠨ ᡴ ᡥᡝᡵᡤᡝᠨ ᡩᡝ.

@mailasun

4 жыл бұрын

JoeysWorIdTour don’t forget the Finnish were ruled by the Mongols at one time.

"Water bottom-in tree-on bird sits" is EXACTLY how you would say it in Korean

@qui9

4 жыл бұрын

Grigory Zinoviev *Altaic hypothesis intensifies*

@Flamerate1

4 жыл бұрын

Same in Japanese as they both use identically the same grammar. I don't know which came first though or maybe this Khitan had something to do with it. Hmm? 池の底、木に鳥が座った Not sure how "in" and "on" are being differentiated but that's what I got.

@krupam0

4 жыл бұрын

Pretty sure that's how it would work in any agglutinative language, with plausible differences in word order.

@LuisAldamiz

4 жыл бұрын

Basque would use similar grammatical structure but not quite identical phrasing, something like "pond-in is-that tree-on bird sits" (article "the" or rather nominative declension ignored for simplicity), the main difference is that Basque would use the copula (the verb to be, or one of two versions of it) which NE Asian languages seem to not use (right?) It is a phrasal formation that some have likened to the way the eagle would think (first the context, then the details), while Indoeuropean (or seemingly Chinese too) do it the other way around, like a snake which sees first the details and only then the context.

@andyjay729

4 жыл бұрын

@@LuisAldamiz Speaking of NE Asia, how about Native American languages? Aren't most of them also SOV too?

NativLang, you're inspiring many young people, both in Mongolia and around the world, to consider with awe and curiosity the linguistic origins of our obscure region--and I thank you for that. Khitan is such an underrated language, especially among the Mongols. Even though we study it to be part of our ancestors, because we don't study the logograms, we're so ignorant and disavowing of them. I only learned to differ when I read Gyorgy Kara's "Books of the Mongolian Nomads".

@nehcooahnait7827

2 жыл бұрын

Technically they weren’t that much an ancestor of modern mongols, but more of one of the ancestors of many northern Chinese and Manchus, alongside some Mongolic speaking peoples who claim to be the direct descendants of the Khitans.

@SaposaBear

2 жыл бұрын

@@nehcooahnait7827 Interesting...

@user-vh8ni3fe1w

6 ай бұрын

한국으로 이주한 거란인들도 있었음 요제국이 금제국에게 멸망할때 거란의 도시 하나가 고려에게 점령당함 한국으로 이동한 거란인들은 정착하지 않고 한국내에서 이동하면서 생활하는 사람들이 있었는데 그사람들을 백정이라고 불렀음

@wetot2

4 ай бұрын

@@nehcooahnait7827 almost similar with the Xianbei

@bokonoo77

3 ай бұрын

@@nehcooahnait7827 wrong Autosomal results shown that modern mongols are practically mirror to daurs who are literally called converted mongols

About two years ago I was in Hong Kong, and a friend took me to a linguistics bookstore tucked away in a small office building room that was going out of business and clearing out its books. One of the books on sale was a heavy volume on the Khitan small script. I have been mad at myself ever since for not bringing enough cash to buy it.

THE GREAT MIDDLE [something] KHITAN STATE

@giorozaitien646

4 жыл бұрын

'Middle State'(Diaud Gur) literally means China. 'something' sounds 'hulʤi' which might mean 'people' as 'hun' in Mongolian. So the whole phrase is 'The Great China of Khitan people'.

@giorozaitien646

4 жыл бұрын

@098765 Craper Essentially it's "Great Khitan of the middle empire". The concept of "middle empire" is equivalent to China. The Mandarin name of China, 中国, literally means "the middle country".

@cochan7347

4 жыл бұрын

@@giorozaitien646 It's better to say "Chinese" when it comes to scripts because all dialects (or languages) of the Chinese language (family) writes the same

@giorozaitien646

4 жыл бұрын

@@cochan7347 I would like to say "Han" instead of "Chinese".

@Neverdyingpride

4 жыл бұрын

between han Chinese and Mongolians west to Manchurian there were people called kitan and people surrounding Beijing area are direct disendents

Khitan, Jurchen, and Tangut. The three extinct languages that look like Chinese and were neglected for a long time. Thanks for making this video.

@ianhomerpura8937

3 жыл бұрын

I thought Jurchen evolved into Manchu?

@VJBILL1

3 жыл бұрын

@@ianhomerpura8937 not quite. They borrowed that lineage from one of the Clans that they conquered during the early 17th century. The Nara Clan of the Eight Manchu Banners were the direct descendants of the Jurchens of the Jin dynasty while Nurhaci's Aisin Gioro Imperial Clan was from the Huligai People of Southern Heilongjiang region of North Eastern China. The Huligai's weren't really related in any way to the actual Jurchens but after the creation of the Eight Banners, their descendants in a way could be considered part Jurchens due to Clan intermarriages.

@QuanHoang-qd1ye

3 жыл бұрын

@@VJBILL1 i thought the wanggyian clan were the descendants of wanyan?

@VJBILL1

3 жыл бұрын

@@QuanHoang-qd1ye Yes. The Wanyan clan was the direct descendant of the ruling imperial family of the jurchen Jin Dynasty. However, there were also other clans that existed as well during the Jurchen's rule of northern China in the 12th to 13th centuries. After the Jin's fall to the Mongols in 1234 AD, a few Jurchens returned to their ancestral lands in northeast China and eventually manifested into the Nara Clan that encompassed the Hoifa, Yehe, Wula, and Hada tribes. Most of the Jurchen people after the fall of Jin Dynasty assimilated into the local Han culture and changed their surnames to Han surnames to avoid prosecution from the Mongols and Southern Song rulers.

@user-vh8ni3fe1w

6 ай бұрын

@@VJBILL1 대금제국이 멸망하고 만주에 남아 있던 여진족의 족보는 전부 거짓에 가까움 몽골족의 침략을 피해 다른 여진족 부족의 침략을 피해 만주를 돌아다니면서 이주했기 때문에 조상을 알수 없다 순수한 대금국의 황족과 여진족은 몽골이 침략했을때 중원에서 없어졌음 만주에 남아 있던 여진족의 족보는 위조라고 봐야한다 완안부족의 후손이라고 하는것도 거짓말 일거다 완안부 사람들은 전부 중국한족이 되었다고 봐야 하는게 정답임

When I was just starting to study linguistics, this was the kind of thing I wanted to do. Alas, I was pushed toward topics I could make a career out of.

@littleolliebenjy

4 жыл бұрын

I'm currently studying linguistics in my first year at uni. What did you get pushed into doing?

@MaraK_dialmformara

4 жыл бұрын

@@littleolliebenjy wasting a whole bunch of money trying to become a computational linguist, and then realizing that what I'd really learned was how to write

@susanhill6438

3 жыл бұрын

Me too! I always say my dream job would be a paid linguistics nerd. For practical reasons, and to pay back my scholarship, I chose to be a Speech Language Pathologist. It’s a fun and stimulating career, but it’s not a “paid linguistics nerd”. These videos are SO WONDERFUL for my linguistics-obsessed side.

@MaraK_dialmformara

3 жыл бұрын

@@susanhill6438 fortunately, since I said that I’ve discovered that my calling is Explaining Things to People. I have a long-term technical writing job now, and it feels like exactly what I want to be doing

@XnoobSpeakable

3 жыл бұрын

@@littleolliebenjy how did ur first year go

As someone from a Chinese-dominant region working on an extensive project about Chinese history and culture, this is really helpful! Thank you! The Khitans are an underrated part of Chinese history and should not be neglected either.

@bvthebalkananarchistmapper5642

4 жыл бұрын

As a history enthusiast, I very much agree. I actually find it somewhat a pitty that when he mentioned Khitans during the time of Genghis, he mentioned those living under Jurched Jin rule, not the Khitan remnants that migrated west in face of Jurched invasion and formed the Western Liao Empire in Xinjiang and Kyrgyzstan, also known as the Kara-Khitan Khanate.

@anonb4632

4 жыл бұрын

I sometimes wonder if the Beijing government would prefer that the memory of everything but Mandarin would disappear.

@cometmoon4485

4 жыл бұрын

@@anonb4632 That's almost certainly the case. They call it "Han hua", or the "Hanification" of other cultures.

@anonb4632

4 жыл бұрын

@naranhan2010 Can't say I'm convinced. They send children from minorities to boarding schools to destroy their culture. It's the same thing the USA, Canada and Australia once did. In Tibet, if you go to university, you have to study through Mandarin, even if you wish to study Tibetan language or literature.

@anonb4632

4 жыл бұрын

Looks like we have a bona fide Chinese state apologist here. They often pop up when minorities are mentioned and spout the party line. My last message mysteriously disappeared. Look up 50 Cent Party if you want to know more about this group.

This language is full of, "We'll write it like this, but we'll know to _really_ pronounce it like this." Researchers will have the same trouble with English, when it dies off.

@NikolajLepka

4 жыл бұрын

Unless the internet dies, there will be audio records of it for centuries to come

@jgr7487

4 жыл бұрын

at least it's not Thai!

@jgr7487

4 жыл бұрын

@@CrustyMuffin33 most of it doesn't survive 3000 years without decay or major changes

@tru7hhimself

4 жыл бұрын

@@jgr7487 with thai it's easy (well, easy once you've memorised the classes the consonants belong to) to pronounce anything that's written. it's the other way round that's difficult.

@Dracopol

4 жыл бұрын

@@NikolajLepka What if Islam takes over and requires people to stop speaking English and burn all audio recordings? You're not allowed to disagree in Islam.

I never understand half the stuff you say but I still enjoy it

@daxijinpinggeecheechannel252

4 жыл бұрын

Me too

The rules for the small script remind me of hangeul

@kameyouho4597

4 жыл бұрын

Caleb Joseph yes. I believe Khitan small script and the later Phaspa script gave inspiration to Korean hangeul

@visserskarel

4 жыл бұрын

Still, hangeul is superior since it has similar forms for similar sounds.

@moondust2365

4 жыл бұрын

@@kameyouho4597 I do too. Asides from that, there's a chance the individual characters in the small script gave inspiration to the scripts of Japan, with the exception of the Kanji script.

@parmaxolotl

4 жыл бұрын

Reminds me more of Mayan honestly

@user-nf9xc7ww7m

4 жыл бұрын

@@visserskarel I do prefer syllable bloc (bit biased) and would like to see it in future languages too. I suspect english writing will morph into emojis...🏝👈🏖🙃😁

There's a subtle and poetic irony in "They make Beijing their southern capital", given Beijing literally means "northern capital".

@lizebekkugho6258

3 жыл бұрын

Beijing in that period called Nanjing which means "southern capital". The real name for Beijing is Yenching （Yanjing）(the capital of The Yan, a northern state in old China) and Youzhou( gloomy land )(some tragic histories happened in Ancient Beijing). In addition, Liao has 5 captials. Nanjing (southern capital) is Beijing now. Beijing (northern capital) is a town called Lingdong in Chifeng, Inner Mongolia now. Zhongjing (central capital) is a town called Tianyi in Chifeng, Inner Mongolia now. Dongjing(eastern capital) is a city called Liaoyang in Liaoning now. Xijing(western capital) is a city called Datong in Shanxi now. In general Chinese history, Northern capital refers to Beijing(capital of Qing and Ming and PRC). Southern capital refers to Nanjing(capital of ROC and Dongwu, Jin). Eastern capital refers to Kaifeng(capital of Song). Western capital refers to Xi'an(capital of Han and Tang). Ancient Chinese Capital refers to Luoyang （capital of Han, Tang, Jin, Song）.

@sasukesarutobi3862

3 жыл бұрын

@@lizebekkugho6258 Thank you!

@peterchua.ch2106

2 жыл бұрын

Additionally, current Beijing was known as Dadu (the Great Capital) during the Mongolian ruled Yuan dynasty.

@gregmita

2 жыл бұрын

Some more fun confusing names: The Song dynasty's Beijing was in Daming, in modern Hebei province, some 450 km south of modern Beijing. Dongjing, as pronounced in Japanese, is "Tokyo", i.e. the city of Edo became the Eastern Capital of Japan.

@jeffreylee252

2 жыл бұрын

There’re various of “Jing”(capitals)in China. The northern capital usually refers to Beijing , the current capital of the PRC; the Southern capital is Nanking, the old capital of ROC, also knows as kingleing(金陵）or JohningFu（江宁府) in Qing dynasty,the East capital was Kaifeng, the capital city of Song Dynasty, while the west capital was Changan(current day Xian)where the terra-cotta armies were unearthed, was the most famous ancient capital of China.

Khitan has a very important lesson to teach us. When you invent a new language, you *must* write extensively about its pronunciation, grammar, and origins in _at least _*_one_* mainstream language of the time and publish furiously! Bonus points if you can get copies into government libraries.

@Ezullof

4 жыл бұрын

They didn't invent a language. They invented two ways to write their language. And their language was mainstream. I would be surprised if they didn't write grammars btw. The origin of most grammatical texts is administrative need to teach the language of a ruling class to administrators whose native language isn't the same. Grammars were likely just lost. Keep in mind that all this happened a very long time ago, and even for areas with preserved texts (like Mesopotamia or Egypt) we only have a very small part of what was actually written.

@rickr9435

4 жыл бұрын

khitan & Tangut, besically these two languages died out because of the mongol empire

@ceruchi2084

4 жыл бұрын

Haha, Esperanto is an invented language and all the original grammars were written in Esperanto :D

@tsuikr

2 жыл бұрын

@@ceruchi2084 is there anything important recorded in Esperanto?

@ceruchi2084

2 жыл бұрын

@@tsuikr No

Another big mystery language of early Mongolia that deserves a video is Ruanruan! Perhaps a video on the Paleosiberian languages as well?

@kobovad

4 жыл бұрын

I'd be 100% down for a video about Paleosiberian cultures and languages!

@suomeaboo

Жыл бұрын

@@kobovad I may be two years late, but your wish has been granted. kzread.info/dash/bejne/k6Cgw5R_odLWkco.html

I would really like to see a post on the Tangut language/script. It would be somewhat similar to Khitan in the sense that it is a non-Chinese language adopting a cumbersome Chinese influenced script for their language. In the case of Tangut, it's known as one of the most obtuse scripts ever used on earth, consequently, it's largely undeciphered. Even the basic Chinese numerals are so insanely complex in the Tangut script, check out the wiki for sure, super interesting.

@miriamyang8031

4 жыл бұрын

Yes please! 'The [Tangut] language is remarkable for being written in one of the most inconvenient of all scripts, a collection of nearly 5,800 characters of the same kind as Chinese characters but rather more complicated; very few are made up of as few as four strokes and most are made up of a good many more, in some cases nearly twenty. It is extremely difficult to remember them, since there are few recognizable indications of sound and meaning in the constituent parts of a character, and in some cases characters which differ from one another only in minor details of shape or by one or two strokes have completely different sounds and meanings.'

@rin_etoware_2989

Жыл бұрын

Tangut needed like twelve or fourteen strokes just to write the character for "three", it's crazy

I can't imagine the efforts behind each of your videos. You're truly a language nerd and it's fantastic. Thanks for sharing your knowledge!

I always love to see stuff like this from you. Stuff that's not covered to death on other youtube channels.

Oh my god… that first 30 seconds tore at my heart! You summarized it perfectly in the first three words alone.

Nice! Would love to see more about this mystery being unraveled

YES! More Chinese/Eastern Asian language stuff. Holy damn, am I excited. When you upload, to a language nerd, it's like Christmas.

That was the most interesting thing I’ve seen all day! Glad to see you’re back too!

Every time I watch Nativlang's videos I ask myself why are there some people who click in dislike for his videos? They're greatly educative and fun to watch.

Have heard of Khitan once before, so glad to have a video to watch and break it down!! Thank you!!!

I always look forward to your informative videos that are also fun to watch!

10th. Love nativlang. You are awesome. You made me love linguistics

"Water bottom-in tree-on bird sits", we would say "Нууран дундах модон дээр шувуу сууж байна" is literally aligns word-to-word in Mongolian.

@mastersuper7149

2 жыл бұрын

No offend but, real Mongolian don’t use Russian words. I have a friend from Inner Mongolia province, he said only Mongolian in China know real Mongolian language. They call the language that Mongolia using now is a branch of Russian language.

@GrimGualla

2 жыл бұрын

@@mastersuper7149 Spoken language is the same in the North and South. We tend to use cyrillic script for formal settings(work related) and latin script for informal (such as social media). Mongolian script which originated from the old Uyghur alphabet is now being taught again to children in primary schools nationwide. Any "real Mongolian" would not try to discriminate between the two...

@zireael531

2 жыл бұрын

@@mastersuper7149 we just found smartest dude in the world

@nachokat4710

2 жыл бұрын

@@mastersuper7149 there isn't even any Russian loan words here lmao

@WeAreSMC96

2 жыл бұрын

@@mastersuper7149 that’s pretty funny, because you wouldn’t call e.g. pinyin “a branch of English/Romance language” when its just mandarin in a different writing system lmao

8:03 the "Water bottom-in tree-on bird sits" part might sound very confusing, but as a mongolian, it made a lot of sense to me. It roughly translates or is interpreted to "Усан доорх модон дээр шувуу сууж байна", meaning "On top of a tree* that's submerged, a bird sits.". *"Мод", or tree, doesn't mean only a tree, but it can also be used to describe wood, or wooden, or of a tree. So in this context, it could mean a log floating on top of water. It's crazy to think I would even realize that our language has this weird bottom-in, or tree-on types of prepositions. But I'm no language expert so i could be talking out of my ass here. Only from a native mongolian :).

@oliverduolingo867

4 жыл бұрын

Ooh nice to see a native mongolian here! Nativlang's next video is on Mongolian - investigating it's history, scripts, and the Mongolic language family :-) Can you read Hudum Mongol bichig?

@Garfield_Minecraft

Жыл бұрын

which word mean middle? idk

@PC_Simo

4 ай бұрын

Same thing, for me, as a Finn. Though, the preferred word order in Modern Finnish is SVO (though, technically, the word order is free), possibly by an internal innovation, or by Indo-European influence, as we Finns migrated from West Siberia to the coasts of the Baltic Sea, to Finland and Estonia.

I'm addicted to this channel. This is too good. ❤❤❤ keep it up.

I have been expecting so much for this

I was shocked when I saw you had made this video. I couldn't believe my eyes. Congratulations!

Yes !, another great video

Amazing video as always

Fantastic as always ! 👍

My mum studies Liao history and got to go to a Khitan workshop, I was super jealous! It was cool to learn more from this video

9:10 The -ur / -ul suffix of the Khitan season words remind me a lot of Korean gyeo-ul "winter" and ga-eul "autumn". Maybe *-ul has the meaning of "season"?

@junheel2291

4 жыл бұрын

Actually, alexander vovin argues that there's some korean loan words in kitan language since both goryeo and kitan claimed to be successor goguryeo. for example the video mentioned state in kitan is "gur" and in goguryeo language, it was "kuru" and modern korean "gol" "of state" in modern korean is "goleui". So i think kitan might be the one mongolic branch that was affected by foreign languages such as korean

@cellfractionation

4 жыл бұрын

@@junheel2291 fun fact, state is gurun in manchu, and I am pretty sure of the state would be guruni

@YummYakitori

4 жыл бұрын

@@junheel2291 The word for country here you are talking about is clearly of Chinese origin. Korean "guk" (국), Mandarin "guo" (国), Japanese "koku", Cantonese or Southern Min which has preserved the Middle Chinese pronunciation "gok/kok/guok" (國). The native Korean word for "country" is "Nara" (나라)

@junheel2291

4 жыл бұрын

@@YummYakitori 나라 is yes native korean meaning country but there's another word for it 골 (Gol) or 고을 (goeul)

Thanks for slowing down your presentation style! Great you tuber :)

I love this so much!!!!! Thank you for all your work. I became interested in linguistics because of you and now I am conlanging!!

@vernicethompson4825

4 жыл бұрын

Good for you! From my experience, step 1) phonology, 2)morphology, 3) vocabulary, 4) syntax, 5) writing and translation. Use a thesaurus to create a dictionary. Have fun!

Request: The next time you do a “What [Insert Ancient Language Here] (And How We Know)” video, would you consider covering the ancient Egyptian language(s) as a possible topic? I’m a huge Egyptophile, trying to teach myself Middle Egyptian, and an audio-video guide on its pronunciation would be super-helpful! Thanks!

I'm so happy that I got your videos recommended: linguistics, obscure history and your voice is really nice!

I love these videos. I could watch em all day long

Great vídeo, as always

Thank you so much Josh! I've been interested in this mysterious people since I learned about their empire. Indeed, in Russian Khitans are called кидани (kidáni, singular кидань - kidáñ), and they gave the name to the country of China (Китай - Kitáy), as someone had already said in comments.

I'm currently doing research on Mongolic languages and honestly can't be more grateful for this video

@Fnatic2010

4 жыл бұрын

Might as well as concentrate your efforts on studying academic published papers in Mongolian than trying to do the research in English or other languages. Lots of research materials are already accessible to Mongolian readers just not in English. If you have read enough books on Mongols, you would notice that all these books are just quoting one another in that limited knowledge and source. Secret history of the Mongols don't even have some decent translation and Jami al Tawarikh is not even completely translated into other languages yet. Then there is that blue chronicle that I don't think is translated into english at all.

Holy crap I was just wondering about this weird chinese-esque script when you made this video. Thanks!

Great explanation, montage, very nice.

It’s funny to me, I have heard of this language once by accident. In modern Farsi, and Dari, China is known as (چين) “CHIIN”, when I used this word with a teacher of mine from Tajikistan he looked at me, quite perplexed. And asked what country I meant by that. I described it and he said “oh you mean Khitan?” apparently this name is still used, if somewhat incorrectly to modern ears. I believe it probably came through Turkic/Mongolic sources to Tajikistan and language there and stuck due to the relative isolation of the mountainous country.

@greenboy1916

4 жыл бұрын

TacticalMoonstone that’s grand. If you have sources I can site later, or use for further research, I’d really appreciate it. I’m trying to sort through influences in Tajiki and anything helps. Also, if you’re anywhere near DC I’ll buy you a cup of coffee to say thanks.

Having studied classical and modern Chinese for 7 years and in that time also learning some classical and modern Mongolian and how to read hangeul, I loved this and at the same time am sad I know nobody who might appreciate it the same way

Awesome work, as usual

I just learned about the existence of Khitan Small Script a few days ago when I looked at what's coming out in Unicode 13.0 soon. And here's a video about it! Thank you.

It's just so amazing were uncovering the secrets of this language right now. It shocks me how little we preserve of what we know existed...full cities undiscovered, famous extinct languages we know almost nothing about, species we only know from scarce drawings and with a bit of luck some skeleton.

It's been almost 15 years since last I encountered the Khitan script as my world history textbook made a brief-ish mention to them. I forgot about them altogether for the rest of my life until now. It's an odd trip down memory lane for me. They jump out at me as extra interesting for its weird outward similarity to Chinese characters despite not at all. As a Japanese speaker Chinese characters are totally familiar to me; whilst at first glance these guys sorta look like they could be obscure characters that just happen to have long been obsolete, on closer inspection they reveal themselves to be entirely different script, which is like a reverse aha moment where everything that seemed to make sense actually doesn't. It's almost uncanny, if anything. Just in case some of you might find both of the Chinese characters and the Khitan look all the samey, I guess it's not too dissimilar to coming across a new set of alphabet that don't look exactly like Latin, Greek or Cyrillic but look vaguely similar. That's the sort of impression I get when I look at these scripts. It seems to me as if they learned the concept of logogram from the Chinese and then they somehow decided to make their own from scratch instead of modifying existing ones like folks around the Mediterranean borrowed the Phoenician alphabet.

Wonderful video. Thanks!

Super interesting video, thanks!

This is incredible. It's 2020, and we're still discovering the past

Interesting! My big takeaway from this story is how important it is to have an easily decipherable script. Reading should be as simple as possible for anyone who wants to read your language.

I love your accurate tone when pronouncing those Chinese words

really really amazing, best regards from modern part of Khitan

Thank you for this video! The Khitans and the Liao Dynasty has particularly drawn my interest after I watched Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils in chinese. In the story, Qiao Feng, one of the main characters grew up in and is known as a hero in Song china, but in a turn of events, he finds out that he is actually a Khitan, and becomes an outcast due to, among many other things, the war and fighting between the Liao and Song Dynasties.

@zxp8272

4 жыл бұрын

Really?Is jinyong' book also popular outside China?Anyway, I am happy to know you read his books. I love his books too.

@BobTheHatKing

4 жыл бұрын

zx p You’re acting so surprised... I never said I was outside of china (people use vpns) and also I did mention that I watched it in chinese; the chinese-speaking community extends way beyond just china. But yes, I’m American-born but my parents are from Taiwan and I was introduced to Jin Yong by my mom. DG&SD was actually the very first one I watched.

@tsuikr

2 жыл бұрын

@@BobTheHatKing you could watch it in Chinese? Not bad, not many ABCs can! Some can be quite fluent in modern speaking Chinese but a period drama may use some archaic terms.

@BobTheHatKing

2 жыл бұрын

@@tsuikr my mom explained a few of the archaic terms in the beginning but after a while you kind of just pick it up. It’s not like they’re speaking full on Classical chinese

I'd love to learn more about the Uyghur language on this channel!

非常有趣 great video, informative, well done

Your art in Kitan language is worth more than gold.

“They made ‘北京‘ their Southern Capital” Very confusing sentence if you think about it

Next, please do a video on Tuyuhun and Xianbei and Jurchen and all those other nomad languages.

You are awesome. Never quit. You’re the reason I became a polyglot

Very good video, good job.

Very interesting video, and very misterious language indeed! I would like to make a suggestion for a future video: the interesting indigenous languages of the Iberian peninsula before the Roman conquest: Celtiberian (celtic), Lusitanian (pre-celtic, celtic, italic?), Tartesian (unclasified, indo-european?) and Iberian (language isolate?) :)

@dukeon

2 жыл бұрын

This!

With "large script" being logograms and "small script" representing sounds and syllables, this reminds me of kanji and hiragana system in Japanese. Also, the grammar pattern of "Water bottom-in tree-on bird sits" looks uncannily similar to Japanese as well.

@Anonimounknown3

Жыл бұрын

"this reminds me of kanji and hiragana system in Japanese" I can see where you're coming from, but there's an important detail to keep in mind: the large and the small script never seem to appear in the same text, meaning that they do not mix.

I scrolled through the comments and glad to see that I am not the only language nerd fascinated by all this. Thanks so much!!

I like this kind of videos about mysterious cultures of the past

Perhaps you can discuss the Tangut script at one point? It's like someone took Chinese logograms, thought they were a good idea, then made their own, but stuck to only a few Runic-like strokes, repeated again and again.

There is a similar writing system in the same period in this region, the Tangut writings of Western Xia. Though Tangut is a Sino-Tibetan language instead of Khitan's Para-Mongolic origin , the writings were made in the similar manner in which elements from Chinese were made to represent local ones. And the scripts also look like 'not-right' Chinese. Just Like Khitan, Tangut was forgotten until the recent century. However, it is now much better deciphered than Khitan. Because Tangut people just left so many volumes of their writings, many of which are translations of Chinese literature. Researchers can just check the Chinese counterpart to know exactly what Tangut people were talking about, thus understanding how their language works.

One day I would love to have a video on grammatical cases by you. I’ve watched every video I can, but it still does not stick. No other KZreadr could do it besides you honestly

I love how you can actually pronounce history names ;)

Talk about tangut language, please!

Wow, the time period of Song and Liao, Jin and later Yuan must be the most multilingual time in Chinese history.

@thatchacre5763

4 жыл бұрын

Nope, the Pre-Qin China was ethnically more diverse. We just don't know much about that period.

I swear to god if you ever had a netflix docu series I'd binge it all!

Fantastic!!

2:59 Well, that's the first time in my years of learning English that I came to contact with the word "recalcitrant".

@timmccarthy872

4 жыл бұрын

Good luck to you! English is full of unnecessarily difficult, Latin-derived words like that. As you probably already know, "recalcitrant" is a fancy word meaning "un-cooperative."

@Pepetorde

4 жыл бұрын

It exists in Spanish, "recalcitrante", and it's not that uncommon. But it's also my first time hearing it in English!

@frechjo

4 жыл бұрын

​@Evi1M4chine I don't know what's the history of the Romanian word for "recalcitrant", but there are different sets of Latin derived words in Romance language. The majority emerged together with the languages, so those would be patrimonial words in the languge. Others were incorporated later as borrowings, after the languages were already well differentiated. Those usually come from use in the cultured elites of different times, from sciences, law, politics, or religion. Some times, the original word gets incorporated twice, first as a patrimonial, and later as a cultism: collocare (Lat) -> _colgar_ (Sp, pat); collocare -> _colocar_ (Sp, cult). Sometimes there are both both a "latinism" and a patrimonial variant: in _vitro_ (Lat), _vidrio_(Sp). Etc.

@Zdrange03

4 жыл бұрын

Quite a common word in French. Was probably taken from there.

@wearealreadydeadfam8214

4 жыл бұрын

Krupam Same. I’m a 29 year old native speaker.

8:07 yes it does! Sadly Master Yoda is not around at the moment to help us :/

Very interesting and worthwhile video. Actually, I had heard about an early attempt at introducing a syllabary in China. This may be that attempt. An attempt at deciphering the syllabary appeared in a massive volume on alphabets and syllabaries of the world published in the UK about 55 years ago.

OMG.... this video really blows my eyes away......

I find this pretty interesting. While I was learning Russian and learning the names of countries we learned how to say China as Китай (Kitay).

@eugeneng7064

4 жыл бұрын

Guess why? Fun fact: in English the word is Cathay

@eliad6543

4 жыл бұрын

@@eugeneng7064 Well, the origin of that could still be related to "Khitan".

@eugeneng7064

4 жыл бұрын

@@eliad6543 it is. Guess I wasn't clear

@eugeneng7064

4 жыл бұрын

@پاسدار فرد Александр still used today depending on context

@DrWhom

4 жыл бұрын

@@eugeneng7064 Cathay Pacific airlines

Khitan haplogroups are closest to the Hunnu, their descendants are Daur. Mongols and Buryats are also the genetic descendants of the Huns. And the closest descendants of Xianbei turned out to be Orochens (Tungusso-Manjurian group)

The best channel on KZread. No contest :)

I love this!

The dude in the thumbnail looks like Nicolas Cage

@differentialequation9471

4 жыл бұрын

Gunjα Fury This is him. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yel%C3%BC_Chucai

I've heared Korean characters (Hangeul)' so-called box system was influenced by Khitan indeed. I guess the small script was the one.

@lyhthegreat

3 жыл бұрын

really?

I don't if you already have but a video about native south American language would be awesome. Excellent video btw

I keep watching this repeatedly. I don’t know how to explain, it’s just magical…

Wow, i think you should make video about Koreanic languages such as Goguryeoan language, Ye-Maek, Puyŏ, baekje, etc

@balaynganiyebe

4 жыл бұрын

TBH i think we should all probably start with Jeju. It's really preserved well and barely tainted by the mainland, and it's endangered so :)))

@ADeeSHUPA

4 жыл бұрын

@@balaynganiyebe uP

@sirlancelet9167

2 жыл бұрын

@Абдульзефир There is also Jeju, which is different enough to be considered a separate language

Small Khitan writing reminds me a lot about Hangul. Maybe Sejong was a bit inspired?

@lyhthegreat

3 жыл бұрын

even the sentence structure is similar to korean too..the sov order

@beregu

2 жыл бұрын

Korean and Mongolian sentence structure and thought logic in their languages are quite similar. I was taught by a Korean linguist that Hangul was inspired by Mongolian and Sanskrit. Probably, that's why...

(besides a lot of other things) I like the font you use in your videos. what is it?

Hi NativLan: Could you make a video on Rongorongo?