One theory say that hiragana and katakana have hebrew origin because there are the similarities between Hebrew and japanese syllabary. What do you think?

http://jamesjpn.net/2010/06/10/japanese-...mment-2291

There's a pretty good historical record of how the kana developed from kanji. If you look at kana writing from the middle ages, there's no similarity whatsoever to Hebrew writing...chance resemblances between languages are quite common, but if you go back to the historical record, there's nothing there.

Sure, if you try really hard you can make some writting styles of hebrew letters look like some of the kana.

I thought kana were derived from the Matrix movie.

kenate Wrote:One theory say that hiragana and katakana have hebrew origin because there are the similarities between Hebrew and japanese syllabary. What do you think?

http://jamesjpn.net/2010/06/10/japanese-...mment-2291

Uh, no, there's no 'theory' that the kana have Hebrew origins. There are, however, three or four (extremely) dumb people on the internet who wrote something to that accord.

Tzadeck Wrote:

kenate Wrote:One theory say that hiragana and katakana have hebrew origin because there are the similarities between Hebrew and japanese syllabary. What do you think?

http://jamesjpn.net/2010/06/10/japanese-...mment-2291

Uh, no, there's no 'theory' that the kana have Hebrew origins. There are, however, three or four (extremely) dumb people on the internet who wrote something to that accord.

Calling them dumb doesn't dispel their argument or your lack of one.

They don't have an argument. There's no proof whatsoever for the the claim other than some superficial similarities between some katakana and hebrew letters.

Isn't Jesus meant to be buried in Tohoku somewhere too? Maybe he brought it with him? :o

yudantaiteki Wrote:They don't have an argument. There's no proof whatsoever for the the claim other than some superficial similarities between some katakana and hebrew letters.

He said there was similarities, and has pointed out said similarities. You reacted emotionally.

シ ツ ソ ン resemble two two eyed smily faces and two one-eyed smily faces.
Conclusion: The creators of smilies travelled to Japan in prehistoric times and shared their knowledge of smilies with the Japanese.

Okay, on a more serious note: Why are they comparing today's Hebrew characters and today's kana? These scripts have changed a lot through time. Shouldn't they be comparing the first kana with their contemporary Hebrew characters if they want to support this thesis?

It's like saying that whales evolved directly (NOTE that I am saying "directly") from fish because they both happen to live in the sea.
Which is wrong because whales are mammals that originally lived on land. Fish have lived in the ocean since they first appeared on earth. (I do acknowledge that all land mammals in turn came from the sea, but that was a millions of years before whales became creatures of the sea)

I liked this part of the website:

Quote:Hitchhiking, physical / spiritual health, KJV truth, Linux, Wordpress, exposing the Illuminati Masonic Zionist Jesuit Roman Popery New World Order

Aikynaro Wrote:Isn't Jesus meant to be buried in Tohoku somewhere too? Maybe he brought it with him? :o

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shing%C5%8D...sus_Christ

By the way,
aiueo ordering of kana comes from Sanskrit (that's true).

ryuudou Wrote:

yudantaiteki Wrote:They don't have an argument. There's no proof whatsoever for the the claim other than some superficial similarities between some katakana and hebrew letters.

He said there was similarities, and has pointed out said similarities. You reacted emotionally.

No, he said there's a theory that kana are -derived from hebrew characters-, and the link proposes that theory. I stand behind those who say that's just plain stupidity. (If you just point out the similarities without trying to make the conclusion, I'd say that's just plain uninteresting, but not stupid.)

The history of the kana is not very old and is thoroughly documented. The slightest effort at looking into the origin of the kana disproves this 'theory' one way. The development of kana is recent enough that any mass movement of hebrew people through Asia would be in the historical record, and that disproves the 'theory' another way.

Actually, it looks to me to be more malicious than stupid; it looks like making a hoped-to-be controversial proposal knowing full well that it's false, just to troll for hits for advertising $$$.

Two sets of kana to work with, and the old hebrew characters don't even have a vowel sound ... of course they could find a few vague similarities, and a smaller number of similarities with modern vowel-marked hebrew. There's only so many ways to combine small sets of lines. て (te) looks like a T, maybe kana was actually derived from the roman alphabet! ... or maybe it was derived from kanji just like all the books say.

Did anyone besides the Chinese even have contact with Japan in the middle of the 1st millennium AD when the katakana started popping up?

ryuudou Wrote:

yudantaiteki Wrote:They don't have an argument. There's no proof whatsoever for the the claim other than some superficial similarities between some katakana and hebrew letters.

He said there was similarities, and has pointed out said similarities. You reacted emotionally.

From the link in the first post:
"However from the chart, it seems pretty convincing to me that Japanese syllabary scripts are based on Hebrew script, and therefore would mean the ancient children of Israel did in fact come to Japan in the early part of the first millennium!"

SomeCallMeChris:

Quote:Actually, it looks to me to be more malicious than stupid; it looks like making a hoped-to-be controversial proposal knowing full well that it's false, just to troll for hits for advertising $$$.

I think there's a good possibility of it being sincere. He has other posts on his site about how Christianity supposedly reached Japan in pre-written historical times but was suppressed; I think he's one of many who are allowing their religious beliefs to override their sense of plausibility. In this case I would imagine this belief is a way to address the objection of how Christianity can be the universal, correct religion when it didn't get to Japan for 1500+ years after Jesus' death.

SomeCallMeChris Wrote:

ryuudou Wrote:

yudantaiteki Wrote:They don't have an argument. There's no proof whatsoever for the the claim other than some superficial similarities between some katakana and hebrew letters.

He said there was similarities, and has pointed out said similarities. You reacted emotionally.

No, he said there's a theory that kana are -derived from hebrew characters-, and the link proposes that theory. I stand behind those who say that's just plain stupidity. (If you just point out the similarities without trying to make the conclusion, I'd say that's just plain uninteresting, but not stupid.)

The history of the kana is not very old and is thoroughly documented. The slightest effort at looking into the origin of the kana disproves this 'theory' one way. The development of kana is recent enough that any mass movement of hebrew people through Asia would be in the historical record, and that disproves the 'theory' another way.

Actually, it looks to me to be more malicious than stupid; it looks like making a hoped-to-be controversial proposal knowing full well that it's false, just to troll for hits for advertising $$$.

Two sets of kana to work with, and the old hebrew characters don't even have a vowel sound ... of course they could find a few vague similarities, and a smaller number of similarities with modern vowel-marked hebrew. There's only so many ways to combine small sets of lines. て (te) looks like a T, maybe kana was actually derived from the roman alphabet! ... or maybe it was derived from kanji just like all the books say.

None of that applies. I was not taking the side of the author, or arguing for his theory in any sense. I was simply making the independent statement that "hey thats dumb!" is a not a valid rebuttal. Less valid than any skeptical theory in that link.

buonaparte Wrote:

Aikynaro Wrote:Isn't Jesus meant to be buried in Tohoku somewhere too? Maybe he brought it with him? :o

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shing%C5%8D...sus_Christ

By the way,
aiueo ordering of kana comes from Sanskrit (that's true).

May be true, but the dictionary ordering has nothing to do with the actual language. Frankly Japanese (particularly Old Japanese) has more in common with Egyptian than Sanskrit.

You know what's really amazing? My theory that after kana was derived from hebrew, English was derived from kana! Here's the (pretty convincing) proof:

あ----------> a
い、イ----------> i, I
う ----------> u (just rotate it 90 degrees)
く ----------> C
ケ----------> K
そ----------> S (flip it horizonatally, and squint really hard for this one)
し----------> ʃ (okay not technically English, but close enough; at least it shows that this IPA symbol was derived from Japanese)
た---------->ta
て----------> T

QED

This explains my other theory that the ancient children of Fuji-san did actually come to Australia (the birthplace of English) in the early 20th century.

ashman63 Wrote:You know what's really amazing? My theory that after kana was derived from hebrew, English was derived from kana! Here's the (pretty convincing) proof:

あ----------> a
い、イ----------> i, I
う ----------> u (just rotate it 90 degrees)
く ----------> C
ケ----------> K
そ----------> S (flip it horizonatally, and squint really hard for this one)
し----------> ʃ (okay not technically English, but close enough; at least it shows that this IPA symbol was derived from Japanese)
た---------->ta
て----------> T

QED

This explains my other theory that the ancient children of Fuji-san did actually come to Australia (the birthplace of English) in the early 20th century.

I knew it!

I guess you can find evidence for anything if you squint hard enough...

ryuudou Wrote:I was simply making the independent statement that "hey thats dumb!" is a not a valid rebuttal. Less valid than any skeptical theory in that link.

Well, I think we've shown now that it -is- pretty dumb. It may not be a valid argument, but in the case, it's a valid observation. Dumb. As. Rocks.

ashman63 Wrote:し----------> ʃ (okay not technically English, but close enough; at least it shows that this

Actually, the IPA symbol comes from the older English form of "s". You'll see it quite often in texts even up to the late 1800s/ early 1900s. For some reason English decided to have two slightly different forms of "s" running around at the same time. Printed forms of the ʃ character usually look more like an "f".

Actually, I think this shows both Hebrew script and kana came from aliens.

"dumb" ... that's not a rebuttal, that's a dismissal

ryuudou Wrote:I was simply making the independent statement that "hey thats dumb!" is a not a valid rebuttal.

The problem is that you think you're departing some sort of wisdom by telling us this, and you're not. Everyone already understands that calling something dumb is not a valid rebuttal--you're not the validity police, and nobody wants you to be.

Sometimes there's a deeper wisdom in knowing when something is a waste of your time and dismissing it.

ryuudou Wrote:Frankly Japanese (particularly Old Japanese) has more in common with Egyptian than Sanskrit.

帝釋天 thinks differently.