On Wed, 13 Aug 1997, Ben Williamson wrote:

Thomas R Jefferys <wyrm@mail.utexas.edu> enlightened us in the following manner:

As I said, this so-called "certainty" is a *myth.*

I am in agreement with you that spoken Japanese and Chinese have about as much 
in common as vicchysoise and chow mein, but in terms of meanings of the kanji, 
I must disagree. 

There are variations, but in general the kanji meanings stay quite close in 
Japanese in Chinese.  Sometimes it is somewhat off, but the general meaning is 
usually identical.  Why do I think this?
a) My relatives and friends that are fluent in Chinese (I am not, but I know a 
little) can read Japanese text and pick out general meaning if not nuances.

b) I know about 1200 Japanese kanji.  Some of them I knew before taking Japanese 
due to my background with the Chinese languages.  Occasionally there are 
differences, rarely a kanji will mean something COMPLETELY different from the 
Chinese.

Ben Williamson.

	But Ben, you're missing the _point_! Written language came MUCH
later. In fact, I'm told that the Japanese have several legends about how
the written kanji were taken from China, and _backed in_ to the spoken
Japanese language. While I have no personal proof of this, given what I
have read of Japanese history and myth, it sounds quite likely.

	What this means, it that Chinese and Japnese have no more in
common than say.. English and Russian. Which is a rather apt comparison,
given the Roman alphabet and the Cyrillic alphabet. Some letters are
identical, some are similar to each other, and some are totally unique.

	I realize my next statement can be taken as an insult, but it's an
insult repeated in quite a few world history books I've studied. Japanese
has no basic similarity to Chinese... they simply saw a good working form
of _written_ language in a near-by land that had a superior culture (at
THAT TIME! Please remember that in Asia, at least, China was the very
first real, cultured, civilization.) and they stole it, taking it to use
for their own. And that happened to include the writing system, which they
proceeded to hack up to fit their own tongue.

	In fact, according to the book 'Samurai' by H. Paul Varley, there
was a period when the Japanese slavishly and unashamedly imitated
everything that was Chinese. Status in the Emperor's court depended on
just how skillfully you could do so.

	Just my two cents. Sorry, Tybalt. My mind is rambling.

	Ed Becerra