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Can Japanese People Read Chinese? (Mandarin, Simplified)

That Japanese Man Yuta · demo · Watch on YouTube

Language & linguistics

What it is

Yuta, a Japanese YouTuber, tests how much simplified Chinese a Japanese person can read, working with a Mandarin speaker. The video shows where shared kanji help and where meanings differ.

Why Hacker News recommends it

HN uses it to answer whether Japanese speakers can read Chinese: they can guess a lot, but not reliably.

  • 2 people recommended it
  • 2 different months
  • 0 strong recommendations
  • first 2020, last 2021

What HN commenters said

  1. “That Japanese Man Yuta has a great video demonstrating just how much Chinese script do ordinary Japanese folk understand”

    Shows how much Chinese script ordinary Japanese understand

    Tade0, 2020-10 · Recommendation · in “What Chinese looks, feels and sounds like when you're from Korea or Japan (2009)”

  2. “I found these videos quite entertaining”

    Entertaining videos on familiar characters with different meanings

    scaladev, 2021-03 · Recommendation · in “Japanese typography: Kilograms of sinograms”

Excerpts from Hacker News comments, linked to the originals. Summaries and labels were written by a language model from those comments.

Topics: kanji, simplified chinese, japanese, writing systems

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