Why do people overseas feel that Japanese words and names sound African?
When Japanese people learn English or French, they may have difficulty learning the pronunciation of sounds such as 'r' and 'l' with the tongue rolled, or because the pronunciation cannot be accurately expressed in katakana and it is difficult to reproduce it by ear. On the other hand, many African languages have pronunciations that are similar to Japanese, and Farouk Kperogi, a journalism professor at Kennesaw State University in the United States, has stated his view that there is an interesting phonetic correspondence between Japanese and African languages.
Japanese Words and Names Sound African. Why? - Notes From Atlanta
Regarding the correspondence between Japanese and African languages, Kuperogi points to Obama City in Fukui Prefecture. In 2006, when former President Barack Obama was a senator, he joked in an interview with a Japanese TV station that he was from Obama. This prompted the mayor of Obama at the time to send him some of the city's famous crafts, and a group was formed to support Obama in the 2008 presidential election, which spurred passionate support. Former President Obama is of Luo descent from Kenya, and Obama is a name often given by the Luo people. There is also a town called Obama in Nigeria, and the sound of 'Obama' can be said to be a word that can be heard in both Japanese and African languages. The image below shows a bust of former President Obama erected in Obama City.
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Another example that Kperogi gives is Ajinomoto , a savory seasoning made by a company with the same name as the product, and is commonly used in Nigerian households. Kperogi had long thought that the seasoning in his kitchen, called Ajinomoto, was a Nigerian company named after a Nigerian language. He also asked his wife, who is half Igbo Nigerian and half American, 'What language do you think Ajinomoto comes from?' and she replied, 'It must be Yoruba, a language spoken in Nigeria and elsewhere.' Kperogi also points out that many Japanese personal names, town names, and names of things have different meanings in Nigeria.
by Richard Masoner / Cyclelicious
Similarly, many African words can be understood phonetically in Japanese. For example, the Yoruba people, a major ethnic group in Nigeria, have words that sound familiar to the ear, such as 'Yoru' (night) and 'Ba' (horse). This is unusual for a completely separate language, and is a surprising match.
However, no evidence has been found that the correspondence between Japanese and African languages is more than merely coincidental in phonology or semantics.
Similarly, the language of Plateau State in central-eastern Nigeria shows similarities in sound and rhythm to the Sino-Tibetan languages of China and its neighboring countries. Linguists who have studied these similarities have found that lexical statistical analysis shows that less than 30% of the words that are similar in pronunciation between Plateau State and Sino-Tibetan languages are similar in meaning. As a result, linguists call these similarities 'accidental evidence.'
Similarities in pronunciation and sound usage between different languages would suggest that they share a common origin, but there has been no evidence of this whatsoever. 'It's just a coincidence of similarities in sound,' Kperogi said. 'Interestingly, however, neither the Plateau language nor Japanese belong to any of the major language families in their respective regions, and are what are known in linguistics as ' language isolates .''
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in Note, Posted by log1e_dh