CJK Cheat Code | Shortcut to Three Languages
Learn to "convert" between Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.
(The ebook accompanying this video is taking a lot more time than I expected. However, in the meantime, the script for this video has been uploaded on Patreon for your reference.)
Patreon: / 808cjk
Join the 808CJK Discord: / discord
Website: www.808CJK.com/
Chapters:
00:00 - Introduction
00:53 - Middle Chinese
01:32 - Sound and Meaning Readings
04:04 - The System Itself
04:58 - Initial Consonants
06:00 - CJK Consonants
09:27 - Level 1
15:57 - Level 2
18:51 - Level 3
20:00 - Final Consonants
24:26 - Intermission
27:31 - Demonstration
Learn hangul (Korean alphabet):
Learn to Read Korean in 15 Minutes - www.ryanestrada.com/learntore...
Fluent Forever: Pronouncing Korean - • Fluent Forever: Pronou...
Middle Chinese - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_...
Kanji - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji
Japanese Honorific Prefix (御~: お~, ご~) - www.tofugu.com/japanese-gramm...
Sino-Japanese vocabulary - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Ja...
Sino-Korean vocabulary - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Ko...
Sino-Xenic pronunciations - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Xe...
[CN] 朝鮮漢字音 - zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%9C%...
[JP] 音読み - ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%9F%...
Hunminjeongeum Haerye - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunminj...
Hunminjeongeum Haerye (text) - en.wikisource.org/wiki/Transl...
[JP] Hunminjeongeum Haerye (text and explanation) - www.tufs.ac.jp/ts/personal/cho...
[Documentary] Hangeul, the Scientific Letters - • Video
Mandarin IPA - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IP...
Japanese IPA - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IP...
Korean IPA - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IP...
Labial consonant - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labial_...
Coronal consonant - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronal...
Sibilant consonant - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sibilant
Dorsal consonant - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorsal_...
Laryngeal consonant - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larynge...
Lateral consonant - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateral...
Approximant - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approxi...
Semivowel - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semivowel
Chinese sound correspondences - www.frathwiki.com/Chinese_sou...
Middle Chines tones - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_to...)
Erhua - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erhua
Dakuten and handakuten - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakuten...
Deriving the Japanese "p" and "b" sounds from "h" - japanese.stackexchange.com/qu...
Sokuon - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokuon
[CN] Japanese gemination (sokuon) and non-nasal finals - zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/137984549
There is a lot going on in this video and it might be quite confusing - I am still working on a book that will explain and present everything in a comprehensive and clear way. In the meantime, if you would like study these languages with me, I am now available for private tutoring or a free 30-minute consultation over Zoom. Through these sessions, I hope to get a better sense of what questions people have and to answer them in future videos or the book. The application form is here: forms.gle/FRKYa6WjiY8BYPbk7 As always, thank you for your time and kind interest :)
It took you so long because you didn't know about the concept of similar sounds. Ancient Sanskrit Grammaticians knew it since the beginning. They wrote about 5 places of origin: कंठ (throat), तालु (palate), मूर्धा (roof), दन्त (teeth) and ओष्ठ (lips). Sanskrit consonants were classified into these place with the left ones classified on the basis of other nature, making it easy to study Grammar. That's why more studies should be conducted on Sanskrit!
Wow, I almost feel like I don't deserve this video
Haha glad you like it!
😊 I do deserve this video
❤️
exactly! so much effort applied it this vid.
you don’t if you didn’t notice this tbh.
I am Korean, and as someone studying both Chinese and Japanese, I've vaguely noticed similarities in the pronunciation of Chinese characters. Your video has systematically organized these rules in a way I could never have imagined. The amount of research and effort that must have gone into this is incredible. This video will be helpful to anyone interested in the languages of these three countries.
As a person who's studied all 3, Cantonese sounds closer to both Korean and Japanese than Mandarin does.
Shijian doesn't sounds similar to Japanese jikan. 0. Cantonese sounds more similar😂
Cantonese sounds similar to Vietnamese.
Cantonese sounds nothing like Japanese or Korean. Cantonese sounds like vietnamese or mandarin.
It's nice having it laid out in a comparison table like this. I feel like I was doing this subconsciously with Cantonese, Japanese, and Vietnamese already, but I guess with the power of this table I can now go from Japanese to Korean and more Mandarin.
@@3miuretro821 That's because Mandarin palatalized k followed by front vowels to become j and the other languages did not.
I can watch lessons like these all day
As a Chinese, I improved my Chinese after listening to your tutorial.
It’s obvious to anyone who’s studied multiple CJK languages that the relationship is there yet people angrily deny it to me all the time. Nevertheless systematizing it like this is great
This should be an university class, this is amazing. I consider myself at a low intermediate level of Japanese, but I also want to learn mandarin and korean. This is amazing.
Me not knowing any of these languages: oh yes, of course, very interesting 🧐 🤔
Lol same 😂😂
I feel you bro😂
My favourite example of words between Chinese (specifically Mandarin) and Japanese is 開始. They’re almost identical. Another one is 感動, too.
The reason why I like 感動 too is because I actually guessed its pronunciation in Japanese based on what I know in the first place (Mandarin). I grew up learning Mandarin so yeah.
its not so simple.勉强 has two different meaning.
@@WmannThe tones in Chinese dialects prevents a 100% accurate translation 😅
Well I’m not saying ALL are the same, I’m just saying that knowing Mandarin in the first place really helps
Hm, I feel like you only think that because of the illusion of pinyin and roomaji lol. 始 doesn't even really have a vowel in Mandarin. It ends in a rhotic retroflex lol, which is nothing like an い sound.
Some Japanese and Korean pronunciations are closer to Cantonese and Hokkien, than to Mandarin.
Uh not cantonese at all wtf you talking about, they sound extremely different cantonese sounds more like vietnamese or thai, Japanese sounds almost exactly like middle chinese if you said the syllables longer and stetched the indentation’s
@@NeostormXLMAXOP mentioned both Cantonese and Hokkien. And both dialects are from the Southern branch of the Sino-Tibetic language family; therefore there will be some similarities. Also Japanese retains the Sui-T'ang dynasty way of speaking Chinese so a lot of Kanji on'myouji (Chinese readings) will sound like Cantonese and Hokkien as those were the lingua franca of the empire at the time. Mandarin only came to existence approximately 1,000 years ago.
@@NeostormXLMAX I say some, not all of it. I'm Hong Konger btw, and I can hear words in Japanese that sounds closer to Cantonese than Mandarin. also, Cantonese is much more closer to Middle Chinese than mandarin.
@@NeostormXLMAX also, Vietnamese also inherit some pronunciation from Middle Chinese, but theirs is a lot further away.
@@NeostormXLMAX i speak canto and learning korean atm. When he gave the "time" example, korean was "sigan" and mandarin was "shijian" which is similar. However, the canto pronounciation is exactly the same being "sigan". Whilst learning korean, I've noticed many other words that are have exactly the same pronounciation and meaning. Therefore, canto is much closer to korean in pronouciation than mandarin.
I love your use of hangeul as the starting point for consonant analysis. It highlights the middle chinese thinking behind the syllable. There are many patterns in the vowels from K to J and M. Also, have you looked at old Korean 한자 dictionaries called 옥편. They show the historical sound change and explain Mandarin in 한글.
Oh thank you so much for the recommendation-this is the first time I've heard of them. I'll definitely look into this!
Regarding the vowel system you mentioned, if you know classical Japanese spelling (歴史的仮名遣い) and the rules applied to change it in the meiji era to accommodate vowel changes, it's also possible to predict mandarin vowels to a relatively high degree of accuracy. For instance 相(ショウ) was originally シヤウ which sounds very similar to xiang when you pronounce it in Japanese. Same for 上→シヤウ→shang, here are a few more examples: 棒→バウ→bang 鋼→カウ→kang 九→キウ→jiu 劉→リウ→liu 高→カウ→gao 好→カウ→hao 鏡→ケイ→jing 停→テイ→ting I just started learning Mandarin so there's probably a lot more I'm yet to notice, but here are some trends I've realized: aウ→ang/ao ヤウ→iang eウ→iao eイ→ing So final ウ(after a) and イ(after e) tend to consistently be Japanese equivalents of ng and final o. Just one thing to be careful is that Japanese has various onyomi readings for each kanji and the one we need to use when "converting" to mandarin is 漢音 (most of the time). If the kanji has 唐音 use that instead. When converting to Hakka, for instance, 呉音 would be more appropriate. As an example, 漢音 of 病 is ヘイ, which using the pattern I demonstrated above we correctly get the mandarin equivalent "bing". If we use the 呉音 ビヤウ however, using the same technique, we get the Hakka "phiang".
Could you make a complete workbook for learning all 808 characters & pronunciations from zero? Self publishing on Amazon is fairly simple and you could create a video lecture course for every lesson and sell it as a package deal, as well as the book and the course separately. You're doing God's work sir, keep it up!
There are between 3000 and 10000 kanjis in Japanese and Chinese has between 8000 and more. Not only that but each kanji, at least in Japanese, changes with context, means different things, or has a translation with so much nuance that it's basically untranslatable. In Japanese you learn how to read the words not the individual kanjis, and you learn how to write each kanji though most kanjis have a similar stroke order or at least one that's convincing enough. And you'd think that 658 words is a lot, but Japanese is a language with several homophones and even homonyms, so it barely makes a difference. Learning Japanese and Chinese is like learning Greek or Slovakian as an English speaker.
Thank you for the great suggestion! I will definitely try working on this :)
I think also that it would be great!
So underrated lesson for CJK leaners...
This also applies to Vietnamese btw
What are the changes of consonants though?
@@lupus5338 what do you mean?
@@conho4898 like the word time, jikan, shikan... how would it change in vietnamese?
@@lupus5338 時間 is thời gian.
@@conho4898 hm, I can see the shift of sounds.
牙 means molars or back teeth, and 齒 means incisors or front teeth, hence the Chinese names for velar and dental (sibilant) sounds.
That's me learning Japanese as a Korean - just remembering the japanese pronunciation of the vocab that I already know in most cases
this is something i v been looking for more than 20 years! thank u very much. so should all chinese, japanese and korean people.
This video is awsome! I can't stop rewatching it.👍🏻
Please come back!!!!
These videos are so well done. Excellent work
Amazing! Keep up the good work :)
Wow! What a great resource! Thank you!
thanks for your hard work! I can't imagine how laborious it was to join all that info in such a clear way. BTW, if you want some info on the vowels of the readings, there is a very famous youtuber called Stuart Jay Raj, he is both a linguist and a polyglot, and also fascinated by anything related to the Chinese language. Maybe he has some ideas to add to your system, since he learned some old and middle chinese as well. Also, when are you going to continue reading all the chinese characters?
Thank you for the suggestion! I will definitely check out Stuart Jay Raj's videos as I do more research on vowels :) I'm graduating from college in a few weeks so I'll probably continue with reading the Chinese characters after that! Just so I have time to finish up with school and to study more characters. I'm glad you enjoyed that stream haha. Was pretty worried that it was a bad idea.
yep, I was waiting for someone to mention Stu, otherwise I would have - he's got a great video on the sound shift from the languages. I'm also sure you've seen the newer CN, JP, KR videos from the polyglot youtubers
Excellent work! Congratulations!
Why this is so underrated? The work he put in this is amazing ❤
Man! You're absolutely brilliant.
This has always been at the back of my head all this time, and I'm glad someone had finally made a video about it. I'm not a native speaker of any of the three languages so this helps so much !! Everything is explained so well and comprehensively, Thank you so much !!
Amazing work and enormous amount of useful information! Please, accept my deepest appreciation!
Great insights that I can relate to! Something to add for the character 易 that appears at 30:18. 易 has two sounds with a different meaning for each as far as I know. Hanja dictionaries call it “쉬울 이 or 바꿀 역.” It sounds “이” when it means “easy, easily” and “역” when it means “to exchange.” I believe Japanese follows the same semantic distinction with the “イ” and “エキ” sounds.
簡易 is (kan i) and 貿易 is (bou eki) so yes there is a distinction
Cantonese 易Yi(easy) and 易Yik(change)
As a Korean, I REALLY love your work! Thanks!
This really helps, being born in HK and knowing Mandarin and some Canto, it has helped with learning Japanese
Will there be any more uploads? I just came across this channel. It’s soo useful!
終於有人整理出我一直想做的音韻對應了 好感動
这真的很有意思啊!!!学了一点日语韩语和广东话,我真的能几乎无误地推理出一个字在另一门语言中的发音!😂
但作為講粵語的還是有點失望w 因為感覺粵語保留的ptk能夠對應得更好吧
@@oishibaking 比如“法”这类是吗?其实讲真的,ptk对应最好的可能是韩语。
@@martingin6937 學 (hok, hak, gaku, xue) 粵語、日語、韓語,只有粵語韓語完整保存了ptk 粵語就是直接從中古漢語照搬完整的ptk,根本就無需「對應」,這才是我失望的原因,因為粵語我認為更有參考價值。不過可能普通話比較常用吧(順帶一提很多粵吹就是用粵語完整ptk的發音踩低普通話) 韓國的話也是ptk不過t變成r了,日文吧ptk變成っ(納豆)、つ(発)、く/き(敵),日文的p韻尾是消失了的。
@@oishibaking 粤语的花,有些字的ptk会发证变化,比如“法”从p变成了t。日语的话也没有消失到完全没有痕迹。日语里面很多固有词和汉字读音都经历了经历了末尾ふ(读作ぷ)→う的变化。比如蝶々(ちょうちょう)、十(じゅう)。
Great video!
Great video! As a native Mandarin speaker learning Japanese, I have always wondered if there were some kind of pattern to how the ancient Japanese people took the Middle Chinese readings and tweaked the pronunciation to fit within the phonotactics of Japanese. I have also kind of developed a hunch for it, but seeing the rules all laid out is great!
amazing video. as a learner of kr/jp and heritage speaker of chinese I've always been thinking about this and it's great to see it all laid out systematically like this. I've been supporting on patreon since I first found this channel and this video alone made me really glad I did! you're doing great work, keep it up 👍👍
" I've been supporting on patreon since I first found this channel and this video alone made me really glad I did! you're doing great work, keep it up 👍👍" literally 그 말이 내 말이야
Amazing thank u for the video
Cantonese and a lot other southern dialects preserve the non nasal consonants. Also, the er added at the end as final consonant only happens in Beijing dialect and surrounding northern dialects which was an influence from mongols and Manchurians when they ruled China since song dynasty. People in the south generally don’t do it at all.
That would be perfect as a computer algorithm, but I no human could apply these principles and be able to "convert" words from one language to another on the fly, let alone talk. To say nothing of the way each of these languages "phrase" their thoughts (i.e. their grammar). Lots of overlapping between Japanese and Korean structures, to be sure, but not so much between those languages and Chinese. Interesting as a subject of study, remarkable actually, but anybody who has studied any two of those three languages already knows there is a lot of overlapping between words used by all three because of the Chinese origin of much of their vocabularies.
Incredible video! I wish you had some examples to pratice my skills on at the end. Like, if the Chinese pronunciation is this, what might the Japanese pronunciation be? If the Korean pronunciation is this, what might the Chinese pronunciation be? etc!
The information in this video is powerful
I took one semester of mandarin in the mid 1980s. it was entertaining but the only thing I now recall is the name the teacher gave me. Chen Bai Lin. that is it, the sum total of what I learned. I really hope this attempt is more fruitful. I am greatly impressed by the thought and organization you have put into these videos! Thank You.
This is good information, but the slides need major formatting changes so that the viewer understands every step you make. There are so many symbols floating around, and it’s hard for me to make sense of them without more colors, labels, Gestalt principles.
Awesome video! I learned Mandarin but I'm not planning to learn the other 2 languages any soon, but I'm still passionated about linguistics and particularly fascinated by the sinosphere so this is also very helpful to me.However, I think the video should have been diving a little more into the different types of Japanese on-yomi readings such as 漢音,吳音, 唐音 etc and how this system work for each of them, or you can do another video about it.
That's a great suggestion! I've been interested to look into the different types of onyomi for a while now, so maybe I will do a video about it!
Continue the course with common grammar, semantics, phonetics, slangs, etimology, common poems and musics, between the 3 idioms,mini films
This is amazing. Thanks for all the hard work!
this channel is fucking awesome. just have to say.
Oooh! I need this.
My brain is growing up after I saw this video
For fu, it's part of the syllable group for bu or rather bu is viewed as voiced variation of fu in Japanese, so I would argue it is still predictable, especially if you know about either Japanese or have done language comparision with Germanic languages, where f, b, v are all interrelated.
you may find the pronunciation of southern chinese ( eg cantonese) are more sound like koeran and Japanese
Hokkien is more like them
underrated video❤❤
come back please
oh great video learning this three languages is hard but in otherwise is fun since i love to travel china japan and korea💗 thabk you for sharing this video😘 kasahamnida,xiexie, arigato gozaimasu
i only understood like half of that but it seems cool
Can someone explain the level 2 constants I have no idea how I can predict the sounds in the other 2 languages. Also I'm literally a beginner so I'm trying to organise it all and then start learning asap. Looking forward to some help guys!
If using Cantonese, Japanese, Korean comparisons. Should be way more in common
So helpful!! Thank you
세종이 이 영상을 좋아요
历害!😊👍
Hi there, love your work. I'm thinking of joining your patreon. Are you still maintaining and operating it?
Hello! Unfortunately, I am not actively adding content to it right now but I do hope to start again in the next few months
Thanks for letting me know. When you become active again, I'll likely join@@808CJK
Good video for beginners! Minor thing but, at 0:24, the count for shared words seems to be an error. I speak all three languages in varying degrees, and I think there are thousands of shared words. Just think about this. There are 808 shared characters, and most words are made by combining the characters. It does not add up. (for example, 杀--杀人-杀人犯). When I study these languages, for so many words, I just need to double-check the pronunciation, and the meanings are exactly the same.
And you can even learn vietnamese at the same time too!
cool
I am actively using japanese and korean funny enough i had learned basic mandarin before them😂
just discovered your site. This is AMAZING! im struggling with the 3 of them.... 👌👍🙏⚘
Thanks I'm typing this comment so I can watch this.
This is a well made linguistic explanation. However, I don’t think this method actually gets you _that_ far. The thing is, there are many native pronunciations of words and those seem to be the most used in an every day conversation. As a learner of Japanese, I can understand that 日曜日 is supposed to be interpreted as sun-something-day, so Sunday, but I still have to learn that this abomination is pronounced “nichiyōbi,” meaning that even the two characters for sun spell different sounds. Besides, other than the Middle Chinese borrowings, these three languages have nothing to do with each other. Mandarin is a Sino-Tibetan language, Japanese is a Japanic language, and Korean is an isolate. Their grammars differ a lot, though Japanese, Korean and many Turkic and Mongolic languages seem to have certain similarities, but that’s a whole ’nother discussion for another time.
Post more, heeeyy
My saviour
The king was inspired by Jews and Nestorian Christians who were persecuted during the dynastic change of Yuan to Ming to recreate their system of alphabetical representations of sound and replace zhongWen.
❤❤❤
I need to clear my brain out of everything first, then come and watch this video. That way, I'll understand more of what im seeing.
This is crazy.
I think I know which language to learn now
best books to learn to write the characters? should I start with kids books or...? thanks. anyone can answer this, btw.
I heard good things about remembering the kanji by james heisig. Maybe check it out
Just copy them lol. Watch some videos about stroke order but outside of that, that's really all you need
What is this supposed to help with
This is really interesting ... Instead of just learning Mandarin I wanna be able to learn all 3 languages , China is obviously really influential and will play an important role in the future of manufacturing and technology but Korea and Japan have more soft power in the arts and culture and a lot of specialized industries where they're important , so it's definitely interesting to learn all three , that part of the world is super developed and very interesting for us westerners as it's the closest you can get to a different planet when you compare it to north America or Europe. Everything is so different and unique from our POV even if there are some problems in those countries they're not perfect by any means ( as people who idolize east Asia tend to imply ) , there's no such thing as a perfect country or region but still it remains really interesting , exotic and exciting to visit those places and to speak the languages in order to create relationships or do business , so it's definitely an amazing approach you're crafting here , You're doing god's work
Phantastic linguistic research! Now I am interested in kantonese.
A lot of things lost in Mandarin like initial [ng], final [k] and the entering tones are preserved in Cantonese, I'd love to see how that compares in this analysis.
curious if this helps with learning Cantonese too!
Yes it does. Cantonese preserved Tang Dynasty pronunciations very well, and that was the Dynasty in which Korean and Japanese borrowed Chinese Characters. If you've ever watched Bleach(Anime), one example would be 斬魄刀 jaam paak dou, canto zan paku tou, japanese zhan po dao, mando or for some common words like poison or revenge 毒藥/毒薬 - poison duk yeuk, canto doku yaku, jp dog yag, korean du yao, mando 復仇 - revenge fuk sau, canto fuku shu, jp bog su, korean fu qiu, mando
看來得跟長輩們多多學習閩南語了 (據說比較接近唐音) 且聽且珍惜吧 雖然我不知道為什麼入聲在普通話會消失 造就了需要判斷平仄與否時得靠閩南語發音的有趣現象
普通話大約在元朝開始發展,很多北方人南遷所以南方保留中古漢語,而北方就夾雜很多外來(遼,金,元)音。 用粵語都可以比對一下 復仇 fuk sau, canto fuku shu, jp bog su, korean fu qiu, mando 毒藥/毒薬 duk yeuk, canto doku yaku, jp dog yag, korean du yao, mando 滿足 mun juk, canto man zoku, jp man jog, kor man zu, mando
0:16 That’s not what “related languages” means.
很多汉语方言保留了中古汉语的语音。不一定要参考韩语和日语去找中古汉语的的语言。谢谢。
I'm very very much interested to learn all these three languages! But to be honest with you, I find it very difficult to understand this video. I don't know if it's the way topics are presented or what. Anyway, I will watch it over and over again...
Thank you for the feedback! I definitely could have explained it better in this video. I plan to make more videos in the future that can explain the topic more clearly and to give more examples!
Do you speak all these three languages? I'd like to hire you as my personal tutor. I'm willing to pay you $5 for an hour lesson every Monday, Wednesday and Friday weekly.
I'm fluent in Mandarin and roughly intermediate in Japanese and Korean! I am open to private tutoring but we may have to discuss about the prices. You can contact me directly at 808cjk@gmail.com :)
8:16 Why are there sounds classified as voiced? Mandarin doesn’t have voiced consonants.
Thank you for pointing this out! I think my classification is still generally correct, but this is a great point and I will try to find another way of indicating the difference.
Please include Vietnamese as well. It's CJKV
What about cantonese
Dude I think I love you
I just realized what your KZhead name means
Anyone have a list of the words
The list is available for free as a spreadsheet at our Patreon page! www.patreon.com/808cjk
냠!
Why did u stop uploading 💔
he liked your comment but didnt respond lol
He will basically only do quality videos for general stuff instead of the original plan to do all the characters. He will also do daily posts on KZhead community.
Are you spinning your wheels or did you get somewhere?
Hi! I have been busy with life lately but I am still working on this. I don't think I can figure out the vowels without more knowledge of Cantonese and Vietnamese, so that will take a while. I did change my mind slightly about the initial consonants: I now think that the laryngeal group (ㅇ) should be split into two. For the book idea, I feel like a proper book on the topic should analyse all 808 characters in terms of whatever categories I propose so that will also take a while. I'm hoping to have something substantial maybe a year from now? But meanwhile, I hope the daily community posts on the 808 characters are helpful-they're already using the revised categories for the initial consonants I mentioned.
Waht app is the best to learn of all 3 languages to learn?
Duolingo for sure , it was not a good app before but now it's more developed it has so many levels to do and it's for free , you can learn many languages at a time for free it doesn't have a limit
Duolingo
I JUST KNOW CHINESE LANGUAGE
divide and conquer lol
So fascinating and interesting how three countries with so much deep-rooted hate, bloodshed and hostility between them both currently and historically could have such deep-rooted commonalities in language, culture and values. There's so much to explore there in terms of the contrast between these neighbors and the history/geopolitics of Western areas, maybe maybe it has something to do with the fundamental differences between Abrahamic religions and Asian religions (Buddism/Confucianism/Shinto etc)