Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Japan and Black Africa.........



I always thought that Japan and Black Africa had some significant interesting common points. 1) A lot of Black African proper names can be easily written in Japanese Kanjis (漢字): - Bamako→バマコ→場間庫 - Mali→マリ→万理 - Congo→コンゴ→今後 - Kinshasha→金紗車 - Kilimanjaro→キリマンジャロ→霧万蛇路 2) Black African people that come from the above mentioned places can speak and pronounce very well Japanese (including the right prosody). A few examples from the Japanese show biz world (芸能界) - Bobby Ologun - Bernard Ackah 3) Bambara (バンバラ), the language of Mali and Ivory Coast is similar to Japanese. My favorite word is Bele Bele (ベレベレ) meaning "plump buttock". It's similar to those Japanese onomatopoeia like かさかさ、チャラチャラ or even ぴちぴち. By the way, Bambara is a SVO (SOV) language like Japanese language. 4) Japanese pichipichis and Black African pichipichis can be very similar. Compare this and this. 5) In food, there is a common ground between pounding millet and pounding mochi Please tell me if you find some other similarities. ^^ I will sound naive or simplistic for certain people. But I really believe that the difference can be very slight between Japan and certain countries of Black Africa, regarding a limited number of criteria.

15 comments:

  1. and you almost forgot the most astonishing irrefutable similarities; How do you think you say september in bambara? the answer SEPUTAMBURU!,

    Also I once was introduced to a guy called Allan OUTANABE in France; I was surprised when the guy entered because he was black and from Mali....

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  2. isn't japanese and bambara SOV (Subject Object Verb) language ?
    But is true that there are a lot of similarity between japanese and black african languages. Not sure about the pichipichi ;-)

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  3. Where did you get the first picture from? A dodgy site or something?

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  4. yes you are right v3n3. my mistake.
    SOV.

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  5. To Oren: I took the photo from google pictures and I added the covers.
    But I saw the video that where it comes from. it s a porn video where a Japanese girl comes to Africa to experience the local sexuality.....

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  6. In a way it shows the deep bonds between those cultures :P.

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  7. Wherever that picture is from does not really matter IMHO.

    Pascal, I agree on the similarity and I am not very surprised to be honest.

    You probably know that you can find a lot of similarities between the Japanese Mythology and Greek Mythology, Japanaese Traditions with Jewish Traditions, Japanese Language to the Turkish Language.

    Japan is relatively young civilization who established itself during the 8th century or so. Therefore it absorbed and adopted a lot from existing civilizations/cultures which already were established at that time. Let it be tradition, language, myths, art, etc.

    My 2 cents.

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  8. Yesterday I went to Daikanyama UNIT to listen to Maia Barouh.

    She was mixing up Black African voices and Okinawa voices...

    http://www.maia-zoku.com/

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  9. I've seen a touristy type video of this woman performing oral sex and having sex with one of the black masai tribesman. She's there with a japanese male friend, who's the guy operating the camera.

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  10. yes i know. I had a look at it.
    well, it s interesting to see that black African guys are interested in Japanese girls...who are completely unknown...

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  11. That pic is from a porn for charity thing called naked continent.There are a whole series of them. As I understand the guy the girl has sex with was actually brought from Japan.

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  12. in japanese sakana means a fish ,in lingala(kongo language)it means to play

    in japanese nani means what , in lingala it means who
    in japanese suki means love , in lingala it means hair
    there are many same words which don't mean the same think

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  13. yes sure, it s always the same dilemma between deep structure and surface structure.
    I mean it s the theory of "pointer" and "pointee"
    The same pointer to different objects.
    Although I am sure the intonation is different and therefore it s slightly different.
    But overall it does not change my view on the fact that Japanese are like Yellow African regarding the syllabic nature of their natural languages.....
    We can say the same for French people that are like White African because they have the same strong appetite for very strong taste...regarding food.

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  14. This is really nice to read up. I am from the West Africa, Nigeria to be precise. I have found the Japanese culture especially the language s you`ve described. Pls, check out suru on facebook and read it up. its another angle on how this two amazing cultures inter linked.

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  15. lol this is from porno not from tourist lol

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