Most people have heard of the opposition between Traditional Chinese and the other widely used Chinese writing system, Simplified Chinese, but Japanese tends to be viewed as a monolith. This is probably because both TC and SC are widely used, but Japanese is almost always written in only one orthography—the one introduced in the postwar reforms.

Even when people have heard of the reform, it probably wouldn’t occur to them to refer to the postwar orthography as “Simplified Japanese”, even though that is exactly what it is. My use of “Traditional Japanese” mirrors that of “Traditional Chinese” to distinguish it from “Simplified Japanese”, partially for laughs, but mostly seriously.

What is Traditional Japanese?

I admit that I am, ironically, simplifying this a little bit. There are three character sets that are relevant to this discussion of Japanese writing: hiragana, katakana, and Chinese characters. Since the two former sets are interchangeable, we can consider them collectively and refer to them as kana. When I say “Traditional Japanese”, I mean both the traditional shape of the Chinese characters and the traditional kana spelling.

Traditional Characters

It is not unheard of for historical texts to now be rendered in what is often called old kana spelling or historical kana spelling, but with simplified characters. It also wasn’t unheard of historically to simplify characters here and there, but the standard shape was shared throughout the Sinosphere (roughly modern Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and Greater China), and is the shape recorded in the KangHsi Dictionary (康煕字典). Some people also use the traditional shapes of characters with the new kana orthography, but this is even less common.

Traditional characters are rather straightforward, since they correspond to the KangHsi shapes. Sometimes, though, the preferred character variants in Japan differed from those in China, and this is still the case, so you usually see 踊, 澁, 雇, 勞働, and 豫定 in Japan and 踴, 澀, 僱, 勞動, and 預定 in China. There are also some characters that were made in Japan, such as 込, 畑, and of course 働 above. In one case, four characters are collapsed into one: 辨 (and its variant 辧), 辯, 瓣, and 弁 are all written 弁 in the new orthography, but it isn’t uncommon to see it used for 辮 and 辦 as well. In addition, for some words, the character spellings were changed to variant spellings that used more common characters, such as 交叉→交差.

Traditional Kana Orthography

The traditional kana spelling is slightly more complicated. While the new kana spelling has a low number of possible spelling corresponding to phonemes (almost 1:1, but not quite), the traditional one has many ways to spell the same sound. This is because it preserves distinctions that have been lost in speech. Consider /oː/, which can be spelled ⟨おう, おお⟩ in the new orthography, but also ⟨おを, おほ, おふ, あう, あふ⟩ in the traditional one. This does make it more difficult to spell, but reading is still straightforward, because these sequences are always read /oː/, with one exception: verbs ending in /u/. A verb like ⟨會ふ⟩ ‘to meet’ would be rendered ⟨あふ⟩, but read /aꜜu/, not /oꜜː/. (Many people do read it as /oꜜː/ when reading texts in Traditional Japanese, but I consider that an erroneous reading pronunciation.)

Distinctions

The simplified kana orthography collapses these distinctions to correspond to pronunciation:

• わ行 ‘wa-line’ kana and あ行 ‘a-line’ kana: ゐ→い, ゑ→え, を→お. (The new orthography retains を only as an accusative marker.)
• Word-medial (intervocalic) は行 ‘ha-line’ and わ行 ‘wa-line’ (which is already mostly collapsed into the あ行 ‘a-line’—see above): あは→あわ, あひ→あい, あふ→あう, あへ→あえ, あほ→あお. (This only occurs within stems, and there are a few exceptions, such as あひる ‘duck’.)
• くわ→か, ぐわ→が.
• The so-called “yotsugana”: ぢ→じ, づ→ず. (The new orthography retains づ and ぢ where つ and ち are voiced in compound words in a process called 連濁 [rendaku]. In addition, 痔 ‘hæmorrhoids’ is still often written ぢ.)
• あ+う sequences and お+う sequences: あう→おう, あふ→おう. (Notice that this leads to おお and おう still being distinguished.)
• え+う sequences and よう: せう→しょう, けふ→きょう, etc.
• い+う sequences and ゆう: きう→きゅう, じふ→じゅう, etc.
• く, き, ち, つ→っ where it before か行 ‘ka-line’ and た行 ‘ta-line’ kana (and indeed anywhere つ marks a long consonant): 學校 ‘school’ ガクカウ→ガッコウ, 決定 ‘decision’ ケツテイ→ケッテイ, びつくり→びっくり etc. (Compound words are excepted from this, so e.g. 洗濯+機 ‘washing machine’ センタク+キ does not officially become センタッ+キ.)

These changes “stack”, as it were, so は行 ‘ha-line’ kana going to the わ行 ‘wa-line’ go on to the あ行 ‘a-line’ unless they become わ /wa/, and くわう also becomes こう.

New Distinctions

The new orthography did actually introduce a new distinction, namely small kana. ゃ, ゅ, ょ, っ (and ゎ) used to be written や, ゆ, よ, つ (and わ), which could cause ambiguities. However, many cases of く, き, and ち also became っ.

Etymological Kana Orthography

Because the traditional orthography makes many historical distinctions, it is often included in Japanese dictionaries (though not in Japanese—English ones), and especially character dictionaries. In fact, many of these dictionaries make more distinctions than the historical orthography in Sino-Japanese readings of characters. I call this deep historical kana orthography. Sino-Japanese readings are conventionally rendered in katakana:

• Final ン and ム. These were considered variants until the early 20th century, but are distinguished in character dictionaries to show whether a character had -n or -m, respectively, in Middle Chinese.
• Medial ヰ and ヱ, analogous to クワ. For example, 兄 was spelled キヤウ, but is often rendered クヰヤウ in “deep” orthography. (Some dictionaries also write them as small kana in these cases, but there are no Unicode characters for for small ゐ, ヰ, ゑ, or ヱ.)
• Sometimes, ウ and イ are rendered in small kana as ゥ and ィ when they derive from a Middle Chinese /ŋ/.

My Preferred Spelling

I like to use the deepest kana orthography I possibly can, including small ヰ and ヱ, when I can help it. In practice, though, “deep” kana orthography looks exactly the same as the traditional spelling, since Sino-Japanese is almost always written in Chinese characters.

Although I prefer etymological spelling, as long as it’s (mostly) read in a regular way, I don’t really hate the new spelling. I see it as an informal shortcut that would be well suited for handwritten notes scribbled down in a hurry, but less appropriate for formal texts. This is also the attitude I have towards Simplified Chinese or indeed any kind of character variants.

How to Learn Traditional Japanese

Most serious Japanese dictionaries written for Japanese readers include the traditional spelling, but not the “deep” variant. For that, you’ll need a character dictionary written for Japanese readers, such as 漢字源, or rely on Wiktionary (especially Japanese Wiktionary is good at adding these spellings).

For traditional characters, you can usually rely on lists that show the simplified Jōyō characters (常用漢字), but you have to watch out for changed character spellings and which character to use for 弁, although some serious dictionaries actually do help you with that. An example is Sanseidō’s 新明解國語辭典, which also includes traditional spellings and Standard Japanese pitch patterns.

I hope this helps. I am also working on a learner’s dictionary and textbook for Traditional Japanese, but it will take a while to finish.

I’m no socialist or supporter of either Marxism or 主體 (Juche), but I do enjoy socialist music. The best such music is currently made in north Korea, and the lyrics are readily available from sites like this one.

However, while some of the lyrics on that site include mixed-script versions, which is rare in the first place, not all of them do. Also, that site doesn’t have all the songs I like. That’s why I want to include mixed-script versions of some of my favourites here, starting with the song that got me interested in north Korean music in the first place.

Songs added so far:
攻擊戰이다、千里馬 달린다、더 높이 더 빨리、愛國歌、우리의 金正日同志、當身이 없으면 祖國도 없다

攻擊戰이다

붉은旗 추켜들고 進擊해간다
銃대를 앞세우고 突擊해간다
一心의 千萬隊伍 이끌고가는
그 모습은 先軍旗幟다

攻擊 攻擊 攻擊 앞으로
將軍님의 革命方式은
白頭山번개처럼 攻擊
正日峰우뢰처럼 攻擊
攻擊 攻擊 攻擊戰이다

山嶽이 막아서도 踏步가 없다
大敵이 밀려와도 防禦가 없다
瞬間도 멈춤없이 맞받아치는
그 戰法은 必勝不敗다

攻擊 攻擊 攻擊 앞으로
將軍님의 革命方式은
白頭山번개처럼 攻擊
正日峰우뢰처럼 攻擊
攻擊 攻擊 攻擊戰이다

目標는 強盛大國 希望峰이다
標대는 主體偉業 勝利峰이다
先軍의 值線走廊 暴風쳐가는
그 걸음은 強行軍이다

攻擊 攻擊 攻擊 앞으로
將軍님의 革命方式은
白頭山번개처럼 攻擊
正日峰우뢰처럼 攻擊
攻擊 攻擊 攻擊戰이다

千里馬 달린다

百戰百勝 勞動黨 새 時代를 열었다
千里馬의 氣像을 온 世上의 떨치자
어서가자 빨리가자 千里馬 타고서
七箇年計劃을 앞당겨 나가자
에헤 에야차 에야차
共產主義 새 언덕이 저기 보인다
에헤 에야차 에야차
共產主義 새 언덕이 저기 보인다

勞動黨의 戰士들 하나로 뭉쳤다
빛나는 새 勝利 우리를 불은다
어서가자 빨리가자 千里馬 타고서
創造와 革新으로 새 奇蹟 올리자
에헤 에야차 에야차
祖國統一 새날이 밝안다
에헤 에야차 에야차
祖國統一 새날이 밝안다

數十年을 하루로 달리여 나간다
建設과 增產의 불길을 높여라
어서가자 빨리가자 千里馬 타고서
後孫萬代 幸福할 樂園을 꾸미자
에헤 에야차 에야차
勞動黨 旗발 따라 나간다
에헤 에야차 에야차
勞動黨 旗발 따라 나간다

더 높이 더 빨리

아～ 더 높이 아~ 더 빨리
將軍님의 領導 따라
富強祖國建設에로
달리자 더 높이 더 빨리

붉은旗 추켜들고 革命의 노래로 疾風 같이 달리자
이 땅에 발붙이고 未來를 내다보며 우리의 式으로
더 높이 더 빨리
將軍님의 領導 따라
富強祖國建設에로
달리자 더 높이 더 빨리

工場을 建設해도 土地를 整理해도 우리의 式으로
科學과 技術의 目標는 占領해도 最尖端水準으로
더 높이 더 빨리
將軍님의 領導따라
富強祖國建設에로
달리자 더 높이 더 빨리

先軍의 銃대 우에 千萬이 굳게 뭉친 우리 힘 無限타
勝利한 그 氣勢로 또 다시 飛躍하면 더 좋은 樂園되리
더 높이 더 빨리
將軍님의 領導 따라
富強祖國建設에로
달리자 더 높이 더 빨리

愛國歌

아침은 빛나라 이 江山
銀金에 資源도 가득한
三千里 아름다운 내 祖國
半萬年 오랜 歷史에
燦爛한 文化로 잘한?
슬기론 人民의 이 榮光
몸과 맘 다 바쳐 이 朝鮮
길이 받드세

白頭山 氣像을 다 안고
勤勞의 精神은 깃들어
真理로 뭉쳐진 억센 뜻
온 世界 앞서 나가리
솟는 힘 怒濤도 내밀어
人民의 뜻으로 선 나라
限없이 富強하는 이 朝鮮
길이 빛내세

우리의 金正日同志

幸福한 내 나라 한지붕아래
和睦한 大家庭을 꾸려주셨네
人民을 親兄弟로 키워주신 분
그이는 우리의 金正日同志

언제나 슬기론 人民이라고
素朴한 그 생각도 政策에 담네
人民을 先生으로 부르시는 분
그 先生의 스승은 金正日同志

人民을 熱烈히 사랑하시며
한平生 人民爲해 服務하시네
人民을 하늘처럼 믿으시는 분
그 하늘의 太陽은 金正日同志

當身이 없으면 祖國도 없다

사나운 暴風도 쳐몰아내고
信念을 안겨준 金正日同志*
當身이 없으면 우리도 없고、
當身이 없으면 祖國도 없다！

未來도 希望도 다 맡아주는
民族의 運命인 金正日同志*
當身이 없으면 우리도 없고、
當身이 없으면 祖國도 없다！

世上이 열百番 變한다해도
人民은 믿는다 金正日同志*
當身이 없으면 우리도 없고、
當身이 없으면 祖國도 없다！

*同志 is the original, but since he became general, the 將軍 version  has also been commonly used. The song can be sung with either 「金正日同志」 or 「金正日將軍」.

Let’s say you want to learn some East Asian languages, especially to a high level. Not just one, but several. In most cases, that will be Mandarin, Japanese, and Korean, so I’ll talk about those, but the secrets I’m going to tell you apply to any Chinese language and even Vietnamese. You can learn all of the above languages much more easily if you first invest some time into Cantonese.

A common complaint is that Cantonese is less useful than Mandarin. That may be so, but Cantonese is still a huge language that comes with a distinct and interesting culture, most notably spoken in Hong Kong and southern China, but also in chinatowns all over the world. But the real reason I’m writing about it is its almost magical ability to act as a key to any other language you may want to learn in what I like to call the Sinosphere. The usefulness of knowing Cantonese is bigger for some languages than for others, but it helps a lot in all cases. Let’s go through the benefits of knowing Cantonese.

Tones

As you may or may not know, all Chinese languages descended from a common language, and all but a few of them only split after what we call the Middle Chinese period. Well, these transitions are actually impossible to talk about in absolute terms, I’d argue, but that’s another discussion. Early Middle Chinese is described as having four tonal categories: 平 ‘level’, 上 ‘rising’, 去 ‘departing’, and 入 ‘entering’ (though 入 didn’t contrast directly with the others, as we shall see). We can’t really know for sure what the pronunciation of these tones were, but we assume that all tones were lower in pitch if their syllable started with a voiced initial, meaning that the vocal cords vibrate when you articulate the initial sound (you can feel voicing by touching your throat while saying ‘mmm…’).

By the Late Middle Chinese period, however, obstruents, meaning sounds that are made by restricting the airflow either wholly or partially, had lost their voicing distinctions, so that /p/ and /b/ had merged into /p/. But their tones remained the same, and the result was that the number of tones doubled. The high tones are called 陰 ‘Yin’ and the low tones 陽 ‘Yang’. Traditionally, the number of tones is then said to be 8, but if we only count contrasting tones, there were only 6. Regardless of how you prefer to count, all of these categories are preserved in Cantonese, and the high entering tone has split according to vowel length, so that short vowels have a higher tone than long ones, dividing the 入 category into three levels.

Most of the Chinese languages have lost one or more categories: Mandarin has preserved 4 out of 8 categories. Shanghainese has preserved 5. But the interesting thing is how categories were lost: in almost all cases, a category simply merged with another one. In some cases, it split and merged into two different categories, depending on whether or not its initial was an obstruent or a sonorant. In one case, it’s unfortunately random. In addition, there are numerous exceptions to the rules, of course, but the vast majority of syllables/characters follow the rules. Knowing what category a character belonged to in Middle Chinese lets us know what tone a character has today, as long as we know what categories the modern tones correspond to. Because Cantonese has preserved all of the categories, it lets us know what tones a character has in other languages – even in Vietnamese. Let’s look at how the tones of Cantonese lets us predict Mandarin tones:

Tone 1 (陰平): high level tone in both Cantonese and Mandarin. Some Cantonese speakers also distinguish a high falling tone.

Tone 2 (陰上): mid rising tone in Cantonese and low falling/dipping tone in Mandarin. (This is usually called the third tone in Mandarin.)

Tone 3 (陰去): mid level tone in Cantonese and high falling tone in Mandarin. (This is usually called the fourth tone in Mandarin.)

Tone 4 (陽平): low falling/very low level tone in Cantonese and mid rising tone in Mandarin. (This is usually called the second tone in Mandarin.)

Tone 5 (陽上): low rising tone in Cantonese and low falling/dipping tone in Mandarin – just like tone 2 (陰上). Many obstruent-initial tone 5 syllables instead become high falling tones in Mandarin.

Tone 6 (陽去): low level tone in Cantonese and high falling tone in Mandarin – just like tone 3 (陰去).

Obstruent-final Syllables

Sometimes called tones 7 through 9 (because one category split into two in Cantonese), these are actually the same as the other three level tones, 1/3/6, except that they end in unreleased obstruents, -p/t/k. In the most common romanization systems, they are labelled 1/3/6, but it can be useful to think of them as tones 7-9, because it fits the rest of the list:

Tone 7 and 8 (陰入高 & 陰入低): high level tone and mid level tone respectively in Cantonese and random in Mandarin.

Tone 9 (陽入): low level tone in Cantonese and mid rising (if obstruent-initial) or high falling (if sonorant-initial) in Mandarin.

Mandarin doesn’t retain any of the final obstruents, but it’s actually the oddball of the lot.

Final Consonants

Cantonese preserves six final consonants: -m, -n, -ng, -p, -t, -k. Although Vietnamese for example preserves two more, -nh and -ch, the intact tonal categories of Cantonese more than make up for it, because most of the languages have lost those two finals anyway.

Mandarin preserves only two final consonants: -n and -ng. Original -m has merged with -n, so they are predictable going from Cantonese to Mandarin, but not the other way around, just like the tones. The obstruent finals are gone, but as far as I know there is no predictable pattern to go by as far as their traces are concerned.

Japanese has only one final nasal, /ɴ/ (ん). Original -n and -m correspond to this (loaned as /nu/ and /mu/), but -ng doesn’t. Instead, -ng was loaned as final /u/, and is (usually) written う even today, though usually in the combination おう, signifying long /oː/. Of the obstruent finals, -t and -k are preserved usually as /t(s)u/ (つ) and /ku/ (く), and sometimes as /t(ɕ)i/ (ち) and /ki/ (き). The last one, -p, was borrowed into Japanese as /pu/, which has since undergone a change to /hu/ (ふ) and then deletion of the /h/, meaning -p is also /u/ う in most cases. Examples: 十 ‘ten’ (-p) /ʑipu/ => /ʑihu/ => /ʑiu/ => /ʑuː/; 白 ‘white’ (-k) /paku/ => /haku/; 工 ‘work’ (-ng) /kou/ => /koː/.

Korean also preserves six final consonants, but -t was borrowed as -l (possibly due to weakening in Old Mandarin). Otherwise, the endings are the same, except for a few labial-initial syllables, because Cantonese has undergone a process of dissimilation where a labial final consonant turns into a dental one if the initial consonant is also labial. But these syllables are few and far between, so don’t worry about it. Examples: 法 ‘law’ (-p, but -t in Canto) /pʌp/; 發 ‘prosper’ (-t) /pal/; 南 (-m) /nam/.

Voicing

Although Cantonese (and Mandarin) lost their voicing distinctions in initials, the low tones of Cantonese still lets us predict their presence in e.g. Shanghainese and Japanese. However, it should be noted that the two main categories of Sino-Japanese readings, 吳音 (Go’on) and 漢音 (Kan’on), differ in this respect, with 吳音 retaining voiced initials and the later 漢音 having only voiceless obstruent initials, so it’s not always predictable for each word. Example: 上 ‘above/rise’ (-ng) has the Go’on /ʑoː/ (じょう), but the Kan’on /ɕoː/ (しょう).

Problems with Cantonese

Recently (that is, in the last couple of centuries), Cantonese has undergone, and is still undergoing, certain sound changes that sadly make it less suited to be used as a key. However, all but one of these are preserved in every major romanization scheme:

• Merger of (null)- and ng-. Originally, the three high tones had null-initials and their corresponding low tones had ng- (with a few exceptions; 啱 had both ng- and a high tone). Nowadays, they are used interchangeably by most people, with ng- being preferred in formal contexts and null otherwise. Not a big problem comparatively, since the tones reveal where ng- was originally.
• Merger of n- and l-. This is common in large parts of China, especially the south. Unlike the ng-/null merger, though, this one is not otherwise predictable, so you should take care to learn which syllables start with n-, even if you decide to pronounce them l-.
• Merger of ng and m. With the exception of 唔 ‘not’, every single instance of “m” as its own syllable in Cantonese was originally ng. Easy to predict.
• Merger of gwo-/kwo- and go-/ko-. The same goes with this one: learn which syllables have a -w-, even if you decide not to pronounce it.
• Merger of -n/-ng and -t/-k. These also have to be learned even if you decide not to distinguish them.
• Merger of sh/ch/zh- and s/c/z-. This is an old merger, and is the only one not usually distinguished in romanization. However, given the choice between tone categories and consonants, I choose tone categories any day of the week.
• Merger of -om/-op and -am/-ap. This is another old merger, but one that affects a relatively small number of words, and isn’t that useful comparatively anyway. Cantonese syllables ending in -om are -an in Peking and those ending in -am are -in in Peking.

Cantonese has also lost a fair number of medials. Vowels may not be too helpful (though you’ll notice some patterns even when they are different, such as Cantonese short /a/ corresponding to Mandarin /i/, and /oː/ corresponding to Mandarin /ɑ/. Mandarin vowels tend to be slightly more similar to Japanese and Korean ones, but vowels seem to be the least predictable feature.

So now you know why you should learn Cantonese to make everything easier for yourself. Remember that you don’t need to understand all the technical stuff in this article; your brain is great at recognizing patterns, so learning Cantonese will give you most of the benefits automatically. Have fun!

Scandinavia is a dialect continuum, so I normally talk about it as one language. Most people don’t, but that’s fine too. Lets look at the names “Norwegian”, “Swedish”, and “Danish”. They have two main meanings, descriptively:
1. Any and all Old Norse-derived varieties spoken within the political borders of the respective Scandinavian countries.
2. The main Old Norse-derived variety used in the respective Scandinavian countries (roughly Oslo, Stockholm, and Copenhagen speech).

Basically, they are terms of convenience. If you’re a learner, you’ll probably use it more in the second meaning, so I’ll do that here, but don’t forget that Scandinavian is more than these three (four if you count Nynorsk) standards. All the standard varieties are really similar to each other, and one common way of saying it is that Norwegian and Swedish sound similar (Oslo being close to Stockholm geographically), whereas Norwegian and Danish look similar in writing (Bokmål being based on the Danish written tradition).

There’s a lot of truth to this, and with Oslo being a place where all kinds of Norwegians and other Scandinavians alike can be heard, learning Bokmål (the most popular written language in Norway) with Oslo pronunciation is a good way to access Scandinavia from the middle. Norwegians are generally better at understanding their neighbours than the other way around, which may have something to do with being in-between. I personally think Oslo-accented Bokmål gives the best coverage overall.