Japanese vs. Chinese Keigo

[羽之助]

Well, I learned something interesting today. Apparently, up until 1949, China had a keigo/polite speech system like Japan (read: complicated). When asked one's name, you were supposed to reply with "my humble name is ..." and so forth.

Can anyone here with a Taiwanese/Korean/SEAsian background offer examples as to whether their language also has/had a polite speech system? We often hear complaints about Japanese and its honorifics, but it was just part of a larger whole, apparently.

More can be read here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Standard_Mandarin#Modern_Standard_Manda rin_vs._historical_Mandarin

[grace_enyi]

Well, I learned something interesting today. Apparently, up until 1949, China had a keigo/polite speech system like Japan (read: complicated). When asked one's name, you were supposed to reply with "my humble name is ..." and so forth.

Can anyone here with a Taiwanese/Korean/SEAsian background offer examples as to whether their language also has/had a polite speech system? We often hear complaints about Japanese and its honorifics, but it was just part of a larger whole, apparently.

More can be read here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Standard_Mandarin#Modern_Standard_Manda rin_vs._historical_Mandarin

Ah, that's right...some of that Chinese sounds familiar to me from watching movies and stuff. But honestly speaking, I don't think it's anything compared to Japanese. And I think Taiwanese is a Chinese dialect. I don't speak it, since my parents never use it (not being native Taiwanese), but it's basically from Fujian and is a type of Minnan dialect. I don't know how polite speech in Taiwanese differs from that in Mandarin, but I just wanted to point that out. Hmm...according to Wikipedia (skimming), Taiwanese has a lot of Japanese loanwords. Yeah...even in Mandarin, in Taiwan we use some phrases which are closer to Japanese than what's said on the mainland.

Korean has a sort of polite speech system - maybe even more strict than that of Japanese? But I don't actually know anything about Korean besides what I've heard from others and my experience in watching dramas.

[tekkan]

Korean, Mandarin & Cantonese, Japanese are all very similar.

Korean, Japanese and Cantonese have alot of similarities in the way words are pronounced. I'm sure someone out there has probably proved or at least theorized that all of these languages orginated from a common one.

And to the poster above.

I personally think that it is Japan that has taken words from mandarin and cantonese. They use Kanji which is Chinese. Japanese is probably evolved from the orginal Chinese language.

And in regards to humble speech. If you watch those movies or read the books set in the era of emperors and such you'll notice that the speech is very formal and is probably what you'd call humble speech.

1949, thats close to time China's last emperor was dethroned and the communist government took over. So thats probably why they stopped using it.

[atomiton]

You think Japanese has difficult Keigo, try Korean or vietnamese.

In Vietnamese, just greeting someone depends if someone is your age, a little bit older, a lot older, or a lot younger.

Korean has more titles than Japanese when it comes to family.

[gyoza]

I had plenty of trouble with Chinese when it came to family titles. You had mom, dad, older/younger sister/brother. Then with the extended family, you would have different titles for, say, an uncle who was on your mom's or dad's side, and depending on whether he was younger or older than your dad/mom, the word would change too. :boggled:

[Justin Ellis]

Korean, Mandarin & Cantonese, Japanese are all very similar.

Korean, Japanese and Cantonese have alot of similarities in the way words are pronounced. I'm sure someone out there has probably proved or at least theorized that all of these languages orginated from a common one.

And to the poster above.

I personally think that it is Japan that has taken words from mandarin and cantonese. They use Kanji which is Chinese. Japanese is probably evolved from the orginal Chinese language.


No.

While it's very likely that there may be a link between Korean and Japanese, Chinese and Japanese are about as similar as Japanese and English. Chinese is a tonal language, Japanese is not. Chinese is (like English) a Subject Verb Object language, whereas Japanese is a Subject Object Verb language, and there are countless other syntactical differences between the two. Chinese is in the Sino-Tibetan group, Japanese is -as far as anyone can definitively prove- a language isolate, but probably a member the Altaic language family (it has a closer genetic link with Turkish than Chinese). I could go on, but my point is that the idea of Japanese being a relative of Chinese is absurd and ignorant.

I'm not sure where you picked up the idea than Japanese and Chinese are members of the same language group, tekkan, but you best forget it.

[羽之助]

If we're getting into language origin discussions ...

Chinese was the Latin of Asia. As all the Romance languages have similar words, so do East Asian. Thus Chinese words spread to other languages. In Cantonese, 國 is gwok. Mandarin is guo. Korean is guk. Japanese is koku. Another example is 關. Cantonese gwaan, Mandarin guan, Korean gwan, Japanese kan (prerevision spelling kwan (クヮン). Anyone know what the Vietnamese/other Chinese dialects such as Shanghaiese would be? Anyway, all the pronunciations came from classical Chinese, which we don't know the true pronunciation of. This only applies to the introduction of Chinese words. It is like ... the relationship between the Roman Empire and Britain, I guess, the relationship between China and Japan, in terms of language. Or Latin and ... argh. Heh.

BTW does anyone here speak Russian? I hear if you mess up Russia's keigo old ladies will beat you to death in the street. Ah, Firewolf, if you read this thread ...

[Frankey-eh]

I had plenty of trouble with Chinese when it came to family titles. You had mom, dad, older/younger sister/brother. Then with the extended family, you would have different titles for, say, an uncle who was on your mom's or dad's side, and depending on whether he was younger or older than your dad/mom, the word would change too. :boggled:
yep yep. it's a headache when all your grandparents each have six/seven siblings. I can never keep track of who's the second aunt and the third aunt. And also all the gugu, yiyi, etc. I only know up to my parent's siblings. actually...maybe not even that. I always get gu-ma and jiu(? e?)-mu mixed up for some reason.

[Rellik]

If we're getting into language origin discussions ...

Chinese was the Latin of Asia. As all the Romance languages have similar words, so do East Asian. Thus Chinese words spread to other languages. In Cantonese, 國 is gwok. Mandarin is guo. Korean is guk. Japanese is koku. Another example is 關. Cantonese gwaan, Mandarin guan, Korean gwan, Japanese kan (prerevision spelling kwan (クヮン). Anyone know what the Vietnamese/other Chinese dialects such as Shanghaiese would be? Anyway, all the pronunciations came from classical Chinese, which we don't know the true pronunciation of. This only applies to the introduction of Chinese words. It is like ... the relationship between the Roman Empire and Britain, I guess, the relationship between China and Japan, in terms of language. Or Latin and ... argh. Heh.

BTW does anyone here speak Russian? I hear if you mess up Russia's keigo old ladies will beat you to death in the street. Ah, Firewolf, if you read this thread ...

Latin cognates are a lot more useful than Asian cognates. Latin "natio/natus" is pretty obvious. Mandarin "guan" means about 11ty billion other things.

And even then, it only applies when the Asian language in question is using Chinese-style word construction.

[Illusion]

Off-topic:
Siblings of your father are called Shu-shu, Bo-bo, Gu-gu
Siblings of your mother are called Jiu-jiu, Yi-yi. Jiu-Mu is the wife of Jiu-jiu.

I'll only use the name titles above with their name, e.g. *name* jiu-jiu. I can't really remember who is the 2nd or 3rd maybe up until I'm in Middle school. Even the Jiu-mu I called them Aunty*name*. My parents are not strict with the titles.

As for others (not siblings of my parents), I just uncle this, aunty that. Easier.

On-topic:
We do have those polite/humble speech system. If you mean these: 贱人， 寡人，etc. Nowadays, you don't really see people use it. Those you see in notices, advertisements are formal speech, I think. Can't really give much information on it because I rarely (or never?) use it.

[Rellik]

well there's also pronouns like "nin"

[Frankey-eh]

Off-topic:
Siblings of your father are called Shu-shu, Bo-bo, Gu-gu
Siblings of your mother are called Jiu-jiu, Yi-yi. Jiu-Mu is the wife of Jiu-jiu.

for me, I have three older cousins in addition to the two aunts and uncles on my mom's side, so I have to give them titles too. The youngest is brother with the oldest, so it's "da biao ge" and "xiao biao ge". then, the middle one is from my yiyi, so he has a different name. I call him "yi biao ge", which also happen to mean either "second cousin" or "yi cousin". Before I learned to write it out (that was two summers ago) I thought it was "second cousin".

[touche]

No.

While it's very likely that there may be a link between Korean and Japanese, Chinese and Japanese are about as similar as Japanese and English. Chinese is a tonal language, Japanese is not. Chinese is (like English) a Subject Verb Object language, whereas Japanese is a Subject Object Verb language, and there are countless other syntactical differences between the two. Chinese is in the Sino-Tibetan group, Japanese is -as far as anyone can definitively prove- a language isolate, but probably a member the Altaic language family (it has a closer genetic link with Turkish than Chinese). I could go on, but my point is that the idea of Japanese being a relative of Chinese is absurd and ignorant.

I'm not sure where you picked up the idea than Japanese and Chinese are members of the same language group, tekkan, but you best forget it.

hm...if i remember right, I read at least 5 textbooks that said that the Japanese had origins from main land Asia, closer to Korea, but still in the region of China (the people, not the country).

ONE textbook said that Japanese orignated from...well, northern islands, as you said.

hm....no offence, but i'm going with the majority =(

[Faumdano]

I'm sorry but, just because you think you might have possibly maybe read it in a text book, doesn't mean it's correct. The majority opinion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_language#Classification) on the matter says contrary to what you think.

[laggedreaction]

hm...if i remember right, I read at least 5 textbooks that said that the Japanese had origins from main land Asia, closer to Korea, but still in the region of China (the people, not the country).

ONE textbook said that Japanese orignated from...well, northern islands, as you said.

hm....no offence, but i'm going with the majority =(

That's still not the same thing as being closely related to the Chinese language. Basque and Latin are from the same continent, but are wildly different. Plus, he never said that it originated from the northern islands. Where in his post did you get that from?

[gyoza]

well there's also pronouns like "nin"

Some really innocent guy was having a heated argument and at one point he got really angry and blurted "NING MU QIN DE!"... we all fell down laughing.

[aoeuid]

BTW does anyone here speak Russian? I hear if you mess up Russia's keigo old ladies will beat you to death in the street. Ah, Firewolf, if you read this thread ...

I don't know about old ladies beating you up on the street, but if there is something like keigo in Russian, I don't know anything about it, and regularly speak to old peolple. However, there are a few minor things about names and such, like having to say "grandmother [first name]" and "uncle [first name]" when referring to or speaking to those people. Also, when referring to a teacher, you say their first and middle name.

There is quite a lot of slang though. It's especially prevalent among the younger people, and old people might get upset if you use that too much, but I agree with them on that :cop:

[touche]

That's still not the same thing as being closely related to the Chinese language. Basque and Latin are from the same continent, but are wildly different. Plus, he never said that it originated from the northern islands. Where in his post did you get that from?
He didn't tell me, but Turkish would probably mean those islands north.

I'm just saying, that's what i believe, sorry if i sounded blunt and stupid :duh:

although, it wouldn't make sense( that they originated from turkish regions), since the prouniciation of Japanese words are closer to Chinese THAN Korean, and Korea's closer.

Yet, Japanese are an awful bunch of resourceful people >_>'
i dunno anymore.

[Xenotrauma]

It's all good... with the way Japanese vocabulary is evolving now, it'll just turn into broken English soon anyway, and everyone will start saying it's an English cognate :D

[shadow]

Korean, Mandarin & Cantonese, Japanese are all very similar.

Korean, Japanese and Cantonese have alot of similarities in the way words are pronounced. I'm sure someone out there has probably proved or at least theorized that all of these languages orginated from a common one.

And to the poster above.

I personally think that it is Japan that has taken words from mandarin and cantonese. They use Kanji which is Chinese. Japanese is probably evolved from the orginal Chinese language.

And in regards to humble speech. If you watch those movies or read the books set in the era of emperors and such you'll notice that the speech is very formal and is probably what you'd call humble speech.

1949, thats close to time China's last emperor was dethroned and the communist government took over. So thats probably why they stopped using it.

This post is completely wrong. Japanese and Korean are not similar to Chinese at all, and are not related to it. Where did you get this information from?

[touche]

This post is completely wrong. Japanese and Korean are not similar to Chinese at all, and are not related to it. Where did you get this information from?

hm...i doubt korean is, the writting and spoken langauge is completely different from any Asian language i've seen, it utilizes a system of symbols (circles with ticks, crosses, etc. around it to make up individual letters, not combination of symbols, like chinese where the symbol of day, combines with moon, to make the word clear/bright.)

Japanese, however, is quite close in terms of the pronounciation, and utilizes some chinese words, as part of their langauge (rather combing symbols, they just use them, like...copying them and using them, not that i'm saying they're plagarists.)

i don't know if there's a connection in terms of history between the three langauges. However, i can determine that Chinese and Japanese, are,in terms of lingual structure, connected.

*don't bash me again, i'm just saying what i know:frypan: :bang: :duh: *

P.S. I am not assuming that each has a historical connection, i believe so, but since it is an theory not proven yet, I cannot state so like so above. Therefore I want to say that I am in no way assuming anything in this. I hope everyone understands this.

[Faumdano]

Touche: You do realize that Korean used to use, and still does to a small extent, use Chinese characters...

As for Japanese sounding a bit like Chinese, well... that's kind of the point of creating foreign loan words - you try to get as close as possible to the original pronunciation as one's language permits. In contrast, look at the words of purely Japanese origin - they sound nothing at all like Chinese.

Also, Japanese/Korean and Chinese grammar have about as much in common as English and Japanese do. In other words, none whatsoever.

Just because Japan adopted the Chinese script in no way implies the two have any other relation than what script they use. That's like me saying that Vietnamese and English are obviously related because they both use the Latin script... You're making huge leaps in logic.

[laggedreaction]

He didn't tell me, but Turkish would probably mean those islands north.



WTF? Where are you getting that from?

although, it wouldn't make sense( that they originated from turkish regions), since the prouniciation of Japanese words are closer to Chinese THAN Korean, and Korea's closer.

No it isn't. Not even close. Japanese pronunciation is definitely much closer to Korean than Chinese. Where are you getting your information?!?

hm...i doubt korean is, the writting and spoken langauge is completely different from any Asian language i've seen, it utilizes a system of symbols (circles with ticks, crosses, etc. around it to make up individual letters, not combination of symbols, like chinese where the symbol of day, combines with moon, to make the word clear/bright.)

Actually, Korea did use Chinese characters until Hangul was invented. Even then they still used Hanja for a while. Also, the fact that the script looks different has nothing to do with the genetic relationships of the languages. English could be transcribed into Arabic script, but that wouldn't change the fact that it's still closely related to German which uses a roman alphabet. You also, must be unaware of Japanese kana, without which, you wouldn't be able to write modern Japanese. It effectively functions like Hangul, which is the Korean script. It provides phonetic representations of syllables.

Japanese, however, is quite close in terms of the pronounciation,

LOL, where are you getting your information?


i don't know if there's a connection in terms of history between the three langauges. However, i can determine that Chinese and Japanese, are,in terms of lingual structure, connected.

Not even close. They've borrowed chinese words just like they've borrowed English words. That doesn't mean that in terms of lingual structure Japanese and English are related. Hell, you could even write English with a mix of chinese characters and roman alphabet if you wanted. Just because languages utilize a smilar script, doesn't mean they're related. Hell, during the Meiji restoration there were proponents for the complete romanization of Japanese writing. That still wouldn't make Japanese closer to European languages.

[Marqs]

hm...i doubt korean is, the writting and spoken langauge is completely different from any Asian language i've seen, it utilizes a system of symbols (circles with ticks, crosses, etc. around it to make up individual letters, not combination of symbols, like chinese where the symbol of day, combines with moon, to make the word clear/bright.)

I'm not sure if you're trying to simplify things to make them more understandable - or if you simplify them because you don't have more accurate information. Sounds like the latter. No offence meant, but on this light it's just difficult to take those arguments very seriously - to me they sound like guesses. And are in some ways opposed to what i've read from more or less reliable sources.

So i tried to find some info about this stuff, and get more info about the widely accepted theories. Sure, they're not the absolute truth, but maybe slightly more reliable than guesses.

The Korean script is called Hangul. Created between 1443-1446.
More info in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hangul
I found this interesting:
Korean classification is often debated. Many Korean and Western linguists recognize a kinship to the Altaic languages. However, this is not well demonstrated, and many consider Korean a language isolate. Others believe that Japanese and Korean may be related; still others believe this is not so, and any similarities are simply due to a Sprachbund effect.

Sprachbund-effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprachbund)
A Sprachbund (pronounced /ˈʃpʁaːxˌbʊnt/ plural form Sprachbünde /ˈʃpʁaːxˌbʏndə/, German for language bond, also known as a linguistic area, convergence area, diffusion area) is a group of languages that have become similar in some way because of geographical proximity. They may be genetically unrelated or only distantly related. Where genetic affiliations are unclear, the Sprachbund characteristics might give a false appearance of relatedness.

Many Koreans say the grammar is similar to Japanese, and there's some words that are similar. The koreans seem to learn the language quite easily... (annoying - i have to work so much more :D)

Japanese, however, is quite close in terms of the pronounciation, and utilizes some chinese words, as part of their langauge (rather combing symbols, they just use them, like...copying them and using them, not that i'm saying they're plagarists.)

i don't know if there's a connection in terms of history between the three langauges. However, i can determine that Chinese and Japanese, are,in terms of lingual structure, connected.

*don't bash me again, i'm just saying what i know:frypan: :bang: :duh: *

P.S. I am not assuming that each has a historical connection, i believe so, but since it is an theory not proven yet, I cannot state so like so above. Therefore I want to say that I am in no way assuming anything in this. I hope everyone understands this.

About the writing & vocabulary with chinese origin...
The original language of Japan was the so-called yamato kotoba. In addition to this original language, Japanese also has a great number of words that were either borrowed from Chinese or constructed on Chinese patterns. These words, known as kango, entered the language from the fifth century onwards via contact with Chinese culture. Chinese-based words comprise as much as seventy percent of the total vocabulary of the Japanese language and form as much as thirty to forty percent of words used in speech.

Altough the japanese speaking (fluent) chinese guys in my dorm keep saying, that in their opinion chinese and japanese are really different kinds of languages.

About the Korean-Japanese-connection. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_language#Classification_and_related_languag es)
The possibility of a Korean-Japanese linguistic relationship is a delicate subject because of the complex historical relationship between the two countries.

more info about nihon-go (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_language)

Sorry for the amount of quotes / references. I just think that when discussing a topic where research has been done, it'd be smart to benefit from it. And thus avoid empty argumenting, vague guessing etc. So trying to help the ones (like myself) with only little background information some tools for the discussion.

:watson:

[Plekto]

I'm thinking that given what is now Eastern Russia's/Siberia's proximity to northern Japan, that that's probably how the language picked up its different grammar structure. IIRC, there is still a small group of indigineous Japanese up in the north. Searched wikipedia - ah - Ainu's the name I'm looking for :)

A study of their language would probably reveal a close simmilarity to any indigenous people left in eastern Russia and Alaska. Of the theories I've read about, the idea that the area was settled by tribes from what is now Alaska makes a lot of sense - the language patterns and grammar are more simmilar to most Native American language than Chinese.

http://linguistics.byu.edu/classes/ling450ch/reports/ainu.htm
Interesting read. I think the conslusions at the end are probably the best I've heard so far. They're the last remnants of a tribe that covered northern Asia and America five to ten thousand years ago. Kind of like the Aboriginee people in Australia - their own seperate surviving group. Everybody around them was either assimilated or an offshoot of them. Their tribe shrunk and shrunk until nobody recognized their past influence.

Given that they pre-date most of Japan by thousands of years, and essentially were the major population on Hokkaido until probably 2000 years ago, that's likely where the Japanese language came from. As least until Chinese was brought over and took most of the language over. Written languages tend to obliterate only oral ones over time, afterall. But the basic grammar of the oral usually survives faily intact.

So we got Ainu-Chinese as a result.

Probably not a very popular theory, though, in Japan. They don't seem to like the Ainu in Japan, which is a bit odd. It's their only true link to their ancient past and they seem bent on getting rid of it. Though, it is encouraging to hear that they are trying to revive their culture in the last decade or so. They definately don't like the Chinese, though there's no wiggle-room on where Kanji came from :)

[jindojim]

On the topic of keigo: Chinese used to have keigo because up until the reign of communism, Confucian ideals still had an effect on the language. Which is why they used to have a form of keigo to show different forms of respect. But Communism eliminated those distinctions, so Chinese no longer has keigo.
So between Japanese and Korean, I would say Korean has the most forms of keigo. And it's used on an everyday basis, more than Japanese. In my opinion, grammatically, keigo (or jondaemal...I think) in Korean is a lot more easier to conjugate and remember than Japanese keigo. I remember hearing a lot of Japanese find keigo to be quite difficult even for themselves. Fortunately, there are really only a limited number of circumstances when they really have to use it. But because Korean language is the most deeply rooted in Confucianism, you have to treat people even a year older than yourself with a different level of respect. And use a different language as well, unless they're your good friend. So keigo has a biggest role in the Korean language.

On the topic of the origin of Japanese language: Well, both Korean and Japanese use Chinese characters, and their usage is quite similar as well (Many kanji in the Japanese language mean the same thing in Korean, whereas to Chinese, they might not make sense). Grammatically, Korean and Japanese is almost identical. Many words are also very similar to each other as well because of the way they read Chinese characters (toshokan/dosogwan, kaban/gabang, etc.) I'd have to argue that Korean language clearly had an impact on the origins of Japanese language. But since tones from both languages come from Chinese, Chinese is definitely one of the sources of the Japanese language. Possibly, the native Ainu to the north may have had some minimal influences, but their interaction with the Yamato (the origin of the Japanese today) was limited to basic trade. Besides, during the Tokugawa Period, the Ainu were dominated and were forced to speak Japanese. So I really can't see too much influence coming from them.

[Plekto]

The Ainu would have been a very very long-term older influence(we're talking about 2-3,000 years ago) - which being only oral, would have at least set up the grammar structure. Tack Korean on top of it, then Chinese Kanji - you get this wierd amalgum. But the grammar is still plainly not Chinese.

[jindojim]

NO. The Ainu would have had a very MINIMAL effect on the Japanese language, if any at all. The limited contact between the Yamato and the Ainu would not have had a significant enough role to drastically influence the Japaense language.
Once again, the Korean language's grammatical structure is almost identical to the Japanese grammar structure. The better question is to ask where the Korean grammatical structure derives from.

[羽之助]

Is the answer Chuck Norris?

[chas]

On the topic of the origin of Japanese language: Well, both Korean and Japanese use Chinese characters, and their usage is quite similar as well (Many kanji in the Japanese language mean the same thing in Korean, whereas to Chinese, they might not make sense). Grammatically, Korean and Japanese is almost identical. Many words are also very similar to each other as well because of the way they read Chinese characters (toshokan/dosogwan, kaban/gabang, etc.) I'd have to argue that Korean language clearly had an impact on the origins of Japanese language. But since tones from both languages come from Chinese, Chinese is definitely one of the sources of the Japanese language. Possibly, the native Ainu to the north may have had some minimal influences, but their interaction with the Yamato (the origin of the Japanese today) was limited to basic trade. Besides, during the Tokugawa Period, the Ainu were dominated and were forced to speak Japanese. So I really can't see too much influence coming from them.

I'd have to disagree with the part about Chinese usage of the kanji differs from the Japanese. You know how the same verb in Japanese can have many different kanji used, right? And that the usage of them depends on situation.

For example, the verb きく can be 聞く, 聴く, 利く, 効く, or 訊く. The chinese/japanese definition and the usages of all those are the same. 聞く is just listening to something in general (without much effort), while 聴く is when you are directly making your ears listen to something, like putting on head/earphones to listen to music. 利く(in chinese it'd be 有利) is when things are beneficial to you, or advantagous(有利的). 効く(有効(的)) is when something is effective, and the most common example is probably the effectiveness of the medicine you are taking. The last one being "to ask", or more specifically "to inquire". The first one can be "to ask" as well, but more general.

Another example would be 見る, 診る, 看る or 観る. First one is just a general "see" or "look", whatever you see with your own two eyes. Second one is more like examining a patient, looking for symptons, disease, etc. Third one is more like looking after that one, although this one combined with the first is the general "look, see" in chinese (看見). The last one would be like observing or watching (觀賞) something (a play, for example).

A lot of the times, when you take the kanji of a japanese verb and add another kanji to it, it gives you the exact same meaning in chinese. I noticed while I was playing this kanji game with a japanese friend and beginner japanese student, we'd have to explain the meaning and different usage of them to the beginner, but my Japanese friend's english wasn't that good, so I had to explain most of them. A lot of them, I'd just explain with the chinese definition because some of them I hadn't bother learning (the japanese version, anyway) and maybe only 1 or 2 kanji the meaning is slight different or has an extra meaning to it, but overall most japanese meaning of the kanji is 100% same as the chinese definition.

I think the Chinese language influenced both Korean and Japanese. Those two languages started with Chinese characters anyway, until they developed their own writing system (hangul, hiragana/katakana). Like that Library example, toshokan/dosogwan, would be tu shu guan in Chinese (kinda like a combination of both).

Being Chinese has really helped me in learning Japanese. There are just so many things that are similar (not surprising), it makes memorizing things easy and some things don't even need to be learned and it will still be understandable (kanji, mostly).

Edit: Just to be on topic: A lot of those Chinese keigo still exist today, mostly in like official documents or in dramas with settings from the olden days. I was reading that wikipedia page someone posted in the first page where it had keigo conversation in the beginning and then modern conversation after. Surprisingly, I was able to read and understand it without looking at the english translation beside it. But I still despise simplified chinese. They're ugly and, yeah.. ugly. Plus the fact that I can't read most of them.

[kfcpri]

As a Cantonese from HongKong I would say the grammer of Chinese and Japanese are not alike at all. But the meaning of each individual noun or verb (if they are in Kanji) are, most of the time, the same in meaning since Kanji comes from Chinese words, so a Chinese who didn't learn Japanese might get the meaning of Japanese text by context if it has a lot of kanji among it, e.g. typical articles on newspapers..

As for the different level respect thing, it stills exist surely in words.
A common example is that, in standard formal letters, whatever things belong to "their" side (the side you are writing to) would be written in a more respectful form , e.g.
Company 公司->貴公司
Resident 住客->貴住客
Your son/daugters 子女->貴子弟
You 你->閣下
And whatever things on "my" side would get a more humble tone
Company 公司->敝公司
My son/daugters 子女->敝子弟
I/Me 我->本人
(Just some possible mappings as example, not strict conversion)
Literally, 貴means expensive, honored; while 敝 means shabby.
But as for in speech, it might appears perhaps during a very formal situation, like when someone giving a speech.

I suppose most of the things that are said to be abolished by the Communist here, were abolished during the May Four Movement, around 1920, when the Chinese Communist Party wasn't even founded yet at all.