If you know any Mandarin, Japanese, and Korean, you might notice that many of their words sound very similar. [Show 時間] For example, “time” is shíjiān in Mandarin, じかん jikan in Japanese, and 시간 sigan in Korean. This is because Mandarin, Japanese, and Korean are deeply related languages, connected by a writing system [show 漢字] for centuries. Our channel has previously talked about 808 characters and 658 words shared among Chinese, Japanese, and Korean and how you can accelerate your language learning by focusing on them. But what if we told you that you could speed up your learning even more, by using certain principles that allow you to convert between the different languages? What if you could use your existing knowledge of one language to figure out the pronunciation of a character in other languages? And what if these

principles were simple enough that they could be memorised within a few hours? Sounds too good to be true? Introducing: the CJK Cheatcode. To get started, we first need to understand why it is even possible to “convert” between languages. Mandarin, Japanese, and Korean are all heavily influenced by Middle Chinese, which is an older form of Chinese used from around the 4th to the 12th century CE. Mandarin is descended from Middle Chinese, while Japanese and Korean imported large amounts of characters, words, and pronunciations from Middle Chinese. Over time, the three languages all diverged from Middle Chinese in their own ways, which is why they sound rather different today. However, the way that Middle Chinese consonants evolved is relatively systematic, and so we can make use of these patterns of sound shifts to derive rules for “converting” between languages.

That said, we need to clarify that our principles do not work for all readings in Japanese and Korean. Remember that Mandarin is a direct descendant of Middle Chinese while Japanese and Korean are not. This means that the older versions of Japanese and Korean already had their own words for many things before they even encountered Middle Chinese. As they imported the writing system of Chinese characters, they did incorporate the relevant Middle Chinese pronunciations to co-exist alongside their own words. Overall, it is estimated that 60% of modern Japanese and Korean vocabulary is derived from Middle Chinese and hence are theoretically derivable from our system. Exactly which 60% of Japanese and Korean can our system predict? Simply, they are the “sound readings.” Let us explain. Japanese still writes with Chinese characters, which they call kanji. This means that many native words are still written with Chinese characters,

even though the pronunciation has nothing to do with the Middle Chinese pronunciation. These cases where they only keep the meaning of the character but not the sound are called 訓読み (くんよみ) kunyomi, which translates to “meaning reading.” Meanwhile, the cases where both the meaning and the sound of the character are used are called 音読み (おんよみ) onyomi, which translates to “sound reading.” These two types of readings can be observed when using the honorific prefix in Japanese. When you want to show respect to the person you are speaking to, you can add the prefix お~ o- or ご~ go- before nouns. お~ o- is generally used before nouns that use the kunyomi or “meaning reading,” like in お酒 osake. ご~ go- is generally used before nouns that use the onyomi or “sound reading,” like in ご両親 go-ryōshin. The same

prefix has two pronunciations because it is actually a character (御) that itself has two readings: it is read as お o in the “meaning reading” and ご go in the “sound reading.” For kanji, we cannot use Middle Chinese pronunciations to guess the pronunciation of the kunyomi or “meaning reading” because its pronunciation is unrelated to Middle Chinese in the first place. This means that our system only works for the onyomi or “sound reading” of Japanese. As for Korean, it used to have equivalents for kunyomi and onyomi, which are 訓讀 (훈독) hundok and 音讀 (음독) eumdok. However, modern Korean no longer uses Chinese characters, which they call hanja, in normal writing. This means that there is no need to use the hundok or “meaning reading” of these characters to represent

native words. Therefore, when we talk about a Korean hanja reading, it basically refers to the eumdok or “sound reading.” Again, this is exactly the kind of reading that our system can predict. Now that we have laid the theoretical foundation, let us move on to explain the system itself. However, be warned that, since we need to present a lot of information, there will be quite a number of tables ahead. Let us begin. A Middle Chinese syllable can be divided into three parts. First, there is a consonant in the beginning, then vowels in the middle, and finally another consonant at the end. Our system focuses on the initial consonant and the final consonant. Initial consonants can be divided into six groups, while final consonants can be divided into seven. You can think of each group as a natural family of sounds. Suppose that a character begins with an initial consonant in one

group in Japanese. This means that, most likely, the character will begin with an initial consonant in the same group for Mandarin and Korean. Therefore, once you are familiar with which sounds fall within which groups, you can use your knowledge of the character in one language to fill in your gaps in the other languages. There is one simple principle that defines each group of initial consonants: similar sounds belong to the same group. But what exactly makes consonants similar? To explain this, we need to first understand what a consonant is. Sounds are produced when air flows from your lungs and out of your body through your mouth and nose. Simply, consonants are those sounds which are produced when the flow of air is obstructed in some way. This is in contrast to vowels, which are sounds produced by unobstructed airflow. You can roughly classify consonants along two dimensions based on the nature of the airflow’s

obstruction. Consonants can differ based on the location where the obstruction occurs. In linguistics, this location is called the place of articulation. Consonants can also differ based on the way the airflow is obstructed, or the manner of articulation. Consonants are therefore similar if they have the same place of articulation or manner of articulation. Out of our six groups of initial consonants, five are defined by their place of articulation, while the sixth has its specific place of articulation and manner of articulation. Let us now introduce the consonants of Korean, Mandarin, and Japanese. For reasons that will be clear later, we have also listed the lack of a sound, which is denoted with a dash (“-”) when appropriate. Here is a table of consonants in Korean. We have listed the hangul, or Korean alphabet, for each consonant. The square brackets next to them contain each consonant

notated in the International Phonetic Alphabet. Each row is one of our groups of initial consonants, while the columns denote certain properties of each sound. This classification may seem overwhelming and difficult to remember, but look closely at each of the rows. Do you notice the hangul in each row are, in fact, all built off of the same shape? This is no coincidence—for the shapes of the letters were designed to encode information about how each sound is produced. Let us take a quick detour to the Hunminjeongeum Haerye. This is a commentary commissioned by the creator of hangul himself, King Sejong the Great. 牙音ㄱ，象舌根閉喉之形。 The dorsal sound ㄱ depicts the back of the tongue blocking the throat. 舌音ㄴ，象舌附上腭之形。 The coronal

sound ㄴ depicts the tongue touching the palate. 脣音ㅁ，象口形。 The labial sound ㅁ depicts the shape of the mouth. 齒音ㅅ，象齒形。 The sibilant sound ㅅ depicts the shape of the teeth. 喉音ㅇ，象喉形。 The laryngeal sound ㅇ depicts the shape of the throat.” Each of the five shapes indicates the place of articulation, and therefore each corresponds to one of our groups of initial consonants. We will go into more detail later about where each place of articulation is. For now, just know that almost all other consonants in hangul are created by adding additional strokes to these five shapes. This is why you can tell the place of articulation of each Korean consonant and hence which group they belong to just by looking at the way it is written in hangul.

That said, we have one exception for our final group of initial consonants. This is the semi-coronal/lateral consonants, represented by ㄹ in hangul. This differs from the other groups because it has a different manner of articulation. It is not formed from any of the other five shapes, and it does not form any other letters. As such, it is the only consonant in the group. Going back to the Korean consonants, some of them do not commonly appear as initial consonants in hanja. We are therefore left with these 13 sounds. We will go into more detail on each of the groups later. Moving on to Mandarin, here is the pinyin alongside the International Phonetic Alphabet for each consonant. They are categorised into the same six groups as the Korean consonants, and indeed many of the sounds are identical. One sound, ng [ŋ], does not appear as an initial consonant.

Finally, here are the Japanese consonants. Japanese uses a syllabary rather than an alphabet, which means we cannot represent consonants on their own. This is why we used the romanised letters here alongside the International Phonetic Alphabet. Note that each letter here represents the entire row of the hiragana and katakana syllabaries, which contain all five Japanese vowels. In some consonant-vowel pairings, the initial consonant differs from others in the same row. Therefore, when referring to the h [h] row, we also include the f [ɸ] consonant. Similarly, when referring to the t [t] row, we also include ch [t͡ɕ] and ts [t͡s]. Also, for the first row, the sound h [h] is not technically the unvoiced version of b [b]. However, we arranged it in this way because the h [h] row used to be pronounced as [p], which

is the unvoiced version of b [b]. This also matches the larger pattern where unvoiced sounds are turned into the voiced sounds by adding the two strokes known as the 濁点 dakuten. Lastly, the p [p] row is not common in kanji sound readings. With that, we can group the consonants across the three languages. From top to bottom, we have Korean, Mandarin, and Japanese. Here, then, is a rough chart of all six groups of initial consonants. However, there are more details to be filled in, so we’ll call this the “Level 1” chart. It helps a lot to use the Korean hangul shapes to remember which consonants are where, especially since the consonants in the other languages mostly correspond to the Korean consonants. Moreover, you can always double-check which group a sound belongs to by producing the sound and observing where the airflow is obstructed in your mouth.

While it is not necessary to use hangul to memorize our six groups, we think it is the most convenient way. Therefore, if you don’t know how to read hangul, check out the link in the description to a comic that teaches you how to read it in 15 minutes. For a more in-depth explanation of hangul using the International Phonetic Alphabet, we have also linked to a playlist of videos by Fluent Forever on Korean pronunciation. Now, let us zoom in on each of the six groups and look at some characters within each group. You may notice that some characters use consonants from other groups—we will account for those in Levels 2 and 3 of our chart. The first group is the labial consonants, where the airflow is obstructed using the lips. The name “labial” is derived from the Latin word “labia,” which means “lips.” King Sejong also calls them the “lip sounds.” In hangul,

these are the consonants based on the square, which is meant to depict the shape of the mouth as seen from the front. This is also identical to the character for “mouth.” For Korean, we have ㅁ [m], ㅂ [p], and ㅍ [pʰ]. For Mandarin, we have m [m], b [p], p [pʰ], and f [f]. For Japanese, we have m [m], h [h], and b [b]. Here are some characters within this group. We have also included the reconstructed Middle Chinese pronunciation for comparison. The second group is the coronal consonants, where the airflow is obstructed using the flexible front part of the tongue. The name “coronal” is derived from the Latin word “corōna,” which means “crown.” The tip of the tongue used in producing these sounds can be thought of as the head wearing

the crown. King Sejong calls these the “tongue sounds.” In hangul, these are the consonants based on the ㄴ, which depicts the side view of the tongue touching the top of the mouth. For Korean, we have ㄴ [n], ㄷ [t], and ㅌ [tʰ]. For Mandarin, we have n [n], d [t], and t [tʰ]. For Japanese, we have n [n], t [t], and d [d]. Here are some characters within this group. The third group is the sibilant consonants, where the tip of the tongue directs a stream of air towards the teeth. Since the tip of the tongue is used, sibilants are technically a subset of coronal consonants. However, since there are so many sibilants in Mandarin, Japanese, and Korean, they have been separated out into their own group. The name “sibilant”

is derived from the Latin word “sībilāns,” which means “hissing.” Quite a few sibilant consonants do sound like hissing. For example, the “s” sounds in “sibilans” are themselves sibilants. King Sejong calls these the “teeth sounds.” In hangul, these are the consonants based on the ㅅ. This is supposed to depict the shape of the teeth. For Korean, we have ㅅ [s], ㅈ [tɕ], and ㅊ [tɕʰ]. For Mandarin, we have s [s], sh [ʂ], x [ɕ], z [ts], zh [tʂ], j [tɕ], c [tsʰ], ch [tʂʰ], and q [tɕʰ]. For Japanese, we have s [s] and z [z].

Here are some characters within this group. The fourth group is the dorsal consonants, where the airflow is obstructed using the back of the tongue. The name “dorsal” is derived from the Latin word “dorsum,” which means “back.” King Sejong also calls these the “teeth sounds,” but with a different character. In hangul, these are the consonants based on the ㄱ, which depicts the side view of the root of the tongue blocking the throat. For Korean, we have ㄱ [k]. For Mandarin, we have g [k] and k [kʰ]. For Japanese, we have k [k] and g [ɡ]. Here are some characters within this group. The fifth group is the laryngeal consonants, where the airflow is obstructed in the larynx, which is also called the voice box. This group also includes the lack of

an initial consonant. King Sejong calls these the “throat sounds.” In hangul, these are the consonants based on the ㅇ, which is a top view looking down into the throat. For Korean, we have ㅎ [h]. For Mandarin, we have h [x] and r [ʐ]. In all three languages, we also have the lack of an initial consonant. In Korean, this is written with an ㅇ. The y [j] and w [w] sounds we included in this table are not actually consonants—they are actually vowel sounds. However, when there is no consonant preceding them, they signal the start of a new syllable like initial consonants usually do. Therefore, they are not actually different from the lack of an initial consonant, but they are included here because the use of “y” and “j” in Mandarin pinyin and Japanese romanisation tends to make us think of them as consonants.

Here are some characters within the group. The sixth group is the semi-coronal/lateral consonants, where the airflow is obstructed using the tongue, causing the air to flow along the sides of the tongue. Since these sounds involve the tip of the tongue touching the top of the mouth, it is related to the coronal consonants in terms of the place of articulation. However, it is further distinguished by its manner of articulation, being a lateral approximant. The air flows along the sides of the tongue, hence “lateral.” The airflow is relatively unobstructed and so the sound approaches being a vowel, hence “approximant.” King Sejong calls these the “half tongue sounds.” In hangul, this is the consonant ㄹ. For Korean, we have ㄹ [ɾ]. For Mandarin, we have l [l]. For Japanese, we have r [ɺ].

Here are some characters within this group. And that’s Level 1 of our system for initial consonants. We still have Levels 2 and 3. Level 2 will help you narrow down your predictions when you convert between languages. Level 3 will account for instances when characters use consonants from different groups. However, we know that Level 1 is already a lot to take in, so feel free to skip to the section on final consonants if you want some time to digest the information. You can always come back to this video when you are ready for the higher levels. In addition, we have an accompanying ebook available for all Patreon patrons. If you want a handy reference for all the information presented in this video, please consider going to patreon.com/808cjk and becoming a patron. Almost everything in this video is original research, and creating this video has taken us months of analysis.

and writing. So if you find this video useful and want to support us on Patreon, we will greatly appreciate it. As a patron, you will also get access to other exclusive ebooks and early access to our videos, among other perks. Thank you! For Level 2 of initial consonants, we can break down our groups into more precise sub-groups. When “converting” a consonant from one language to another, the resulting consonant will most likely come from the same sub-group. However, some consonants are shared between different sub-groups. These consonants are designated with blue arrows in the chart. The first group of labial consonants can be further divided into two sub-groups, based on whether they are nasal or not. If air flows out your nose when you produce a sound, that sound is nasal. Therefore, one way to check if a sound is nasal is to put a finger in front of your

nose. You should be able to feel some air coming out of your nostrils when you make a nasal sound. The nasal sub-group contains the three nasal labial consonants from Korean, Mandarin, and Japanese. The non-nasal sub-group contains the rest of the labial consonants. However, while the Japanese b [b] is non-nasal, it is shared with the nasal sub-group. In other words, both non-nasal and nasal labial consonants “convert” to the Japanese b [b]. The second group of coronal consonants can also be further divided into nasal and non-nasal sub-groups. The nasal sub-group contains the three nasal coronal consonants from Korean, Mandarin, and Japanese. The non-nasal sub-group contains the rest of the coronal consonants. However, while the Japanese d [d] is non-nasal, it is shared with the nasal sub-group. In other

words, both non-nasal and nasal coronal consonants “convert” to the Japanese d [d]. The third group of sibilant consonants cannot be readily divided into further sub-groups. Similarly, the fourth group of dorsal consonants cannot be readily divided into further sub-groups. The fifth group of laryngeal consonants can be further divided into two sub-groups. One sub-group contains characters whose initial consonant was ɽ in Middle Chinese. The other sub-group contains all other characters beginning with laryngeal consonants. For characters in the first sub-group, most begin in Mandarin with “r,” while some have no initial consonant at all. Those without the Mandarin initial consonant are pronounced as either ér, ěr, or èr. This is due to a process named 兒化 érhuà, where characters develop a “r”

as a final consonant. However, a character can only have “r” as a final consonant if it does not have an initial consonant. Therefore, the initial “r” is dropped. Characters in this sub-group do not have an initial consonant in Korean. Their Japanese initial consonants will be discussed in Level 3. The sixth group of semi-coronal/lateral consonants, containing only one consonant per language, cannot be divided into further sub-groups. That’s it for Level 2 of initial consonants. With the introduction of sub-groups, you should be able to predict consonants more precisely when “converting” between languages. When guessing the initial consonant for an unfamiliar language, it will most likely be a consonant within the same sub-group. Finally, Level 3 of our system is when consonants are shared across groups, designated by yellow arrows. While the chart looks quite messy, it is

actually relatively straightforward when you look at it group by group. Consider the first group of labial consonants. Just know that the nasal sub-group also includes the Mandarin w [w]. For the second group of coronal consonants, the non-nasal sub-group includes the Korean ㅈ [tɕ] and ㅊ [tɕʰ] and the Japanese z [z]. The third group of sibilant consonants includes the Japanese t[t]. The fourth group of dorsal consonants include the Man For the fifth group of laryngeal consonants, we previously noticed that one sub-group lacked Japanese consonants. This sub-group actually includes the Japanese n [n] and z [z]. Meanwhile, the other sub-group includes the Mandarin x [ɕ] and the Japanese k [k] and g [ɡ]. Finally, the sixth group of semi-coronal/lateral

consonants do not include consonants from other groups. And that covers the intricacies of the initial consonants. We know that was a lot, and rest assured that we will demonstrate how to make use of all that information later in the video. For now, let us cover the final consonants. While the final consonants have seven groups, it is much simpler than the initial consonants. Each group simply corresponds to one final consonant in Middle Chinese. These groups can be divided into three types—nasal, non-nasal, and no final consonant at all. The non-nasal consonants only occurred in characters of a specific tone in Middle Chinese, called the entering tone (入声). However, these non-nasal final consonants are entirely unpreserved in Mandarin, and characters in the entering tone could be any of the four tones today. This means

you are unable to use Mandarin readings to predict non-nasal final consonants in Japanese and Korean. This is why, in our series of videos on the 808 shared characters, we try to expose you to the character readings across all three languages. Even if you are unable to completely remember the pronunciations across all the languages, we still think it is useful to get a rough sense of the final consonants. Let us go through each of the seven final consonants alongside relevant characters. The first group ends in -n in Middle Chinese. This stays as ㄴ n in Korean, n in Mandarin, and ん n in Japanese. The second group ends in -m in Middle Chinese. This stays as ㅁ m in Korean. However, it becomes n in Mandarin and ん n in Japanese. The third group ends in -ŋ in Middle Chinese. This stays as ㅇ ng in Korean.

and ng in Mandarin. However, it becomes い i and う u in Japanese. These two vowels are added to the end of existing vowels, forming the long vowels of ō, ei, or ū. The fourth group ends in -p in Middle Chinese. This stays as ㅂ p in Korean but disappears entirely in Mandarin. It becomes three different sounds in Japanese. First, it becomes an う u. This is added to the end of an existing vowel, forming the long vowels of ō or ū. Second, it becomes つ tsu. Third, it becomes a geminate consonant or 促音 sokuon, written with a small tsu っ. You can think of this as a doubling of the consonant that follows. For example, if po with a geminate consonant is followed by kī, it becomes pokkī.

This phenomenon happens in other non-nasal final consonants as well, but it is most common in this group. Overall, gemination can occur when a character ends in つ tsu, ち chi, く ku, and き ki. つ tsu and ち chi can become the geminate consonant or small tsu っ when it is followed by the consonants k, s, t, or h. For く ku and き ki, this only happens when it is followed by the consonant k. The fifth group ends in -t in Middle Chinese. This stays as つ tsu and ち chi in Japanese. It becomes ㄹ l in Korean and disappears entirely in Mandarin. The sixth group ends in -k in Middle Chinese. This stays as ㄱ k in Korean and く ku and き ki in Japanese. It disappears entirely in Mandarin.

Finally, the seventh group has no final consonant in Middle Chinese. As such, it also has no final consonant in Korean and Mandarin. For Japanese, this means they will not end in any of the sounds which distinguish the other groups, like ん n, つ tsu, ち chi, く ku, or き ki. Instead, the only consonant will be at the start of the character. Overall, Korean best preserved the distinctions between the Middle Chinese final consonants. As such, there are final consonants of Middle Chinese that become the same sounds in Mandarin and Japanese. This sometimes makes it difficult to distinguish the specific Middle Chinese final consonant by simply using the Mandarin or Japanese reading. First, -n and -m both become -n in Mandarin and ん n in Japanese. Second, as previously mentioned, Mandarin does not preserve the non-nasal final consonants.

Third, -p and -t both become つ tsu in Japanese. Lastly, -ŋ and -p both become う u, to form the long vowels ō or ū. In addition, characters without a final consonant in Middle Chinese can also end in the long vowels ō or ū in Japanese. Therefore, there can be some difficulties when deducing final consonants from just Mandarin or Japanese. However, you will probably get it right within a few tries. Before we wrap up, let’s have a quick intermission to discuss how this system was derived, limitations, and vowels. If you have been following this channel, you may know that I’ve been attempting a “CJK Challenge” in 2022. As part of that challenge, I was learning Japanese and, over time, I realised that I developed an ability to roughly guess readings of Japanese characters using my knowledge of Mandarin.

I felt like there had to be some way to formulate this intuition into explicit rules, but I couldn’t find any definitive resources on this topic. So… I basically just forgot about it. That’s when one commenter called “Parappa the lagger”… Parappa asked if I could do a video on “how Middle Chinese pronunciation turned into Japanese, Korean, modern Mandarin, etc.” That’s when I realised having these rules would be very useful for Mandarin, Japanese, and Korean. Since there weren’t any good resources on the topic, I decided to just do my own research and figure it out myself. Luckily, as part of this channel, I already had a database of the 808 commonly-used characters shared amongst Mandarin, Japanese, and Korean. Looking through all the characters, I eventually arrived at six clusters of initial consonants that were quite predictive. It was then that I realised that they actually matched the shapes of the hangul characters. And with that,

everything just clicked together, and that’s how we have our system of initial consonants. As for the final consonants, there was already some research out there, so I didn’t have to do that much work. I mostly just translated existing information from Mandarin or Japanese. I told you that whole story to help make clear what are the limitations of this system. First, the system is optimized for the 808 characters shared among the three languages. Luckily, these are also the characters that will appear most often, so it would be the most useful for language learners in the first place. It should also be quite accurate for characters outside this 808. Second, I could not find any principles for the vowels. I think the vowels actually interact with the Middle Chinese tones, which is why it’s difficult to find the patterns when we’re looking at Japanese and Korean, both of which no longer have the tones. Maybe I

could find something more if I’m looking at other Chinese dialects like Cantonese or another tonal language like Vietnamese. I’ll see if I can make any progress on this, and if I have anything on the vowels, I will make a sequel to this video. For now, when “converting” between languages, just try to use the vowel that you already have. Next, linguistic principles almost always have exceptions. Even though I tried my best, there will still be exceptions to all the rules that I laid out. Yeah, just be prepared, and that’s just the nature of languages. Finally, if you have any ideas for future videos, please do comment down below, and maybe I will spend an entire three months making a thirty-minute video about it. Alright, now let’s go to the demonstration. For our demonstration, we will use a passage written in Classical Chinese by King Sejong. It has 54 characters in total. 5 characters are repeated,

and so there are only 49 unique characters. 36 out of those 49 characters are part of the 808 characters shared across Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. For this demonstration, we will grade how accurate our system is. For initial consonants, it gets an A if all readings fall within the same sub-group. It gets a B if at least one reading comes from the same group. It gets a C if at least one reading comes from another group, but this borrowing is accounted for in our system. Finally, it gets a D if at least one reading is not accounted for in our system. (Spoiler: All of the characters here get at least a C.) For final consonants, it gets a tick if it fits our system’s prediction and a cross if it does not. It gets a wavy line if it is close but not exactly right. Here we have the first 8 characters. All the final consonants match our predictions. Five

of the eight characters have all their initial consonants coming from the same sub-group. The remaining three come from other groups, but are accounted for in our system. Five of the next 7 characters match our predictions for the final consonants. There is an edge case here for Japanese: つう tsū with the long vowel matches our prediction, while つ tsu with the short vowel does not. Finally, one character completely mismatches our prediction. Six out of 7 characters have their initial consonants coming from the same sub-group, and one gets it from another group. All of the next 7 characters match our predictions for the final consonants. Five out of 7 characters have their initial consonants coming from the same sub-group, and two get it from another group. Seven of the next 8 characters match our predictions for the final consonants. One of them does not—this is the same character that was a mismatch earlier. Six out of 8 characters have

their initial consonants coming from the same sub-group, and two get it from another group. The next two characters match our predictions for the final consonants as well as the initial consonants. All of the next 5 characters match our predictions for the final consonants. Three out of 5 characters have their initial consonants coming from the same sub-group. One gets it from the same group, and another gets it from another group. All of the next 6 characters match our predictions for the final consonants. Five out of 6 characters have their initial consonants coming from the same sub-group. One gets it from another group. Five of the next 6 characters match our predictions for the final consonants. The last character is an edge case for Japanese: えき eki matches our prediction while い i does not. Four out of 6 characters have their initial consonants coming from the same sub-group. Two get it from another group.

All of the last 5 characters match our predictions for the final consonants. Three out of 5 characters have their initial consonants coming from the same sub-group. Two get it from another group. In summary, out of 54 total characters, there were only four characters that did not completely match our predictions for the final consonant. Meanwhile, 72.2% of the characters had initial consonants from the same sub-group. No character used an initial consonant that cannot be accounted for in our system. The numbers are roughly the same when looking at unique characters and common characters. Focusing on the uncommon characters not part of the 808 shared characters, all of them match our prediction for the final consonant. However, only 61.5% of characters had initial consonants from the same sub-group. Note that getting even the grade of C means that our system can predict

the initial consonants, so our system is still able to predict all the initial consonants of uncommon characters. Yet, for uncommon characters, more guesses seem to be needed to get it right. Finally, let us read what King Sejong actually wrote. These are the opening lines of the Hunminjeongeum, the document where he first laid out the hangul. “國之語音、異乎中國、與文字、不相流通。 As the language of our nation differs from that of China, the language and the writing system do not readily match. 故愚民有所欲言、而終不得伸其情者多矣。 Therefore, when average people have something that they wish to express, many are ultimately unable to share how they feel. 予爲此憫然、新制二十八字、欲使人人易習、便於日用耳。

I feel saddened by this situation, and so created twenty-eight new letters. I hope everyone can learn them easily, and that they are convenient for daily use.” While our system is nowhere as groundbreaking as King Sejong’s, we also hope that people will find the CJK Cheat Code useful, and that it helps them in their language learning journeys. Many thanks to our Patreon patrons, who steadfastly supported us even through the long hiatus between videos. Credit also goes to Parappa the lagger, without whom this video would not have been made. Finally, thank you for watching through this entire video. If you found this video useful, please do consider liking, commenting, subscribing, and supporting us on Patreon. For a small channel like us, it really does help a lot.

CJK Cheat Code | Shortcut to Three Languages

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