NativLang
A steppe empire’s undeciphered glyphs are at the verge of recovery. Meet the Khitan language!
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~ Briefly ~
This animation tells the linguistic story of a script that was invented over a thousand years ago and lasted for three centuries. Despite everything written about them in Chinese history and the written evidence in their language, their scripts remain somewhat of a mystery. We’ll get an understanding of the difference between the two scripts, the attempts at decipherment so far, and what we do know about them. We’ll end comparing identifiable Khitan vocabulary to other languages to see where it fits into North Asia’s linguistic scene.
~ Credits ~
Art, narration and animation by Josh from NativLang. A bit of the music, too.
Most of the music is by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), with one piece by Darren Curtis. Please see my sources document below for full names and credits!
Doc full of sources for claims and credits for music, sfx, fonts and images:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Cu74ghDD8zZhNM-LDQT6CMtz-WB6VMIKPTj20LVJjEc/
As someone who’s studied Chinese, is familiar with how Chinese characters work, and has already learned hundreds of characters, looking at the Khitan characters is such a surreal experience; they undeniably resemble Chinese characters, but so many things are also just off about them, it’s bordering on uncanny. I can just stare at them for hours.
Wow it's so fascinating.. the block system reminds me of Korean Hangul.
What's more interesting is that Khitan or Qidan governed the Manchuria and Beijing during 12th century. While Hangul was introduced by King Sejeong in Korea in 1400. Cud it be that Khitan is the reference of Korean hangul? If so, then maybe Sejeong the great cud have some artifacts related to the Khitan if my hunch Abt the relation of hangul and Khitan script is right
There are also people in yunnan who are khitan orgin
Great explanation, montage, very nice.
Khitans were a different ethnic people than Hans (Chinese).
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As a native Chinese speaker, your pronunciation of Beijing is fully correct in Chinese. I am amazed by this
I think it's kind of funny that the Chinese sentence at 7:57 translates directly in English to "bird resides pond middle tree", which sounds just as hilariously terrible and only makes sense when you consider "resides" as being used as a preposition and "pond middle" as an adjective.
Khitans lost the war against Goryeo.
The Khitans disappeared. When Mongolia ruled China, the Mongolian policy was”四等人制度”, and Mongols identified the Khitans as northern Han people,so Khitans became Han Chinese.That's why the Mongols called the Han Khitan, and Russia and Kazakhstan followed Mongolia.
8:08 which other language does he mean?
Looks similar to Korean in creating syllables- consonant+vowel+consonant
these things aren't really helped by the pro-han racism of the ccp, even reading what the chinese sources have to say, it is clear that all that was good about the Khitan are being claimed as Han, and all that cannot be claimed or is of no use for their revised history is just discarded. I am sure there are scholars that would help, if only they were not gagged.
Anyone figured out what sort of language the Xiongnu people spoke? Could it be a pre-Khitan of some kind or is there just literally no evidence from Chinese written records? I don’t know the linguistic history of this part of the world well at all…just watched videos like these and some stuff from The Teaching Company, etc. But I think there was a tenuous suggestion that the Huns might have been from the same area and that the horse-riding Xiongnu could have been essentially Huns, or Hunnic anyway. How that relates to Khitans, Mongols, Turks…if at all… I have no idea. It is an extremely interesting and mysterious part of the world, though.
10:10 it says Кидан гүрэн үсэгтэй in mongolian
so basically this is what it would be like if Japanese was an extinct language.
I'm addicted to this channel. This is too good. ❤❤❤ keep it up.
Kitay ch ki chi na
Kidan actually has nothing to do with China! It is ancestors of Mongols!
Prescriptivism sure has its merits. Imagine how much easier a language would be to decipher if it wasn't built on the principle “if enough people make a mistake, it ceases to be a mistake, no matter how poorly it fits with the rest of the language”.
I've seen this script before, but I thought it was more like proto Chinese. One of my teachers, Dr. Marry Scott at SFSU where I studied Chinese told me one of her friends was and expert, Mary said they look like Chinese until you look and see that none of them are any Character anybody knows.
Small script reminds me of Hangeul, except Khitan attaches case to the same block
China's Khitan? LOL
Maybe this language is too stupid so nobody wanted to teach it to little children 😜😜😂😂😂😜😜
I had to pause at 1:21 and go “wow did he just say the leader’s name was 아버지? That means father is korean.”