Just for fun and to be fair, let’s also deconstruct the evidence given
in this site which purports similarities between Hebrew and Japanese words:
Daber: in Hebrew, to speak.
Daberu: Japanese for chatting.
The word ‘Daberu’ (駄弁る), which means ‘to chat’ or ‘to engage in idle talk’, is an (archaic) inflection of the word ‘
Daben’ (駄弁), which means the same thing.
However, the one fatal strike against this connection is: the word ‘
Gaijin’ is a Sino-Japanese (漢語, ‘
Kango’, lit. ‘Chinese [Han] Word’; refers to the part of Japanese vocabulary originating from Chinese or has been created from elements borrowed from it) type of word and not an actual native Japanese word (和語, ‘
Wago’).
In fact, 60 percent of present-day Japanese consists of
Kango and forms about 18 percent of terms used in everyday speech.
The rest consists of
Gairaigo (外来語), loan words from different languages, mainly English, Portuguese, Dutch, German and French.
There is also ‘
Wasei-Eigo’ (和製英語, 'Japanese-made English), which are usually contractions, abbreviations or portmanteaus of actual English words, English words having a different sense and meaning than they have in actual English, or original English terms.
Add to that onomatopoeias and ‘
Gitaigo’ (擬態語; Mimetic words that represent non-auditory senses, psychological states or bodily feelings that could not fit into the category of Onomatopoeia).
Finally, the small remainder that remains consists of ‘Wago’.
Goi: a non-Hebrew or foreigner.
Gai’Jeen: prefix for a foreigner, a non-Japanese.
1.) The term ‘
Gaijin’ (外人) is presently used as a term for ‘foreigner’, whereas this was not always so.
One of the first attestations of this word comes from the early 13th century from the
Heike Monogatari, where in this case,
gaijin is used for outsiders or potential enemies.:
外人もなき所に兵具をとゝのへ
(Transliteration:
Gaijin mo naki tokoro ni heigu wo totonoe)
…Assembling arms where there are no
gaijin…
Another early reference is in
Renri Hishō (c. 1349) by Nijō Yoshimoto, where it is used to refer to a (Japanese) person who is a stranger, not a friend.
The Noh play
Kurama tengu (鞍馬天狗) also has a dialog where
gaijin also means an outsider/stranger or an unknown/unfamiliar person:
源平両家の童形たちのおのおのござ候ふに、かやうの外人は然るべからず候
(…
Genpei-ryōke no dōgyō-tachi no onoono gozasōrō ni, kayou no gaijin wa shikaru bekarazu soro…)
…Since the children of both Genji (the Minamoto clan) and Heike (the Taira clan) are here, such a
gaijin is not appropriate to stay together…
When the first Europeans (such as the Portuguese) entered Japan, they were known as ‘
Nanbanjin’ (南蛮人, ‘Southern Barbarians’), since their ships came from the South. Heretofore, the Sino-Japanese term ‘
Nanban’ (from Chinese ‘Nanman’) was used to designate (naturally) people from South and Southeast Asia, following a Chinese usage in which surrounding “barbarian” people in the four directions had each their own designation.
When the British arrived in the 17th century, they were referred to as ‘Kōmōjin’ (紅毛人, ‘Red-haired people’). When the Tokugawa Shogunate was forced to open contact with the West, the terms ‘
Ijin’ (異人), a contraction of either ‘Ikokujin’ (異国人) or ‘Ihōjin’ (異邦人, both terms meaning ‘people from a different country’) became popular. (Interestingly enough, some Japanese Bible translations use ‘Ihōjin’ as the equivalent word for
Gentiles instead of ‘Gaikokujin’)
The word ‘
Gaikokujin’ (外国人) was only introduced and popularized by the Meiji government who united the feudal states in Japan as one nation, and this gradually replaced Ijin, Ikokujin and Ihōjin. While other terms fell out of use after World War II, Gaikokujin remained as the official government term for non-Japanese people (and a supposed contraction is also used in colloquial speech which became
Gaijin).
2.) This word is also a ‘
Kango’ and not a native Japanese word, thus this word couldn’t have been around before the Chinese influenced Japanese culture. See above.
3.) The Hebrew term ‘Goy’ (plural ‘Goyim’) literally means ‘Nations’ or ‘Peoples’ and while later commonly used as a generic name for non-Hebrews, is also earlier used in its original sense (‘nation’) as a term for the Israelites, such as in ‘
goy gadol’, ‘a great nation’ (it is also used for non-human groups, such as swarms of locusts or other animals).
Kor: cold in Hebrew.
Koru: to freeze in Japanese.
This one, finally is a ‘Wago’. ‘Kooru’ (凍る-こおる; note the long ‘o’ sound) does mean ‘to freeze’.
However, before the post-war spelling reforms of Japanese, Kooru is written as ‘Kohoru’ (こほる). Between the 9th and 17th centuries, the /h/ sound in Japanese was most likely pronounced as /ph/ or /f/, a voiceless labial fricative sound (before that, it may have been likely sounded like /p/). Thus, ‘kohoru’ may have sounded like ‘koforu’ (or ‘koporu’) in Archaic and Late Old Japanese, which is quite a long way from Hebrew ‘kor’.
This lack of an /h/ sound in Old Japanese is the reason why Chinese characters which has an /h/ is rendered with a /k/ sound in Japanese. Take for example ‘花’ which in (Mandarin) Chinese is ‘
hua1’ (Cantonese: ‘
fa1’, Korean: ‘
hoe1’, ‘
hoa1’, ‘
he1’), but in archaic Japanese is ‘
kwa’ (presently this sound is pronounced as either ‘
ka’, ‘
kya’ or ‘
ke’), and why characters with a /f/ or /p/ sound is rendered with an /h/ (法 Mandarin: ‘
fa3’, Cantonese ‘
faat3’, Korean: ‘
pep’, Archaic Japanese: ‘
hafu’ or ‘
hofu’, Modern Japanese: ‘
hou’).
Knesset: Parliament in Hebrew.
Kensei: Constitutional government in Japanese.
Kensei (憲政) is a ‘
Kango’ and is not native Japanese. See above.
