Sewa – Hindi and Japanese

Posted on 24. May, 2008 @ 10:45 pm by in Language Views: 797

Hey everyone.

I heard that SEWA means “service” in Hindi.

In Japanese, they have the phrase 世話する sewa suru which can translate into, “to give assistance to”. Very similar.

In Hindi the phrase namaste is a type of greeting. Literally, according to Wikipedia, namaste means “I bow to you”. In Japanese, 名前 namae means “name”... Which, if you twist your head around a bit,  you could maybe link it back to meaning “you” or something like that. Though, of course, you might be wrong.

Anyway, what is the link here. Is there one? Or is this just a random coincidence? Conspiracy?

Somebody in the know clue me in.

- Harvey

  • phauna

    What the hell are you talking about?

  • Jesse

    There is a connection… Namely, you. This entry is a testment to nothing more (or nothing less?) than the gestalt functioning of the human cognitive process. Sadly (fortunately?), the only thing to connect these very disparate phenomenon is your experience and cognitive processes. Luckily, in a sense, that is more than interesting enough. In other words, it would be very difficult (and I believe not as interesting) to think of these similarities the products of some sort of broad, or worse, ancient historical/cultural development (linguistic or otherwise). Rather, a more interesting question would be… what makes you think these things are the same (or even related)? Or to put a further twist on it, what experiences did you specifically have that allowed you to obtain this information and make this conclusion. Sounds pretty evident at first but when you think about I am pretty sure it will get more fun.

    As a side note (as a result of my gestalt cognitive functioning?), I recalled that ‘namaste’ has actually already become a Japanese word… ‘namu’(南無). Namu is used as a form of address for divinities. The most widely known example of this is undoubtedly the nembutsu (念仏) popularized by the Pure Land denomination of Buddhism. ‘Namu Amida Butsu’(南無阿弥陀佛) In fact, quite a number of Sanskrit words have made it into Japanese but I am not sure of ‘sewa’ (世話) is one of these.

  • Mac

    Harvey, if you think that’s interesting… try doing some searching on the similarities between Japanese and Hebrew vocabulary.

    A lot of it is attributable to coincidence… but some of it is very eerie.

  • http://www.peoline.com/japanguide Skye

    That’s really interesting… if there really is a connection. Having recently found that `kaban` 鞄 is from the Chinese, I’m currently less likely to write language similarities off as coincidence (though I still tend to be fairly sceptical).
    Mac, I’m curious, what are the similarities between Hebrew and Japanese? I suspect this is something that would be used to support the (questionable) theory about the lost tribes of Israel?

  • Mac

    Skye,

    I’m not not personally convinced of the theory that some Israelite descendants made it to Japan with remnants of their culture intact, just of the opinion that it’s deserving of some research.

    The subject, including a little bit on the Japanese and Hebrew similarities, are touched on in this page:
    http://www5.ocn.ne.jp/~magi9/isracame.htm
    Much of it is clearly easily dismissed as coincidence, of course, but I think some of it is similar enough that, considering that much of this is unique to only the Hebrews and Japanese, it warrants investigation.

  • http://rouxified.blogspot.com arshana

    Sewa means rent in Malay.

  • leska

    How about the hindi word namaste (greeting when meeting someone) and the japanese hajimemashite (nice to meet you) the last parts sound very similar don’t you think?

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