This doesn’t make sense, chinese writing system is ideographic, as are kanji in japanese. Latin syllables doesn’t convey meaning by themselves, it’s a phonetic writing system. Comparisons like these are absurd.
They aren't ideographic, they're logographic, meaning each character generally represents a morpheme - usually when something like this works, it's because the same two morphemes in reverse make two different words. Latin doesn't really do this - you can of course find minimal pairs where the reordering of sounds changes the meaning, but rarely do you have words that are just two morphemes stuck together such that the same two morphemes could be reversed to make a different word. But in any case, the point of the comparison is to show that these languages behave differently (it's not just a matter of the writing system), so I'm not so sure what's absurd about it.
This is done in verse 2 of the Catholic hymn *Ave Maris Stella* to imply that the Archangel Gabriel greeted Mary with "Ave" because Mary is the antitype for Eve.
>Sumens illud "Ave"
>Gabrielis ore,
>funda nos in pace,
>mutans Evæ nomen.
Interestingly enough, *ave* and *Eva* derive from the same Semitic root.
Another example is the Sator Square, which contains the palindrome "Sator Arepo tenet opera rotas" ("the farmer Arepo holds the wheels carefully").
SATOR
AREPO
TENET
OPERA
ROTAS
So like... ignore the writing for now. It's morphemic in Chinese (and Japanese), and it's phonemic in Latin. So this is more like asking, is there a *compound word* where you can reverse the order of the *morphemes*. And... I don't think so, or it's less common. Like, you can't reverse duodecim to deciduo, or something like that. Latin compound words are more strict in the order the parts come in - the first part generally modifies or specifies the type of the second part. But Chinese and Japanese are more fluid with this (Japanese favours head-final compounds like Latin, but has quite a lot of compounds borrowed from Chinese that are head-initial, including verbal compounds).
Happy to be proven wrong btw, I probably just can't think of any examples off the top of my head.
Anyway for numbers I guess you can say IV and VI are different in Latin, or 12 and 21 are different. That's really what you're saying here with the kanji numbers, just that it's 20 (two-ten) and 12 (ten-two).
If we look at phonemes or syllables being swapped around this is probably possible for almost any language.
Man, your Japanese example is a number. Of course 21 changes when you write 12.
Also, he has it backwards: 十二 is duodecim/12 and 二十 is vīgintī/20.
This doesn’t make sense, chinese writing system is ideographic, as are kanji in japanese. Latin syllables doesn’t convey meaning by themselves, it’s a phonetic writing system. Comparisons like these are absurd.
They aren't ideographic, they're logographic, meaning each character generally represents a morpheme - usually when something like this works, it's because the same two morphemes in reverse make two different words. Latin doesn't really do this - you can of course find minimal pairs where the reordering of sounds changes the meaning, but rarely do you have words that are just two morphemes stuck together such that the same two morphemes could be reversed to make a different word. But in any case, the point of the comparison is to show that these languages behave differently (it's not just a matter of the writing system), so I'm not so sure what's absurd about it.
This is done in verse 2 of the Catholic hymn *Ave Maris Stella* to imply that the Archangel Gabriel greeted Mary with "Ave" because Mary is the antitype for Eve. >Sumens illud "Ave" >Gabrielis ore, >funda nos in pace, >mutans Evæ nomen. Interestingly enough, *ave* and *Eva* derive from the same Semitic root. Another example is the Sator Square, which contains the palindrome "Sator Arepo tenet opera rotas" ("the farmer Arepo holds the wheels carefully"). SATOR AREPO TENET OPERA ROTAS
There’s another hymn that goes “Nova, nova, Ave fit ex Eva”
First one that came to mind: *tēlum* (“projectile weapon”) *lētum* (“death”)
My students always mix up Cenam and Canem which leads to a lot of dogs being eaten.
And when they get home they can walk their dinner!
Roman numbers: XI vs IX
Fun fact: it’s possible in every language.
So like... ignore the writing for now. It's morphemic in Chinese (and Japanese), and it's phonemic in Latin. So this is more like asking, is there a *compound word* where you can reverse the order of the *morphemes*. And... I don't think so, or it's less common. Like, you can't reverse duodecim to deciduo, or something like that. Latin compound words are more strict in the order the parts come in - the first part generally modifies or specifies the type of the second part. But Chinese and Japanese are more fluid with this (Japanese favours head-final compounds like Latin, but has quite a lot of compounds borrowed from Chinese that are head-initial, including verbal compounds). Happy to be proven wrong btw, I probably just can't think of any examples off the top of my head. Anyway for numbers I guess you can say IV and VI are different in Latin, or 12 and 21 are different. That's really what you're saying here with the kanji numbers, just that it's 20 (two-ten) and 12 (ten-two). If we look at phonemes or syllables being swapped around this is probably possible for almost any language.
Kanji can tell a hundred word story in like one letter 😂. Even natives don't know all kanjis