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Japanese and Korean share a lot of words with Chinese (to be fair, many terms in science were introduced by Japanese, but using Chinese characters). However, in recent years, Japanese tends to use English loanwords directly, without Japanese/Chinese roots.
e.g.
Computer is keompyuteo in Korean, Konpyūtā in Japanese, but dian-nao or ji-suan-ji in Chinese.
dian-nao means "electrical brain". ji-suan-ji means "computing machine".
90% Chinese (who are not familiar with English) have no idea if you say the word "computer" in English. However Korean or Japanese people can possibly get the meaning, even if they speak no English.
That's very true. To add on, 'television' is interpreted in Chinese as 'Electrical-Visual-Machine'. It seems the Chinese have sorted out how they want to view the world, than to reply on phonetical replication of foreign words.
Interestingly, of the few words in the Chinese vocabulary that actually take root from their English prononciations, they are not merely phonetical clones but contain inherent meanings. Take for example, the word 'vitamin'. It's pronounced 'Wei-Ta-Ming'...very similar to its English counterpart but translating each word individually gives: 'Sustaining-His-Life'.
As for the Japanese language, even a common food like ice-cream has to be replicated vowel for vowel, consonant for consonant from English. Just some observations.
I lived in both South Korea and Japan for many years. It was always easy to find the Internet in Japan or Korea, as you just pronounce the same English word into the Japanese or Korean system. If the word 'Internet' didn't work, and it always did, then I'd try 'Computer'.
I went to Tianjin/Beijing, and I was trying to find an Internet Cafe. For the life of me, I could not get anyone to understand the word 'Internet' or 'Computer'. I even wrote them out in English, which would ALWAYS work in Japan/Korea, but it didn't work either.
In conclusion, I have direct experience with what you are saying!
Yeah that's it. I studied engineering in China but when I came to the US, I could not even say simple things of math and physics in English, which is very annoying.
Actually there are two translations for "internet". One is ying-te-wang, which sounds like English. The other one is hu-lian-wang, which literally means "inter net" in Chinese, but does not sound like English at all. The problem is, many Chinese do not like to use either word, and they just use the word wang-luo (or wang) to refer to internet. wang-luo literally means network.
More examples:
rock n' roll = yao gun (shake roll)
hydrogen = qing qi (light gas )
potential energy = shi neng (...)
entropy = shang
chromosome = ran se ti (coloring material)
integral = ji fen (accumulating segments)
...
That's very true. To add on, 'television' is interpreted in Chinese as 'Electrical-Visual-Machine'. It seems the Chinese have sorted out how they want to view the world, than to reply on phonetical replication of foreign words.
Interestingly, of the few words in the Chinese vocabulary that actually take root from their English prononciations, they are not merely phonetical clones but contain inherent meanings. Take for example, the word 'vitamin'. It's pronounced 'Wei-Ta-Ming'...very similar to its English counterpart but translating each word individually gives: 'Sustaining-His-Life'.
As for the Japanese language, even a common food like ice-cream has to be replicated vowel for vowel, consonant for consonant from English. Just some observations.
Yes that is true.
Even if they can't find a good translation and have to borrow the sound, they will try to use "good characters" to add some meaning to it. For example, campaign is xiang-bin 香槟, which is a loanword; but the Chinese characters mean “fragrant bin” （bin refers to some kind of plant)
Even if they can't find a good translation and have to borrow the sound, they will try to use "good characters" to add some meaning to it. For example, campaign is xiang-bin 香槟, which is a loanword; but the Chinese characters mean “fragrant bin” （bin refers to some kind of plant)
I think you meant 'Champagne'
The 'Bin' character you mentioned incidentally refers to a type of apple, not quite a plant.
That's very true. To add on, 'television' is interpreted in Chinese as 'Electrical-Visual-Machine'. It seems the Chinese have sorted out how they want to view the world, than to reply on phonetical replication of foreign words.
Interestingly, of the few words in the Chinese vocabulary that actually take root from their English prononciations, they are not merely phonetical clones but contain inherent meanings. Take for example, the word 'vitamin'. It's pronounced 'Wei-Ta-Ming'...very similar to its English counterpart but translating each word individually gives: 'Sustaining-His-Life'.
As for the Japanese language, even a common food like ice-cream has to be replicated vowel for vowel, consonant for consonant from English. Just some observations.
Well said.
Chinese is a far superior language when it comes to word formation: it is extremely flexible and always does it best to bring new concept within its own language system. Let's look at some examples:
Leopard, cheetah and puma are three completely different words in English, while in Chinese, it is "spotted-BAO", "hunter-BAO" and "American-BAO", respectively. Without knowing the words, you know these are fast moving predators. (BAO means a large cat). In English, there is absolutely nothing that indicates leopard, cheetah and puma are actually animals. They could well be a type of cheese.
For the vast majority, you could tell a word refers to a type of fruit because they mostly end with the same single syllable word, even without knowing the specific word. In English, the words apple, pear, mango, strawberry have absolutely nothing to do with each other.
In clothing, what a hell is a blazer? or a cardigan or pajama? Nothing, absolutely nothing implies they are a type of clothes. In Chinese, papajiama would be "sleep-clothes", a blazer would be called "casual-suit", others such as sneakers, stilettos, bras all clearly indicates they exactly they are, without the trouble of creating new words such as English does.
English is particularly atrocious in naming diseases as you have to know their latin or greek roots. For example, pneumonia refers to the lungs, leukemia refers to the blood, karatitis refers to the cornea, paronychia refers to he nail (who the hell here know this word?) In Chinese, a seven year old can tell what the disease is. Same for those specialist doctors, "gynecologist", "dermatologist" don't really tell much about what those doctors do.
Also, why the hell there are glasses, cups, mugs, globet and tumbler when they pretty much refer to the same thing of different shapes? It is extremely inefficient because other people, and kids have to learn a completely new word for everything sigle item, although they share a lot in common.
Of course, Japanese is even worse than English. It simply translates the pronunciation everytime there is a new borrowed word, while Chinese tries to make sense out of it. "Cocacola" was translated into "delicious and pleasant" with very similar pronunciation and BMW is translated into "previous horse".
Linguists discovered that on average, to express the same idea, Chinese speaks need to say the least amount of syllables, while Japanese (along with Italian and Spanish) speakers need the most, which means, within the same timeframe, Japanese speaks need to speak twice faster than Chinese speakers.
One will be hard pressed to think of another language that is more efficient than Chinese. After mastering Chinese you would realize how chaotic and unsystematic English is with all its unnecessarily large vocabulary - at least words in French, Italian and Spanish to a large extend represent their pronunciation, for English? It is a mess. "ough" can have 6 pronunciations in "thought" "through" "through" "rough" "cough" "bought". I mean, what the hell?
^ You're right, English' vocabulary can be intimidating, with a ton of synonyms for some things. Angry for instance: angry, mad, livid, enraged, furious, seething, cross, plus all manner of colloqualisms. Then there are things/concepts where there is no good word in English, where we have to borrow concepts, like the French 'de ja vu' - although probably not a good example, or the German 'zeitgeist.' Of course English is the ultimate 'borrower' of words from other languages.
Chinese sounds intriguing for that reason. It does sound more logical. Like English, I hear the grammar is relatively flexible. The thing that still puts me off trying to seriously learn Mandarin are mastering the tones and learning all those characters. I would still think an alphabetical system is better than a character-based system.
^ You're right, English' vocabulary can be intimidating, with a ton of synonyms for some things. Angry for instance: angry, mad, livid, enraged, furious, seething, cross, plus all manner of colloqualisms. Then there are things/concepts where there is no good word in English, where we have to borrow concepts, like the French 'de ja vu' - although probably not a good example, or the German 'zeitgeist.' Of course English is the ultimate 'borrower' of words from other languages.
Chinese sounds intriguing for that reason. It does sound more logical. Like English, I hear the grammar is relatively flexible. The thing that still puts me off trying to seriously learn Mandarin are mastering the tones and learning all those characters. I would still think an alphabetical system is better than a character-based system.
Then again, I feel this is where the English language triumphs in all its diversity. It's enriching and satisfying to work one's way through the conundrum of vocabulary, and to find a word that so intimately describes the current state of mind. In this respect, the Chinese language lacks such a kaleidoscopic repertoire of adjectives.
Every language has evolved to reflect the world it is in. There is no inherent merit per se for having a 'flowery' vocabulary or for being succinct to a fault. The Inuits, for instance, have a myriad of ways to describe the quality of snow, far more than any existing culture. This means absolutely nothing to people living in the tropics but it simply implies that the Inuits have refined communication to suit their environment. They have enhanced the useful and discarded the rest.
Then again, I feel this is where the English language triumphs in all its diversity. It's enriching and satisfying to work one's way through the conundrum of vocabulary, and to find a word that so intimately describes the current state of mind. In this respect, the Chinese language lacks such a kaleidoscopic repertoire of adjectives.
Every language has evolved to reflect the world it is in. There is no inherent merit per se for having a 'flowery' vocabulary or for being succinct to a fault. The Inuits, for instance, have a myriad of ways to describe the quality of snow, far more than any existing culture. This means absolutely nothing to people living in the tropics but it simply implies that the Inuits have refined communication to suit their environment. They have enhanced the useful and discarded the rest.
Indeed, although at times I find even the vast vocab of English lacks a word to adequate and precisely describe a concept or feeling.
Also, I've heard and observed myself that English tends to be a rather cold, judgemental language. While there are many words for hatred, how many are there for 'love'? Plus there aren't really words in English for different kinds of love. Like agape love, romantic love.etc. Affection or something ain't the same. Plus words like 'evil' have a much more severe connotation in English than their equivalent translations in say Hebrew.
English is far from perfect - no language is (after all words can be a clumsy way of describing the world, but they are indispensable to civilisation. I like to think of them as a poorly built staircase, or tower). And yes, they are products of their environment. Since English isn't confined to England anymore, it is now evolving into different global strains. The internet merely adds to this fragmentation into countless complex strains of it.
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