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In cantonese we say 香口膠 for gum, but also use a totally different word for blowjob that doesn't sound anything like that. Perhaps the speaker comes from a place where the local mandarin is influenced by Cantonese...
Just to confirm, the incident I posted happened in graduate school in the US. The female classmate is from the mainland, although not from a native Mandarin-speaking area. I believe from Hunan. She has been in the US for many years before that, so not sure where she picked up 口膠, or maybe she was pulling the other classmate's leg or really flirting with him. The male classmate is from Taiwan. Most of those who could understand Mandarin and overheard the conversation were from Taiwan. You can tell they could not hold their laughter but the guy who grew up in Guangzhou and could speak both Mandarin and Cantonese, did not seem to have any reaction.
No. The primary role of a language is to transfer ideas from one human to another as easy and efficient as possible. One of the advantages of an alphabet-like system is the fact that you can write down a word or a concept that is unfamiliar. For example, if two Chinese farmers meet, can they write down a word that they heard about in common speech but never saw written down? The answer is no, in hieroglyphic systems you can't do that.
I have heard that the average scores that Germans got on German spelling test are extremely low. Does anyone know if it's true?
in hieroglyphic (logographic) systems such as traditional Chinese, Egyptian, Sumerian Cuneiform, or Mayan.
Have you learned those languages?
Egyptian hieroglyphs (/ˈhaɪər.ɵɡlɪf/ hyr-o-glif; Egyptian: mdw·w-nṯr, "god's words") were a formal writing system used by the ancient Egyptians that combined logographic and alphabetic elements. You should read the Phonetic reading section.
Most Chinese characters also have alphabetic elements.
青 = qing, can be an alphabetic element
請 is a combination of 言 and 青, 青 represents the pronunciation of qing, so 請 as a whole is read as qing too.
Egyptian hieroglyphs (/ˈhaɪər.ɵɡlɪf/ hyr-o-glif; Egyptian: mdw·w-nṯr, "god's words") were a formal writing system used by the ancient Egyptians that combined logographic and alphabetic elements. You should read the Phonetic reading section.
Most Chinese characters also have alphabetic elements.
青 = qing, can be an alphabetic element
請 is a combination of 言 and 青, 青 represents the pronunciation of qing, so 請 as a whole is read as qing too.
I am a native Japanese. No relatives of mine can speak Chinese
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