I’ma hold off till yalls stop it with the outrageous political tourist vetting.

deleted by creator

a language might be a tool we use, but it absolutely shapes the way we see the world itself to a significant degree, even to the point where speakers of different languages might disagree on basic physical facts

eg: if you ask an english speaker how many fingers they have - they’ll answer 10. but if you answer a polish speaker - they’ll answer 20. polish makes little linguistic distinction between fingers, and how we call them, foot fingers

this is one example of many. i find it deeply fascinating and quite scary. it feels weird to realise that my understanding of the world is broadened and structured better thanks to the fact i use a language to describe it, but there might be things i’ll never notice, or will always confuse, simply because the tool i use is not perfect, and yet, that is the basis through which i perceive the world

本 is typically a more formal way of expressing “this,” but in this context it’s closer to “source” or “origin.”

Japan’s name uses the same characters in both Chinese and Japanese, but is pronounced differently: “ri ben” in Chinese and “ni hon” in Japanese.

Only if you are racist

Afaik, some characters do have meanings but are sometimes used for their readings, so their literal meaning is gibberish.

保 — to protect — bǎo

加 — to add — jiā

利 — benefit, profit — lì

亚 — Asia / secondary — yà

I think this is part of why some people end up with weird gibberish tattoos when they translate things literally, because some made up alphabets try to map Western letters to some Chinese characters, but it doesn’t work that way.

I don’t even know much actor names.

But I think the first foreign name that comes to mind was 奧斑馬 (Obama) I don’t think those are the correct characters of the transliterated name, but that’s how I thought heard the adults said it, I think it was like 2012, right on election year and my mom was talking to like a friend/acquaintance, and Obama was talked about. But the 馬 immediately made imagine like: does this person like horse or like come from a family that has horses, then I think later I learned about presidents in school and learned the English version of Obama and I was like: oh it sounds the same as the 奧斑馬 the adults talked about, its the same guy right?

But does Obama like horses tho? 🤔 (I was so silly as a kid lol)

Street names, there is one memorable one in Philly Chinatown called Race St or 禮士街 on the sign (it’s in both languages on the street sign near the Chinatown Area).

In Cantonese, 禮士 sounds too close to 瀨屎 (to shit yourself) lmfao I always tell my dad “hey it’s the 瀨屎 street” and laugh when I see that street sign, yes I’m that immature (I mean I was still a minor when I was first in the Philly Chinatown, you know, jokes like these was nornal)

As for Chinese first names, yes I joked about my parents names a lot, but unfortunately I can’t share those jokes since its personal info.

I don’t really have memories of names of classmates when I was in school in China, like who cares about classmates. None of the nameswere memorable or that I can make a joke out of.

As a teen, I noticed that Xi Jinping, the Xi in Mandarin sounds too close to 屎 in Cantonese so me and my brother would just call him 屎精評 in Cantonese which sounds almost the same as Xi Jinping in Mandarin. 屎 for shit and 精 is a character in 妖精 monster, and 評 is commentary, so Xi Jinping is a monster that shits itself while public speaking. xD

Bro, not everything is AI, I’m just an introvert that think about things alot.

And it’s not like I seriously think that Japan magically hides the sun inside their island because if the 日 character, its a subconcious impression because my brian automatically make that connection, so its like I just make jokes to my dad like “is it really warn in Japan”

Its kinda like “Iceland”, like: “hey I bet there’s a lot of ice on that island”

If I were still in China, and like someone were to ask me about my impressions of a country, and I don’t have any info, I’d just say that I’ve never been there and never heard of anything about it, not actually say outloud the subconcious feeling about the name of the country.

Also, kid-me think really weirdly.

Also how the fuck is it misinformation?

If I said: “Native English speakers probably think Iceland has a lot of Ice” or “Native English speakers probably think Greenland has a lot of grass”, is that really “misinformation”

Jesus fucking christ, why is every lemming so fucking hostile for no fucking reason.

Bro it ain’t that serious man

I think your perspective and critique is valid and interesting but it can be helpful to assume the best in people, especially when giving a critique.

In my experience, kids (and adults) love the fact that Iceland is greener and Greenland is icier, so it’s not surprising to me that other languages have similar odd names. It’s not surprising to me that some people would have a biased opinion of a place due to an odd name, but like Iceland I expect many know much more about a country than just the name and thus the name doesn’t hold much weight.

Do you not know what subconscious means?

Japan definitely chose it themselves. Before, the country was known as 倭国, with 倭 meaning something like harmonic but also submissive. Obviously one Tennō wasn’t too happy about that and began signing letters to the Chinese court as “from the ruler of the land where the sun rises (日本) to the ruler of the land where the sun sets.” So Japan became the “Land of the rising sun” (well literally it’s the “sun’s origin”).