Essay: I'd Rather Have a Bloody Cunt than Koka Kora
The Japanese borrow a lot of words from other languages. The Japanese language, however, has what may be the world's most limited syllabic flexibility, so when the Japanese borrow the word ice cream, it has to be maimed and reassembled into something like aisukuriimu before it gets to join the Jinglish club. However, the Japanese DO have a writing system whose symbols are totally divorced from meaning, so you can always tell when you're dealing with a foreign loan word.
The Chinese language is a little different. The number of possible syllables in Chinese is much bigger than that of Japanese, but still not very big. Plus, there's all that tonal distinction. What the Chinese lack that the Japanese do not lack is a purely phonetic writing system. Sure, they have this unofficial set of characters that already existed but don't generally get used all that much so they kind of just hang around waiting to be used in words like Liechtenstein (Liezhidunshideng), but they're still capable of holding wisps of their original meanings. So while that approximation of Liechtenstein could mean "line up branch honest nobleman register", especially if you're an asshole, it really just means Liechtenstein. Sometimes the approximation is as difficult to discern as thong fabric on a Brazilian beach: Switzerland becomes Ruishi, Chicago becomes Zhijiage, and Russia becomes Eguo.
Now, what I'm really driving at here, is that what with all this approximation and reapproximation and lexical enslavement, a lot of foreign brand names here in China have the potential to become really, really funny. In Japan, they probably just call Sprite something like supuraito. But here in China, considering the syllabic structure has nothing even approaching something whose third cousin once went out with Sprite's brother, they call it Xuebi. Now, the characters semantically mean something like Snow Jade - not bad. But, if you change the tone on both of those syllables, you get Bloody Cunt. And that's way, way, WAY better.
"Gosh, you know what would hit the spot on this hot, muggy day? A bloody cunt. Ayep."
Another one of my favorites from the vernacular is changing the tones on "I like the cursive script [of Chinese calligraphy]" can leave you with "I like to fuck trees".
So, yes, Japan's all like "we got this katakana thing so we can spell out loanwords" and China's all like "yeah that may be but we get bloody cunts and tree-fucking and that's way funnier". And Japan's all like "whatever" and I'm all like "time to go hop in the shower".
Oh, on a totally unrelated note: this site is really fucking funny.
The Chinese language is a little different. The number of possible syllables in Chinese is much bigger than that of Japanese, but still not very big. Plus, there's all that tonal distinction. What the Chinese lack that the Japanese do not lack is a purely phonetic writing system. Sure, they have this unofficial set of characters that already existed but don't generally get used all that much so they kind of just hang around waiting to be used in words like Liechtenstein (Liezhidunshideng), but they're still capable of holding wisps of their original meanings. So while that approximation of Liechtenstein could mean "line up branch honest nobleman register", especially if you're an asshole, it really just means Liechtenstein. Sometimes the approximation is as difficult to discern as thong fabric on a Brazilian beach: Switzerland becomes Ruishi, Chicago becomes Zhijiage, and Russia becomes Eguo.
Now, what I'm really driving at here, is that what with all this approximation and reapproximation and lexical enslavement, a lot of foreign brand names here in China have the potential to become really, really funny. In Japan, they probably just call Sprite something like supuraito. But here in China, considering the syllabic structure has nothing even approaching something whose third cousin once went out with Sprite's brother, they call it Xuebi. Now, the characters semantically mean something like Snow Jade - not bad. But, if you change the tone on both of those syllables, you get Bloody Cunt. And that's way, way, WAY better.
"Gosh, you know what would hit the spot on this hot, muggy day? A bloody cunt. Ayep."
Another one of my favorites from the vernacular is changing the tones on "I like the cursive script [of Chinese calligraphy]" can leave you with "I like to fuck trees".
So, yes, Japan's all like "we got this katakana thing so we can spell out loanwords" and China's all like "yeah that may be but we get bloody cunts and tree-fucking and that's way funnier". And Japan's all like "whatever" and I'm all like "time to go hop in the shower".
Oh, on a totally unrelated note: this site is really fucking funny.