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I live in Europe. China is often hard to understand and seen as a monolithic block. In Poland if something doesn't make any sense it's common to say "it's Chine
by b0rsuk 6y ago
I live in Europe. China is often hard to understand and seen as a monolithic block. In Poland if something doesn't make any sense it's common to say "it's Chinese to me". The language, especially the characters, is probably the biggest barrier. I vaguely know that China contains a bunch of peoples and languages, regions with distinct cultures. But very little beyond that.
People fear what they don't understand. I think you could make a difference if you made it easier for outsiders to learn about China and Chinese. You don't need to start a blog or a youtube channel. Just point out some existing ones which give foreigners a decent idea about China. Or maybe some movies which illustrate (aspects of) China pretty well and are still accessible to typical Westerners. No, it won't work for people on the street. I don't have a solution for that.
- 082349872349872 6y agoAnyone have recommendations for where to start browsing https://youku.com https://youku.com for someone with nearly nonexistent language skills? For instance, I still haven't run across a chinese lockdown clip equivalent to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BEPFJh4A9M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BEPFJh4A9M yet I'm sure they must exist. Zweig's The World of Yesterday captures his views on being caught in similar situations, in early and mid-twentieth century europe. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24235877 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24235877 Throwaway_ruok, try to stay positive and take care of your family and friends. It's better to worry about things we have a great deal of influence over than those which we do not. 涸辙之鲋 塞翁失马 相濡以沫 积少成多?
- quietbritishjim 6y ago> I vaguely know that China contains a bunch of peoples and languages, regions with distinct cultures. But very little beyond that. I know this is fairly off topic but I found Prisoners of Geography [1] a very accessible introduction to geopolitics. (Of course it only represents one point of view, so looking at some other sources would be advisable.) It has one chapter for each large country or continent, including one for China. I'm tempted to put a one-sentence summary of that chapter here based on my half-remembered interpretation of it, but I think that would do more harm than good! [1] https://www.amazon.co.uk/Prisoners-Geography-Everything-Global-Politics/dp/1783961414 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Prisoners-Geography-Everything-Glob...
- Erwin 6y agoOn a more fun note, what is considered "Chinese" varies greatly by language (it's Greek in English): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_to_me#In_other_languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_to_me#In_other_languages In German, wikipedia claims "Polish in reverse" (though there's no other reference to that phrase on the Net, other than Reverse Polish Notation).
- karl42 6y agoAs a German, I've never heard "Polish in reverse", but "Spanish" works exactly that way ("Das kommt mir spanisch vor").
- wink 6y ago"Can't you understand what I'm saying? Am I speaking Chinese?" is pretty common as well.
- 082349872349872 6y agohttps://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1024 https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1024 has a directed graph.
- b0rsuk 6y agoI'm not surprised at all - it turns out Polish is one of the hardest languages to master. Norman Davies, a British historian fascinated by Central/Eastern Europe with a particular interest in Poland makes a couple of errors per several minutes of speech. Typically with noun genders. https://donald-static.s3.amazonaws.com/userimage/8cabf28c9709408fac2b9678d16b9dba.png https://donald-static.s3.amazonaws.com/userimage/8cabf28c970...