3 ms·
Oh please. Look and see some example Mandarin and Cantonese words loaned to English. [1] They also have your Japanese examples in there. Want more counterexamp
by mkii 3y ago
Oh please. Look and see some example Mandarin and Cantonese words loaned to English. [1] They also have your Japanese examples in there.
Want more counterexamples? Probably literally every Italian food: spaghetti, pizza, ravioli...
To me, this is just more evidence for how strong this meme of Japanese uniqueness, coolness, "sugoi kawaii desune~~ ^-^" is. I'm not bashing people who think Japan is cool. But I do think it's weird how they can't recognize it's just a meme, to the point of fetishization.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_of_Chinese_origin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_of_Chine...
- hintymad 3y agoDid you notice that most of the words, if not all, are based on Cantonese. Hence I was careful to say "mainland Chinese". The early immigrants were mostly from Guangdong and Fujian. They didn't translate their words but to use phonics directly and I wish the mainland Chinese did the same. A good example could be the Japanese word katana。If it were from mainland Chinese, you'd bet the word would be "Chinese sword" instead of "jian" or "dao".