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> I think the manufacturer of your son's ball mixed in a Swedish word I found this super unconvincing at first. But they just kept goin. And going. And going.

> I think the manufacturer of your son's ball mixed in a Swedish word I found this super unconvincing at first. But they just kept goin. And going. And going. And the more I scrolled and the more I read, I started to think that they are right. And by the end I was fully convinced! Well worth reading. Thanks for sharing, OP!

kelnos 3y ago
Same! But then I read another answer further down that suggested it might be a Chinese word for axe, romanized in pinyin as yuè (for 鉞). Since the knock-off ball seems to have been made by a Chinese company, that seems more likely to me. That doesn't explain the weird u-boat thing, though.
- rob74 3y ago
  The "weird u-boat thing" further supports the Swedish hypothesis - "ubåt" or "undervattensbåt" are the standard terms for a submarine in Swedish (https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ub%C3%A5t https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ub%C3%A5t). The word "U-boat" is also used in English, however with the meaning "German submarine during WW1/2" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U-boat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U-boat) - but I don't think it's widespread enough (or appropriate) to be eligible for a toy.
  - berkes 3y ago
    Why English doesn't just call them "under-sea-boat" or "underwater-boat" has been a mistery to me for a long time. (as a Dutch, we call 'em Onderzeeboot or Onderzeeër - underseaboat, undersea-er). It's so much simpler than combining latin/scientific terms.
    - evilduck 3y ago
      Submarine basically transliterates to “undersea-er”. In a hodge podge language like English it doesn’t seem strange.
- ajuc 3y ago
  Chinese probably stole the cliparts without understanding where they come from and what needs to be adapted. Similar thing happened with "Polish dancing cow meme song" being used in some singing toys. The song is very vulgar and talks about hard drugs withdrawal, depression and suicide. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huZOgoihHVk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huZOgoihHVk
- ximeng 3y ago
  That’s an uncommon historical term for axe. A Google image search will show it doesn’t resemble the picture. There are more common characters with pinyin starting with y, like 月 for “moon”.
- porphyra 3y ago
  That is completely unlikely. As ximeng says, it's an archaic word for a special weapon, but also: * Most of the other letters on the ball work well in English but would not work well for Chinese words with pinyin * Children do not learn the alphabet by studying pinyin since pinyin only has a subset of letters. The initials in pinyin are: b, p, m, f, d, t, n, l, g, k, h, j, q, x, zh, ch, sh, r, z, c, s, w, and y. As you can see, there is no 'v'. Children in Chinese-speaking countries would still use English to learn their ABCs.
  - thaumasiotes 3y ago
    > As you can see, there is no 'v'. V also doesn't occur in any pinyin finals, but Chinese people commonly use it in their own pinyin spelling anyway because it is used in pinyin input methods as a substitute for ü, which is harder to type. Your list of initials left out the zero initial, which is important for words like 饿 or 安. As I've commented elsewhere, though "y" is a pinyin initial, "yue" does not feature it - "yue" is just the spelling of the final -üe when no initial is present. This leads into a question I've had for a while - I know that some Chinese people do not distinguish between y- initials and r- initials. I'd like to know whether that lack of distinction somehow extends to every pinyin syllable that might be spelled with a "y", even if the "y" is normally not viewed as being part of an initial, as in "yu" / "yin" / "yue". Do you know the answer? (I know that the lack of distinction occurs for 人 even though it does not rhyme with any syllable that might theoretically begin with y- in Mandarin. But that's not quite the same as what I'm asking about; 人 is definitely not a syllable with a zero initial. I would be interested in how the lack of distinction plays out for a syllable like "ri", where it's not obvious to me how the vowel would accommodate changing the initial to y-.)
    - ximeng 3y ago
      In Cantonese pronunciation ru often becomes jyu (in Jyutping), ri becomes jat, similarly for rang, rong, ran. I guess this same shift is likely reflected in mandarin pronunciations in some areas. This suggests that this is a general change. I think the relevant wikipedia article might be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Chinese_phonology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Chinese_phonology, which should reflect the shift from the earlier Cantonese-like pronunciation (yu style) to modern Mandarin-like (ru style), but it's a bit beyond me. Maybe this "The class of EMC palatals is lost, with palatal sibilants becoming retroflex sibilants and the palatal nasal becoming a new phoneme /ɻ/." is relevant? More discussion here: https://www.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/orf800/question_about_ancientmiddle_chinese_and_mandarin/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/orf800/questio... and at https://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/phorum/read.php?16,126118 https://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/phorum/read.php?16,126118 which suggests "If a word is pronounced "y-" in Cantonese but "r-" in Mandarin, it's reconstructed as "gn", after Hokkien".

kelnos 3y ago

Same! But then I read another answer further down that suggested it might be a Chinese word for axe, romanized in pinyin as yuè (for 鉞). Since the knock-off ball seems to have been made by a Chinese company, that seems more likely to me. That doesn't explain the weird u-boat thing, though.

rob74 3y ago
The "weird u-boat thing" further supports the Swedish hypothesis - "ubåt" or "undervattensbåt" are the standard terms for a submarine in Swedish (https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ub%C3%A5t https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ub%C3%A5t). The word "U-boat" is also used in English, however with the meaning "German submarine during WW1/2" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U-boat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U-boat) - but I don't think it's widespread enough (or appropriate) to be eligible for a toy.
- berkes 3y ago
  Why English doesn't just call them "under-sea-boat" or "underwater-boat" has been a mistery to me for a long time. (as a Dutch, we call 'em Onderzeeboot or Onderzeeër - underseaboat, undersea-er). It's so much simpler than combining latin/scientific terms.
  - evilduck 3y ago
    Submarine basically transliterates to “undersea-er”. In a hodge podge language like English it doesn’t seem strange.
ajuc 3y ago
Chinese probably stole the cliparts without understanding where they come from and what needs to be adapted. Similar thing happened with "Polish dancing cow meme song" being used in some singing toys. The song is very vulgar and talks about hard drugs withdrawal, depression and suicide. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huZOgoihHVk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huZOgoihHVk
ximeng 3y ago
That’s an uncommon historical term for axe. A Google image search will show it doesn’t resemble the picture. There are more common characters with pinyin starting with y, like 月 for “moon”.
porphyra 3y ago
That is completely unlikely. As ximeng says, it's an archaic word for a special weapon, but also: * Most of the other letters on the ball work well in English but would not work well for Chinese words with pinyin * Children do not learn the alphabet by studying pinyin since pinyin only has a subset of letters. The initials in pinyin are: b, p, m, f, d, t, n, l, g, k, h, j, q, x, zh, ch, sh, r, z, c, s, w, and y. As you can see, there is no 'v'. Children in Chinese-speaking countries would still use English to learn their ABCs.
- thaumasiotes 3y ago
  > As you can see, there is no 'v'. V also doesn't occur in any pinyin finals, but Chinese people commonly use it in their own pinyin spelling anyway because it is used in pinyin input methods as a substitute for ü, which is harder to type. Your list of initials left out the zero initial, which is important for words like 饿 or 安. As I've commented elsewhere, though "y" is a pinyin initial, "yue" does not feature it - "yue" is just the spelling of the final -üe when no initial is present. This leads into a question I've had for a while - I know that some Chinese people do not distinguish between y- initials and r- initials. I'd like to know whether that lack of distinction somehow extends to every pinyin syllable that might be spelled with a "y", even if the "y" is normally not viewed as being part of an initial, as in "yu" / "yin" / "yue". Do you know the answer? (I know that the lack of distinction occurs for 人 even though it does not rhyme with any syllable that might theoretically begin with y- in Mandarin. But that's not quite the same as what I'm asking about; 人 is definitely not a syllable with a zero initial. I would be interested in how the lack of distinction plays out for a syllable like "ri", where it's not obvious to me how the vowel would accommodate changing the initial to y-.)
  - ximeng 3y ago
    In Cantonese pronunciation ru often becomes jyu (in Jyutping), ri becomes jat, similarly for rang, rong, ran. I guess this same shift is likely reflected in mandarin pronunciations in some areas. This suggests that this is a general change. I think the relevant wikipedia article might be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Chinese_phonology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Chinese_phonology, which should reflect the shift from the earlier Cantonese-like pronunciation (yu style) to modern Mandarin-like (ru style), but it's a bit beyond me. Maybe this "The class of EMC palatals is lost, with palatal sibilants becoming retroflex sibilants and the palatal nasal becoming a new phoneme /ɻ/." is relevant? More discussion here: https://www.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/orf800/question_about_ancientmiddle_chinese_and_mandarin/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/orf800/questio... and at https://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/phorum/read.php?16,126118 https://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/phorum/read.php?16,126118 which suggests "If a word is pronounced "y-" in Cantonese but "r-" in Mandarin, it's reconstructed as "gn", after Hokkien".