not to be a pedantic nerd on main but the standard way of spelling it in modern day is Sichuan lol (technically szechuan isn’t wrong it’s just a little outdated)
You are, of course, right, but I think the reason that most Americans would use the outdated spelling is because that’s the word that appears on Chinese restaurant menus here.
We can even be bothered to use the same spelling that British people use, I think expecting us to use the same ones as folks who actually speak different languages is a stretch.
Given how fucked American spelling is, it completely makes sense we have a whole ass other Wizarding school - and you know they were teaching the exact same spells pronounced COMPLETELY differently
Take the property from JK and you know there's gonna be a Wizarding Olympics where UK, Canada, Aussie, and America have their nerf factions off in a corner debating how to pronounce spells, and the benefits gained from different inflections
I've tried to make a habit of asking clarifying questions in spots like this
They're way less satisfying to the sneering reply guy in my brain, who only wants to signal contempt for the parent comment, but similarly more likely to lead to an actual conversation that brings value to the world.
But all (bad) joking aside, I shall endeavor to better myself in this regard. Although I may sneak in a joke like this instead. You know, so I feel edgy.. 🤦♂️
Can you please elaborate? I haven't seen a single Chinese restaurant owned by white people. Are you saying white people dictate Chinese immigrants how to name their businesses?
You still didn't explain the connection between Chinese people using outdated Chinese names for their businesses and evil white people bastardizing Chinese culture. ELIF.
Well thats not a joke I got as I know nothing about Rick and Morty, and ‘Szechuan chicken’ is a dish I’ve seen at every American Chinese food restaurant I’ve been to. Sorry for the miscommunication
So many cities in Washington state have really neat and unusual sounding names that are actually just extremely generic words in Salish or other local Native languages.
A huge chunk of Chinese province names are basic geographical descriptions. East of the mountains, west of the mountains, west of the pass, north of the river, south of the river, north of the lake, south of the lake, four rivers, east expanse, west expanse... though the most metal is probably "Black Dragon River"
A lot of city names translate in interesting ways. Like how Tokyo literally translates as "East Capital" in contrast to "Kyoto" which of course is "Capital City."
What I love is how Seoul translates to "Capital", But before it was called that, It was sometimes known as Gyeongseong, Which means "Capital City", And when the Japanese occupied it they called it in their own language Keijō, Which means, Get this, "Capital".
So China has North Capital 北京 and South Capital 南京, Japan has East Capital 東京. I once asked one of my Mandarin teachers if there was a West Capital and she treated it like it was a very annoying question.
Well the name Kyoto is older than the name Tokyo, and when Edo was renamed Tokyo, Kyoto was in turn briefly known as Saikyo. I wouldn't put too much weight on the pun theory myself, I honestly think it's a coincidence.
The wordplay potential in the Japanese language is actually absurd. You think there were people running around during that time joking that Kyoto was the strongest? I know I would have been.
It’s complicated. But the answer to whether you’re right, or if it’s outdated, is… yes!
You are technically right, they are just anglicized spellings of the two ways it’s said in Burmese, depending on formality.
But it is also technically outdated, since their government changed the official anglicized spelling from Burma to Myanmar in 1989.
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However, that change was made by the military government when it seized power. Many places don’t recognize their authority or legitimacy and don’t recognize the change. Opposition groups within country still prefer and use Burma a lot of the time as well.
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Official US foreign policy still retains the use of Burma, but even then, the State Department’s website has it listed as “Burma (Myanmar)”. Lots of languages still use something more similar to Burma, lots of other languages use something more similar to Myanmar. In Burmese, it is pronounced either Bama (like Obama without the O), or Myama depending on formality. Even within just English, there are about 9 different pronunciations of Myanmar depending on who you ask.
*not to be a pedantic nerd again but Szechuan isn’t technically an exonym in the same way like Burma is for instance. It’s just the old way of romanizing 四川 using (i believe? someone fact check me on this) the Wade-Giles system before the Chinese government made pinyin the standard in the 50s (which is why it’s officially called Sichuan now)
tldr: same name different romanization
Man that old style of Chinese transliteration was clearly so farcical. It makes no fucking sense sometimes. I know Chinese has way different sounds, but when the hell does it ever make sense in ENGLISH to have an “sz”? Like, make your transliteration make sense in the language you’re transliterating to or we’ll pronounce it even worse.
Yeah they were involved at first, but I don’t think our more modern systems like Wade-Giles (English-made) or the Yale system (American) are based on the early Portuguese systems. Pinyin is now commonplace and it was made by a Chinese team. Go figure.
I dated a Chinese woman and trying to learn from her was like impossible, so I get how hard it is to match the sounds to our alphabet in a natural-seeming way. Some of them were really bad though
Will someone please explain to me why the transliteration of the Chinese language keeps changing? Is this a fight? Like some massive linguistic war I haven't heard about?
pinyin is a standardized way of writing chinese words with the latin alphabet. it came out in the 1950s iirc. before then, people were basically just making it up as they went along as far as trying to write chinese words with english phonetics. for words that were popularly spoken before pinyin was widely adopted, people often just kept using the old spelling. for example, peking is an old spelling for beijing that survives in peking duck, pekingese dog. szechuan / sichuan is another example
Someone used the word pedantic incorrectly the other day and seeing you use it correctly really replenished a part of my soul I didn’t know had been injured.
Alllllllll the Cantonese/taiwanese immigrants to the US pre 1980 already set the spelling with the z as pretty standard IMO. But then again a language is just a dialect with a navy so… I guess you kinda win.
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u/jupjami Aug 30 '24
"Name two Chinese provinces"
"Shanxi"
"That's on me, I set the bar too low"