um i dunno, i guess i found it a bit silly to say things like "each character is a collection of drawings that can carry meanings all their own" or say that we can't know why some characters have certain connotations. i'm a bit skeptical that anyone whose native language is chinese is treating these brand names as anything but transliterations. i mean, they're reading 宝马 not as the chinese characters TREASURE HORSE but mostly just as a sound... it's a transliteration.... the characters have connotations but i think they're also common characters when transliterating foreign words. just like nobody is reading 奥巴马 as "secret tail horse."
if 耐克 NIKE means something in chinese, why does 希尔顿 hilton "mean nothing"? they both MEAN something but neither really mean anything. like 家乐福 carrefour is three common characters with distinct meanings or whatever but in everyday use they're serving a phonetic purpose and just work as a transliteration. they don't become a chinese word because they're written with chinese characters that have a meaning-- they use those ones because they're common characters for transliterations and will announce that the name is a transliteration of a foreign word. i guess it's different when it comes to shampoo names or whatever.......
― dylannn, Saturday, 12 November 2011 15:48 (twelve years ago) link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brand_blunder#Urban_legends
idk as someone who is nearly a native speaker I do think that they have to choose the transliteration carefully. I haven't talked abou this topic specifically with any chinese people but it's crazy to think that companies choose their names willy nilly out of a hat.
and carrefour, 家乐福, well I think that's pretty good! "home happy fortune" - right, they sell housewares, they're a big box department store, makes sense. much better than 假了负, for example.
― ASPIE Rocky (dayo), Saturday, 12 November 2011 16:02 (twelve years ago) link
and I'm pretty sure obama had no hand in choosing his transliteration - a corporation on the other hand, would definitely want to invest money in choosing a good name!
― ASPIE Rocky (dayo), Saturday, 12 November 2011 16:03 (twelve years ago) link
this is a culture that worships the number 8 because it sounds like prosperity, and hates the number 4 because it sounds like death - homophones are at the root of a lot of chinese jokes!
― ASPIE Rocky (dayo), Saturday, 12 November 2011 16:04 (twelve years ago) link
right right but i also think part of 家乐福 is that it reads like a transliteration, not a chinese word. i guess it was just kind of overstating things, i guess. i just wanted to riff on it too. sorry.
― dylannn, Saturday, 12 November 2011 16:13 (twelve years ago) link
http://data.007gzs.com/upload_files/3/G/GD/gdDTq31.jpg
maybe kfc would be less successful if they had gone with this earlier transliteration
― dylannn, Saturday, 12 November 2011 16:14 (twelve years ago) link
lol
yeah, I mean 家乐福 is definitely a transliteration but the characters were chosen pretty carefully I think. I do think that chinese choose names differently than amurricans - to name a thing is to exert power over it etc. etc. but the underlying principles are kind of different?
like I knew a lot of women in HK who were have like 宝 and 贵 and 玉 and 珍 in their names - you know, characters denoting fortune, treasure, jade. precious metals. and a guy is probably more likely to have other kinds of characters in his name, like 国 or 正 or something. or if you have clever parents they might name you after a 成语. like thought goes into what the names mean, too, whereas in amurrica you might just say "jada sounds cool" or "quincy is cool name" idk.
so yeah, I think it is interesting to see how foreign companies choose their chinese names - some of them go for the pure transliteration like hilton, some of them go for a transliteration w/ meaning in chinese, some of them go for a completely chinese one. I'd have to ask some more of my chinese friends if they notice things like this or if they pay attention to it.
and yeah those introductory explanations from the nyt article do sound like they come from a "teach yourself chinese in 5 minutes!" book but they are still kind of true! traditional chinese characters oftentimes are easier to remember than their simplified counterparts because you can make stories about the radicals. you still can, with a lot of simplified characters. like 捉, makes sense cause you can catch something by binding its feet and hands. my favorite is 噩, for a while I couldn't even stand to look at it - so evil. four mouths around the emperor - eunuchs whispering lies.
sometimes the radical is just a sound-loan, but a lot of times the radicals do contribute meanings.
I'm probably just really sensitive to this kind of stuff since I'm picking up the written language as a newbie, it's probably not ob
― ASPIE Rocky (dayo), Saturday, 12 November 2011 18:21 (twelve years ago) link
but yeah, a native chinese learner is probably not as sensitive to the little 'stories' a character can sometimes tell. just like how an english speaker may not realize breakfast comes from breaking a fast, or disintegrate is literally dis-integrate, or coincidence comes from co-incident!
― ASPIE Rocky (dayo), Saturday, 12 November 2011 18:26 (twelve years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uNWzzt-n3s
― max, Saturday, 12 November 2011 20:29 (twelve years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uNWzzt-n3s&feature=player_embedded
― The Green Path of Hope is formed (nakhchivan), Saturday, 12 November 2011 20:32 (twelve years ago) link
― ASPIE Rocky (dayo), Saturday, 12 November 2011 20:34 (twelve years ago) link
i've been in hong kong the last week and yesterday we crossed the border at lo wu into shenzhen. it was so incredible how in one 10 minute train journey the atmosphere and the people change so much. we only got to spend a few hours so we wandered around being pestered by "sale's managers" from the nearby shopping center. kinda annoyed i didn't get to see more.
― tpp, Sunday, 13 November 2011 06:06 (twelve years ago) link
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/c/ccs1ic?med=1;sort=ccs1ic_id;type=boolean;view=thumbnail;rgn1=ic_all;q1=ccs1ic
― ASPIE Rocky (dayo), Sunday, 13 November 2011 13:22 (twelve years ago) link
yeh it is literally, literally, night and day, the passage between hk and shenzhen
― ASPIE Rocky (dayo), Sunday, 13 November 2011 13:23 (twelve years ago) link
whenever I made that crossing it always felt like 'coming home' and 'civilization' idk weird feeling to have about a place you've lived in for only a few years
i never know how appropriate it is to ask these sorts of questions in the middle of threads or whatever and when i should just email but
yo dayo, are you still in hong kong?
― dylannn, Sunday, 13 November 2011 13:56 (twelve years ago) link
no I came back to the states this past summer
but if you need any pointers lmk also there is at least one ilxor still in hk
― ASPIE Rocky (dayo), Sunday, 13 November 2011 14:02 (twelve years ago) link
one of the coolest ilxors ever btw
― ASPIE Rocky (dayo), Sunday, 13 November 2011 14:04 (twelve years ago) link
okay!
― dylannn, Sunday, 13 November 2011 14:25 (twelve years ago) link
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/07/world/asia/murong-xuecun-pushes-censorship-limits-in-china.html?_r=2
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/11/china-gigantic/
― goole, Monday, 14 November 2011 20:33 (twelve years ago) link
AWESOME
― ASPIE Rocky (dayo), Monday, 14 November 2011 20:39 (twelve years ago) link
"If you look at China, they don't have food stamps. They don't have the modern welfare state, and China's growing. And so what I would do is look at the programs that LBJ gave us with the Great Society and they'd be gone," - Michele Bachmann
― max, Monday, 14 November 2011 23:27 (twelve years ago) link
"If you look at China, they don't have food stamps. They don't have the modern welfare state, and China's building enormous patterns in remote mountain plateaux. And so what I would do is look at the programs that LBJ gave us with the Great Society and they'd be gone," - Michele Bachmann
― max, Monday, 14 November 2011 23:28 (twelve years ago) link
pronounced "plat-ooks"
― goole, Monday, 14 November 2011 23:29 (twelve years ago) link
for once the folx at slashdot provide some cool/helpful stuff
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2525304&cid=38054096
― ASPIE Rocky (dayo), Tuesday, 15 November 2011 02:10 (twelve years ago) link
First comment suggests a relation between the desert project and a map of Washington, D.C....
http://gizmodo.com/5859081/why-is-china-building-these-gigantic-structures-in-the-middle-of-the-desert
― Tower Feist (Eazy), Tuesday, 15 November 2011 06:49 (twelve years ago) link
And then all the other comments suggest it's a wind farm...
― Tower Feist (Eazy), Tuesday, 15 November 2011 06:51 (twelve years ago) link
lol uh that is truther stuff right there xp
― ASPIE Rocky (dayo), Tuesday, 15 November 2011 12:28 (twelve years ago) link
if you thought walking to school uphill both ways in the snow was bad
http://www.chinahush.com/2011/11/14/treacherous-road-to-school/
― dayo, Tuesday, 15 November 2011 13:05 (twelve years ago) link
also huge LOLs
http://shanghaiist.com/2011/11/15/breaking_vladimir_putin_winner_of_t.php
― dayo, Tuesday, 15 November 2011 13:20 (twelve years ago) link
http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMzIwNjM2NDc2.html
― dylannn, Tuesday, 15 November 2011 14:23 (twelve years ago) link
― max, Monday, November 14, 2011 11:28 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark
loool
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, 15 November 2011 18:18 (twelve years ago) link
I'm just gonna post the NYT take on the confucius peace prize because it's so lol
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/16/world/asia/chinas-confucius-prize-awarded-to-vladimir-putin.html
“Those wars were righteous wars,” Qiao Damo, the self-described co-founder and president of the Confucius Peace Prize committee, said in a telephone interview. “Mr. Putin fought for the unification of his country.”
“His iron hand and toughness revealed in this war impressed the Russians a lot, and he was regarded to be capable of bringing safety and stability to Russia,” read an English version of the committee’s statement. “He became the anti-terrorist No. 1 and the national hero.”
The award, co-sponsored this year by Moutai, a liquor company
― dayo, Tuesday, 15 November 2011 20:55 (twelve years ago) link
yeah hey dylannn i'm here. happy to help out or meet up or whatever. let me know. im not that cool but im pretty cool. if you're here before december 4th (i think) this is definitely worth checking out.
― rent, Wednesday, 16 November 2011 23:55 (twelve years ago) link
http://shanghaiist.com/2011/11/17/video_of_tibetan_self-immolation_fr.php
haven't watched this yet, dunno if I'm going to
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/8893337/Chinese-man-sets-himself-on-fire-in-Tiananmen-Square.html
1984, forrealz
― dayo, Thursday, 17 November 2011 12:28 (twelve years ago) link
oh hey, okay dude!! thanks for the offer. aware of yang zhichao as performance artist but hadn't heard of the notebooks project. would like to check it out. has yang zhichao staged a selfimmolation yet?
actually, i will say this right now, if anyone is ever in northern china, feel free to stop by and visit :))))
― dylannn, Thursday, 17 November 2011 15:31 (twelve years ago) link
http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/rBGpV6bjdhU/
― dylannn, Thursday, 17 November 2011 15:36 (twelve years ago) link
http://shanghaiist.com/2011/11/18/google_maps_mystery_structures_actu.php
― dayo, Friday, 18 November 2011 12:02 (twelve years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdJVASZknBg
http://the-diplomat.com/china-power/2011/11/18/reporting-on-china/
Fox Butterworth, the New York Times’ first post-Mao China correspondent, tells the story of a young woman who opened up to him (off the record) about the sex life of Deng Xiaoping’s China and wound up in a prison camp for embarrassing the country.
now I'm intrigued
my dad tried to explain to me that mao wasn't a sex-crazed peasant, that he was just 'curious'
― dayo, Friday, 18 November 2011 12:08 (twelve years ago) link
he lived up to the old kmt line about 共产共妻
actually, i know he had a few wives but never really heard much about mao's sex life.
― dylannn, Friday, 18 November 2011 14:09 (twelve years ago) link
heard mao had the pick of the litter of all the nubile young female peasants in the countryside, there have been books that go into this in more detail but you can never be sure how apocryphal the tales are or if they are really true
― dayo, Friday, 18 November 2011 15:32 (twelve years ago) link
What has lent Mr. Gingrich’s written and spoken work, or, as he calls it, his “teaching,” the casual semblance of being based on some plain-spoken substance, some rough-hewn horse sense, is that most of what he says has reached us in outline form, with topic points capitalized (the capitalization has been restrained in the more conventionally edited To Renew America) and systematically, if inappositely, numbered. There were “Seven key aspects” and “Nine vision-level principles” of “Personal Strength” (Pillar Two of American Civilization), there were “Five core principles” of “Quality as Defined by Deming” (Pillar Five), there were “Three Big Concepts” of “Entrepreneurial Free Enterprise” (Pillar Three). There were also, still under Pillar Three, “Five Enemies of Entrepreneurial Free Enterprise” (“Bureaucracy,” “Credentialing,” “Taxation,” “Litigation,” and “Regulation”), which would have been identical to Pillar Four’s “Seven welfare state cripplers of progress” had the latter not folded in “Centralization,” “Anti-progress Cultural Attitude,” and “Ignorance.”
― dayo, Friday, 18 November 2011 19:59 (twelve years ago) link
In Window of Opportunity, Mr. Gingrich advised us that “the great force changing our world is a synergism of essentially six parts,” and offered “five simple steps to a bold future.” On the health-care question, Mr. Gingrich posited “eight areas of necessary change.” On the issue of arms control, he saw “seven imperatives that will help the free world survive in the age of nuclear weapons.” Down a few paragraphs the seven imperatives gave way to “two initiatives,” then to “three broad strategic options for the next generation,” and finally, within the scan of the eye, to “six realistic goals which would increase our children’s chances of living in a world without nuclear war.”
― dayo, Friday, 18 November 2011 20:02 (twelve years ago) link
haha when I was reading that I was thinking the exact same thing
― max, Friday, 18 November 2011 20:03 (twelve years ago) link
newt gingrich really is a remarkable man
― dayo, Friday, 18 November 2011 20:06 (twelve years ago) link
i did always love how clearly mao outlined stuff
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Friday, 18 November 2011 20:25 (twelve years ago) link
newt gingrich's 'ten taxonomic precepts of sedition' will be required reading for ccp plants worldwide in 2k12
― The Triumph of the Will High (nakhchivan), Friday, 18 November 2011 20:34 (twelve years ago) link