Chinese translations that seem to make no sense but actually do

Screenshot_2018-04-13-02-46-50
This is from Wang’s start vs. Kt Wiz. 台中’s mayor, decked out in Dino’s’s Jersey, threw out the first pitch, along with Changwon’s mayor.

Notice they decided to sound out Taichung instead of using the Hanja root.

For mayor’s name, 林佳龍 they translated it directly from the Hanja, Im Ga Yong.

The top line is only a noun so it’s translated word-for-word using the Hanja root. 開球 is shigu. I’m guessing that’s 始球.

Those South Koreans, God forbid someone’s last name starts with an ㄹ…

Wonder why they romanize them as Lee or Lim.

But this fat dude disagrees with you.
http://a.espncdn.com/combiner/i?img=/i/headshots/mlb/players/full/32582.png&w=350&h=254

Ir looks like they still put up the entire Kanji name up on the screen. So just think of the bajillion katakanas as forming a new on reading. Since multiple on readings were borrowed from different periods anyway, (you got go-on, kan-on, etc.), the baseball players’ names are just on readings borrowed from modern Mandarin.

I was randomly thinking about why geometry was named 幾何, and realized 幾何 (ki-hô in Taigi) is a phonetic translation for “geo”.

2 Likes

Well yeah, and also it doesn’t come from “Switzerland”. It comes from Suisse, which is Switzerland’s name in French.

Ever wondered why Belgium is called 比利時? I mean where did the 時 came from?

I was watching two dudes hitchhiking across Taiwan on youtube, one of them is Belgium. I thought about it a little and this is my guess.

Apparently a scholar official from Shanxi province named Xu Ji-yu (徐繼畬) codified the translation in 1849 in his book Yinhuan Jilue (瀛寰志略). He made the translation while he was the governor of Fujian, and his information came from a Dutch American, Rev. David Abeel. Abeel spent most of his time in Amoy, which spoke mainly Holo.

image

In Dutch Belgium is België, which in IPA is [ˈbǝlɣjǝ]. 時 in Middle Chinese is /dzyi/, this is still evident in Japanese’ word jikan (時間). Many characters that should be read the same, such as 持 is pronounced as tshî in Taigi.

I’m guessing the intended pronunciation for 比利時 was /pe-li-ji/.

Prior to Xu’s translation, there were many other translations of Belgium.

Such as Peh-lí-ji̍p-kik (百尔入革) in Kunyu Wanguo Quantu (坤輿萬國国全圖) made in 1601 by Matteo Ricci:
image

And Pak-gī (北義) in Haiguo tuji (海國圖志) made in 1842 by Lin Cexu (the dude that instigated the Opium war), a Scottish geographer named Hugh Murray, and Wei Yuan who published the work because Lin lost the war and was exiled.

Peh-lí-ji̍p-kik is closer to French La Belgique [bɛlʒik]. Pak-gī is closer to Dutch [ˈbǝlɣjǝ]

3 Likes

Something tells me @hansioux missed his true calling. :sunglasses:

2 Likes

professional web-surfer? or pro-procrastinator?

Don’t pretend garlic…linguist, of course! :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

1 Like

Yeah, I only realized my interest in linguistics when I’m already 30… I wish I had taken a linguistic class back in school.

1 Like

It’s never too late (until it really is).

1 Like
2 Likes

In German it’s Litauen, also closer to litaowan. Maybe the question should be why the name was butchered in English?

Or maybe the Swedes use the Germany pronounciation?

In Lithuanian it is Lietuva [lʲɪɛtʊˈvɐ]

2 Likes

þ (/θ/) was already present in Proto-Germanic, even though both þ and đ (/ð/) were derived from dʰ and t in Proto-Indo-European. So English actually kept the sound, as well as the letter þ, where German and Dutch lost it, and have it reverted back to /d/ or /tʰ/. It’s tragic that the letter þ was lost after the invention of the printing press. Oþerwise we wouldn’t have all þese confusion around the pronunciation for th.

3 Likes

Just realized this one a couple of days ago, and saw someone already shared this fact by using the Cantonese reading back in 2011.

杯葛 is a phonetic translation of boycott. It makes perfect sense because in Taigi 杯葛 is pronounced as pue-kat, p is the unaspirated voiceless bilabial plosive, standing in for the voiced b, and k is the unaspirated voiceless velar plosive, standing in for the aspired kʰ.

2 Likes

I have came across this before, but forgot, and just came across it again today.

Taiwanese people do love their 高麗菜 (cabbage) but why are they called ko-lē-tshài when cabbage is native to Europe and was domesticated there as well?

Well, it came from the Dutch word kool, which is also the cole part of coleslaw. It’s either a remnant of Dutch Formosa or retranslated a Dutch word from Japanese, since none of the other parts of China refers to cabbage this way as far as I know. It

2 Likes

Most locals say it’s because it comes from Korea, but I guess that’s a false etymology?

It’s absolutely a false etymology.

Cabbage in Japanese is just キャベツ (cabbage) now, so maybe it is a Dutch Formosa thing. When the Dutch introduced it to Japan, it was once recorded as オランダナ (Holland veggie), but prior to 1945, it was frequently referred to as かんらん (甘藍 from Chinese) or just キャベツ (cabbage).

甘藍 in Chinese could probably be a translation. If it is, it mostly likely was translated to Middle Chinese since it appeared pretty early. I just can’t figure out from what. Kam-nâ? Kam-lâm? Doesn’t ring a bell…

It was capitata in Latin, caboche in Old French, cavolo in Italian, col repollo in Spanish… Nothing sounds like 甘藍 at all.

1 Like

I guess I’d kind of assumed that, because the only cabbage I saw in Korea was 大白菜.

1 Like