I think you know Toshiba is Japanese company. But my Toshiba is made in China.
'Toshiba' was written in Chinese characters. We Japanese think it's because Toshiba is a Japanese company since Japanese use 2000 Chinese characters.
But I think people will learn to think at a glance of 'Toshiba Co, ltd. Made in China' that 'Toshiba' was written in Chinese characters because it's a Chinese company naturally.
As a matter of fact, right now many office jobs as accounting, etc are transmitted electronically to China and many Chinese people are transacting tens of Japanese office work in China.
They will be forming the United States of East Asia spontaneously.
Most non-Asians cannot distinguish written Japanese from written Chinese anyways, but Toshiba does not sound even remotely like a Chinese name. Of course, never underestimate (or overestimate, for that matter) the stupidity of the average American :P
ReplyDeleteIt's only Taiwanese that use original form of very complicated Chinese characters. China and Japan, both use simplified characters but in different forms. But basically it's not difficult for all East Asian to guess the meaning of anyway Chinese characters.
ReplyDeleteAs you say pronunciation is very different. But when it comes to especially business transactions, they claim that it's not difficult :P
Even in the writing, those characters that are uniquely Japanese are extremely distinctive. The shapes used in some of the Japanese-only characters are simply not used in forming Chinese characters. の is incredibly ubiquitous in Japanese writing and very obviously unique to the Japanese system - the Chinese do not have any characters that I can think of off the top of my head that use a circular shape like that. Circles don't happen in Chinese writing, they do in Japanese writing. That's the trivial way for me to distinguish the two, anyways.
ReplyDeleteHow strange I can find one of the most common Japanese postpositions!
ReplyDeleteBut originally の[no] is a abbreviate form of Chinese characters 乃 [shi]. Likewise all Japanese proper characters are derived directly from Chinese characters. あ[a] is from 安[an], い[i] is from 以[i], etc. etc..
Usually Chinese characters have several pronunciations. On the other hands, Japanese characters only stand for one phonetic sound :D
I started learning English at age 21 with fullest swing under the premise of complete denial of Japanese language. As you noticed Japanese language is too complicated and I thought there's no universal value and still I think so.
ReplyDeleteI learned English as if I were a mad person. For example I kept on listening to English broadcasting 24 hours 6 months at around age 23.
It was only because she was Japanese the reason I was unable to get married to my legendary woman. She engaged in Tokyo and I left for America. When we were both in 4th grade in University. It was my saddest moment in my life.
I am so sorry you are still sad. Lost love is never forgetable .Hold your memories close and reach out your arms to have a chance at new ones. Life does go on my dear .And it sucks being alone.I know all about that subject.
ReplyDeleteAll sad stories were about at my age 25 to 30. Now I'm 46, I have a number of girlfriends. Sad memories were gone somewhere.
ReplyDeleteI want you happy my dear .Glad you have girl friends honey .It's hard enough in life without being alone. LOl ,Keep them memories in your secret garden .And if you need me ,I'll be here for you my friend.
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