Funny Stuff Thread.... to loosen your day

[BMUFL]

Kanji use has been reduced in modern times. Many Japanese today can’t understand WW2 era letters because Kanji was a lot more commonly used even 70 years ago.

It's not just kanji, it's also the entire vocabulary being used.

For example, contrast a line taken from the Japanese declaration of war against United States and British Empire: "朕茲ニ米國及英國ニ對シテ戰ヲ宣ス", with its translation in modern Japanese (that I found on Japanese Wikipedia, so standard caveat applies): "私はここに米国と英国に対して戦争を行うことを宣言する". Notice the difference in vocabulary. And like I said, I could mechanically translate the original line into something actually resembling Classical Chinese: "朕茲對米國及英國宣戰", where as modern Japanese... not so much (in pseudo-Chinese form it would probably look like "私此処対米国及英国宣言戦争行事". Don't quote me on it though.).

This is because formal writing of that era was evolved from sōrōbun (候文, the original pseudo-Chinese, if you will), which looks like something like this: "新年之御慶目出度申納候" (Well, not exactly. What is printed out as computer-readable text is a lot more normalized than what was actually written out with a brush pen), which in turn was ultimately evolved from Classical Chinese.

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To bring it back to pseudo-Chinese, since it's an Internet meme, there really isn't a canonical form. Its resemblence to Chinese is dependent on the writer's familiarity with Chinese and its vocabulary. Sometimes there is actual unadulterated colloquial modern Chinese embedded in it (thanks, momio and Azur Lane). Can't post any example though, because that will get me turbo-banned from this forum (thanks again, momio and Azur Lane).

Make no mistake, this does not mean that modern Japanese people can understand modern Chinese or vice versa with just some simple modification. The languages have drifted too much for that. Hell, it doesn't even mean that modern Japanese people can understand Classical Chinese without some serious annotations and explainations... then again, the same thing could be said of modern Chinese people as well.

 

[A potato]

Not really. The US sanctioned Japan when Japan invaded the rest of China via an oil embargo because there were American business interests over there. That was the reason why Japan launched the Pearl Harbor attack.The British did work with the Japanese for a while, and the Germans had an alliance with the ROC prior to the Japanese invasion.

Alright but I saw on wikipedia that the UK supported Xinjiang's independence during the 1930s can you confirm? As well as supporting tibet's independence

 

[Temstar]

It's not just kanji, it's also the entire vocabulary being used.

For example, contrast a line taken from the Japanese declaration of war against United States and British Empire: "朕茲ニ米國及英國ニ對シテ戰ヲ宣ス", with its translation in modern Japanese (that I found on Japanese Wikipedia, so standard caveat applies): "私はここに米国と英国に対して戦争を行うことを宣言する". Notice the difference in vocabulary. And like I said, I could mechanically translate the original line into something actually resembling Classical Chinese: "朕茲對米國及英國宣戰", where as modern Japanese... not so much (in pseudo-Chinese form it would probably look like "私此処対米国及英国宣言戦争行事". Don't quote me on it though.).

This is because formal writing of that era was evolved from sōrōbun (候文, the original pseudo-Chinese, if you will), which looks like something like this: "新年之御慶目出度申納候" (Well, not exactly. What is printed out as computer-readable text is a lot more normalized than what was actually written out with a brush pen), which in turn was ultimately evolved from Classical Chinese.

---

To bring it back to pseudo-Chinese, since it's an Internet meme, there really isn't a canonical form. Its resemblence to Chinese is dependent on the writer's familiarity with Chinese and its vocabulary. Sometimes there is actual unadulterated colloquial modern Chinese embedded in it (thanks, momio and Azur Lane). Can't post any example though, because that will get me turbo-banned from this forum (thanks again, momio and Azur Lane).

Make no mistake, this does not mean that modern Japanese people can understand modern Chinese or vice versa with just some simple modification. The languages have drifted too much for that. Hell, it doesn't even mean that modern Japanese people can understand Classical Chinese without some serious annotations and explainations... then again, the same thing could be said of modern Chinese people as well.

Hmmm, still both "朕茲對米國及英國宣戰" and "私此処対米国及英国宣言戦争行事" are obvious at a glance to be declaration of war against US and UK to a Chinese speaker. The first case, it's even clear that the message was issued from the emperor thanks to "朕" due to how often you hear that word on TV in all the Qing history dramas.

But yes it's also true as time passes it will become harder to parse pseudo-Chinese out of Japanese thanks to all the phonetic loanwords. My auntie who lived for decades in Japan reckon it makes earning English easier if you know Japanese and vice visa and when she gave examples I thought get out of here they sound nothing like the original English. I also don't like it when the same things happen in Chinese such as 考拉 replacing 树袋熊 for koala. My biggest pet peeve for this is 鲁棒性 for robustness because I still thinks it reads like an euphemism for male masturbation.

 

[LawLeadsToPeace]

Alright but I saw on wikipedia that the UK supported Xinjiang's independence during the 1930s can you confirm? As well as supporting tibet's independence

The bloc known as the West comprises of multiple countries, not just the UK. You said the West was against China, and I implied that each Western country had their own policy towards China during that time. The West is not just the UK.

 

[A potato]

The bloc known as the West comprises of multiple countries, not just the UK. You said the West was against China, and I implied that each Western country had their own policy towards China during that time. The West is not just the UK

Alright thanks.

 

[ficker22]

It's not just kanji, it's also the entire vocabulary being used.

For example, contrast a line taken from the Japanese declaration of war against United States and British Empire: "朕茲ニ米國及英國ニ對シテ戰ヲ宣ス", with its translation in modern Japanese (that I found on Japanese Wikipedia, so standard caveat applies): "私はここに米国と英国に対して戦争を行うことを宣言する". Notice the difference in vocabulary. And like I said, I could mechanically translate the original line into something actually resembling Classical Chinese: "朕茲對米國及英國宣戰", where as modern Japanese... not so much (in pseudo-Chinese form it would probably look like "私此処対米国及英国宣言戦争行事". Don't quote me on it though.).

This is because formal writing of that era was evolved from sōrōbun (候文, the original pseudo-Chinese, if you will), which looks like something like this: "新年之御慶目出度申納候" (Well, not exactly. What is printed out as computer-readable text is a lot more normalized than what was actually written out with a brush pen), which in turn was ultimately evolved from Classical Chinese.

---

To bring it back to pseudo-Chinese, since it's an Internet meme, there really isn't a canonical form. Its resemblence to Chinese is dependent on the writer's familiarity with Chinese and its vocabulary. Sometimes there is actual unadulterated colloquial modern Chinese embedded in it (thanks, momio and Azur Lane). Can't post any example though, because that will get me turbo-banned from this forum (thanks again, momio and Azur Lane).

Make no mistake, this does not mean that modern Japanese people can understand modern Chinese or vice versa with just some simple modification. The languages have drifted too much for that. Hell, it doesn't even mean that modern Japanese people can understand Classical Chinese without some serious annotations and explainations... then again, the same thing could be said of modern Chinese people as well.

Bro Azur Lane is on a different level of sus, I get videos recommended on YT about it and the skins are Olalala :O

 

[BMUFL]

Hmmm, still both "朕茲對米國及英國宣戰" and "私此処対米国及英国宣言戦争行事" are obvious at a glance to be declaration of war against US and UK to a Chinese speaker. The first case, it's even clear that the message was issued from the emperor thanks to "朕" due to how often you hear that word on TV in all the Qing history dramas.

I mean, I have deliberatedly picked a sentence that is simple to parse for me because I am bad at kanbun kundoku or Classical Chinese in general. I am not an expert on it (hell, my Japanese-fu isn't even that good), nor do I claim as one. As such, my example my be deceptively simple. One is welcomed to try to do the same thing for the rest of rescript and see how quickly it can get out of hand. People pay good money to university to study this sort of thing (kanbun), after all.

Aside: if you knew any history about events leading up to the Pacific War, don't actually pay attention to the content of the rescript unless you want your blood pressure to rise.

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Bro Azur Lane is on a different level of sus, I get videos recommended on YT about it and the skins are Olalala :O

My dude, the whole reason why pseudo-Chinese is as mainstream as it is right now and not stuck in obscurity as part of that certain gay p*rn's appreciation community's jargon is because of Azur Lane. When the whole pseudo-Chinese thing was more popular, the corpus of text was mostly people horny posting on main (and a lot of that was about Azur Lane) on Tw*tter with it.

Tl;dr: it's all Azur Lane's fault.

 

[BoraTas]

First and foremost, that may not be the best source considering the person claims to be against China's totalitarian repression.

Secondly, I disagree. China's reputation was trashed since 1949. Western Europeans and Americans have mental panic attacks when they hear the word, "communism". In addition, prior to 2017, China's reputation was further c**ped upon. Did you forget about Liu Xiaobo, Tibetan independence, Chinese sweatshops with child labourers, Dalai Lama, FLG organ harvesting, "Made in China" junk, "Chinese copy and steal", and etc? These labels were ubiquitious. A person who identifies as mainland Chinese were constantly made fun of because of that. Why do you think there are still so many anti-China mainlanders just like the one you cited? Finally, just because you see a bunch of foreign tourists in China doesn't mean they like you. Look at Serpentza and ADVChina. Those guys were in China for a while. Yet they repeatedly piss on China as a whole. To be frank and extremely sharp, the thought of using tourism to boost one's image is prostitute-thinking. China's international reputation was never recoverable to begin with for the superior powers deemed the nation to be undesirable.

I'm personally ok with China being a strict with tourism and foreign entries. It forced China to focus on more complex industries to boost its growth and deceloping domestic talent. Tourism just offers the easy way out and stunts a nation's overall development. Japan is a really good example of this. They have become so dependent on tourism that they changed their culture and behavior to make themselves more tourist-friendly.

I can understand this argument. But I disagree. China's unpopularity is indeed an American-made phenomenon. Yet, China isn't even putting the effort to at least blunt the impact. Having friendly groups outside is important. Even peak China will be a fraction of world's economy and population. Therefore, it would obviously gain from popularity both in terms of security and prosperity. As I said before, if China was popular in Japan and Australia, these countries' US client governments would have a much harder time justifying their military spending increases during a global economic slowdown.

I think the Chinese government is aware of this too. It spends billions annually on soft power, failing to get any results. GT and CGTN are arguably the worst state media outlets in the world. At least among the countries you could show on the map. But successful examples are extant too. For example Genshin Impact has recruited more "Wumaos" than Chinese state media ever did.

I am not proposing here that China should become like Thailand. I am merely saying it shouldn't be this hard to visit and should market itself. You can find a lot of stories about how people were essentially stranded in China after the landing. Phones don't work without astronomical costs, cash is useless, your cards don't work, you have to download a bunch of Chinese apps to do anything,... Most types of tourism are good in multiple levels, and China has immense potential.

Note: I was going to send the original post to the world news thread. It'd better if this discussion is moved to there.

 

[vincent]

My biggest pet peeve for this is 鲁棒性 for robustness because I still thinks it reads like an euphemism for male masturbation.

I suggested 耐操, but my wife has an issue with that translation.

 

[Feima]

It's not just kanji, it's also the entire vocabulary being used.

For example, contrast a line taken from the Japanese declaration of war against United States and British Empire: "朕茲ニ米國及英國ニ對シテ戰ヲ宣ス", with its translation in modern Japanese (that I found on Japanese Wikipedia, so standard caveat applies): "私はここに米国と英国に対して戦争を行うことを宣言する". Notice the difference in vocabulary. And like I said, I could mechanically translate the original line into something actually resembling Classical Chinese: "朕茲對米國及英國宣戰", where as modern Japanese... not so much (in pseudo-Chinese form it would probably look like "私此処対米国及英国宣言戦争行事". Don't quote me on it though.).

This is because formal writing of that era was evolved from sōrōbun (候文, the original pseudo-Chinese, if you will), which looks like something like this: "新年之御慶目出度申納候" (Well, not exactly. What is printed out as computer-readable text is a lot more normalized than what was actually written out with a brush pen), which in turn was ultimately evolved from Classical Chinese.

Going further back, Togo's exhortation at the battle of Tsushima reads exactly Chinese: 皇国兴废在此一战，各员一层奋励努力