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This is why the general public hate leftists.
They didn’t steal their culture from China any more than America stole ours from the UK. They’re the descendants of Chinese people who killed the majority of the people who already lived there
Japan is a colonialist country which commited atrocities as bad as any western country, except maybe Belgium, and doesn’t even acknowledge that what they did was wrong. All their neighbors, even South Korea and Taiwan, have feelings of resentment towards them because of this, even if there is a decent amount of cooperation between them.
But who cares about the skin color of their allies, or which other historical cultures influenced their culture?
This kind of tangentially reminds me of one of the all time takes of all time on tumblr, where someone was saying it’s racist to learn a foreign language (but only for white people of course).
Linguistic appropriation?
Well, yeah, Japan is just China, Ukraine is just Russia. Haven’t you read any theory?
“Anti-imperialism is when you support empires denigrating their former subjects and partners as fake nations undeserving of sovereignty”
Truly my theory was lacking until now 😭
This is a great meme. :)
The real white supremacists are checks notes asian countries opposing China. Huh. Well TIL.
White-aligned
What.
Didn’t you know white is a political affiliation?
I prefer radical turquoise fiscal policies myself
I mean, how far from truth is this?
Their culture and language is stolen from China, even to a point where scholars look into japanese to learn how chinese characters were read over a thousand years ago. Ramen is from China, even though many people consider it japanese.
They were subjugated by the US, before being part of the Axis.
So it’s not that far.
I feel you! After I stole my language from my parents I learned our alphabet and numbers are also stolen and that I don’t even talk the same language as my forefathers :(
I also pity anyone thinking they could invent their own pasta dish and act as its part of their culture. Noodles were invented in China, why doesn’t Japan/Italy/the rest of the world get that!?
China is just in such a unique position: their culture and language handcrafted over millennia by only the finest Han-Chinese, without any influence by any surrounding country like Mongolia. Just pure perfection.
Nobody suggested anything of sorts, and I admit that the word ‘steal’ is not quite right, but I mean what is when you talk about 1600 year old history.
Japanese culture has some overlap with Chinese culture, but they existed separately long before the cultural exchange.
And the funny thing about the Japanese writing system is that they tried to write Japanese in pure Chinese characters but failed, so instead they invented kana and ended up with three different alphabets.
Still, the Kanji has become so uniquely Japanese that Chinese and Japanese are generally unintelligible between speakers who know the same characters because they often mean different things in their own language.
Yeah, because chinese evolved, while japanese preserved the ‘original’ reading and meaning.
The Japanese kept the traditional forms but that doesn’t mean that they share the same meanings or that the Kanji are used in the same contexts to refer to the same things. The videos I shared touch on this. For example, 大丈夫 would confuse any Chinese reader of they had never come across the phrase before.
The pronunciations also evolved in Japanese. Kanji often have multiple on-yomi (Chinese) readings that changed depending on the era and the contemporary culture. And even then, those were interpretations of the Chinese pronunciations which sometimes don’t sound anything like Chinese.
I recommend reading the Kanji blog Fuusen no Arare if you study Japanese. It usually separates the on-yomi readings into go-on and kan-on, which are usually lumped together in other sources.
Their culture and language is stolen from China,
Fucking what.
Jesus fucking Christ.
It’s not even the same language family.
Ramen is from China,
Are you being fucking serious right now
They were subjugated by the US, before being part of the Axis.
what.
I guess they’re either talking about the writing system (kanji) or loanwords from Sinitic languages? Either way, it doesn’t support the argument in a substantial way.
I’m not sure what are you 'what’ing me about.
So English is stolen from French? Loanwords are exactly that. As Pugjesus has mentioned, Japanese isn’t even from the same language family as Chinese.
And also yes, like nobody argues that english is some miracle new language, every linguist knows it’s a mashup of other languages.
60% is a significant portion.
The Sino-Japanese vocabulary page has this very important point:
It has been estimated that about 60% of the words contained in modern Japanese dictionaries are kango,[1] and that about 18–20% of words used in common speech are kango.[a] The usage of such kango words increases in formal or literary contexts, and in expressions of abstract or complex ideas.[2]
Ramen is widely a considered to be a “Chinese” dish here, so that much I think you can let slide, although it bears little resemblance of any kind of Chinese noodle dish I can think of. As far as I know, it originated from Chinese restaurants in Japan during the Bakumatsu to Meiji era.
Oh man you are in for a rocky time when you learn how to actually talk to a Japanese person.
He’s not going to be able to speak to any Japanese person in Chinese, if that’s what you believe will happen.
Consider educating yourself about Japan before making comments about a country you don’t understand.
