This comic strip is funny and annoying. The facts are wrong.It may be pronounced YEN in china but the currency is spelled he “yuan”.In Japan it is spelled “yen”.
Japanese picked up a lot of vocabulary from Chinese, and its written forms are based on Chinese, but it’s an overstatement to say the “The Japanese Language came from Chinese.” Chinese (generally) is tonal and monosyllabic. Japanese (generally) is uninflected and polysyllabic. The origin of Japanese isn’t clearly known, but it’s too structurally dissimilar from any form of Chinese to support a claim that it “came from” China.
It would have saved a lot of fuss if the cartoonists had used “yuan” rather than “yen”, but since both are transliterations from languages that don’t use Roman letters there’s an argument to be made that if it’s pronounced “yen” you might as well spell it “yen”. Heck, for hundreds of years we spelled the name of China’s biggest city as if it were pronounced “Pee-King.”
Sorry, I was thinking of “inflected” in terms of stressing different syllables. My mistake. It’s still only generally true, in comparison with (for example) English, but you don’t need to be a linguist to differentiate between spoken Japanese and spoken Chinese (in any form).
bignatefan almost 13 years ago
They don’t use yen in China, they use yuan.
arye uygur almost 13 years ago
But in China it’s pronounced like “Yen.”
Kvasir42 Premium Member almost 13 years ago
But it’s written, not spoken and Gene is a stickler for stuff like this, right Gene?
Alan2112 Premium Member almost 13 years ago
This comic strip is funny and annoying. The facts are wrong.It may be pronounced YEN in china but the currency is spelled he “yuan”.In Japan it is spelled “yen”.
Redhead55 almost 13 years ago
Good grief – the semanticists this morning.
Love this strip. That’s one of my favorite sayings.
jimbo1949 almost 13 years ago
OK, Gene. Nice try, but Pastis you’re not.
fritzoid Premium Member almost 13 years ago
Japanese picked up a lot of vocabulary from Chinese, and its written forms are based on Chinese, but it’s an overstatement to say the “The Japanese Language came from Chinese.” Chinese (generally) is tonal and monosyllabic. Japanese (generally) is uninflected and polysyllabic. The origin of Japanese isn’t clearly known, but it’s too structurally dissimilar from any form of Chinese to support a claim that it “came from” China.
It would have saved a lot of fuss if the cartoonists had used “yuan” rather than “yen”, but since both are transliterations from languages that don’t use Roman letters there’s an argument to be made that if it’s pronounced “yen” you might as well spell it “yen”. Heck, for hundreds of years we spelled the name of China’s biggest city as if it were pronounced “Pee-King.”
fritzoid Premium Member almost 13 years ago
Sorry, I was thinking of “inflected” in terms of stressing different syllables. My mistake. It’s still only generally true, in comparison with (for example) English, but you don’t need to be a linguist to differentiate between spoken Japanese and spoken Chinese (in any form).