Like does “Steve” sound like the word for “Big Boobs” in Basque or something.
Cao is usually pronounced as /tsao/. For example: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/操
Why is it transliterated like that rather than tsao or zao or something?
Pinyin’s usage of the letter C for /tsʰ/ (not /ts/ as the person you’re replying to says! The difference is subtle but it’s there.) was apparently modeled on a previous romanization system called Latinxua Sin Wenz, which was created in the USSR. I’m kind of talking out my ass right now but from what I half remember these were the motivations for the choice of C for /tsʰ/ in Pinyin:
- Conciseness. Pinyin was ultimately created for Chinese people and not for Yankees studying Chinese, so whether a particular design decision made sense to a particular group of foreigners was less pressing than shaving off a few letters here and there.
- Pairs and patterns. Letters representing voiced sounds in English always represent unaspirated sounds in Pinyin, letters representing voiceless sounds in English always represent aspirated sounds in Pinyin. Digraphs ending in H always represent retroflex sounds, i.e. ⟨zh⟩, ⟨ch⟩, and ⟨sh⟩ for /ʈʂ/, /ʈʂʰ/, and /ʂ/, and you may notice how if you get rid of the H’s you get the corresponding alveolar sounds Z /ts/, C /tsʰ/, and S /s/.
- Precedent in other languages. The letter C makes a /ts/-like sound in a LOT of languages, in particular in Albanian; in Slavic languages, including in many romanizations of Russian, where /ts/ is spelled in Cyrillic with the letter Ц; in Esperanto, which was having a bit of a moment in China when Pinyin was being devised; and to some extent in German and a number of Romance languages old and modern; as well as in Early Middle English, which is where we get the Modern English “soft C” from. The magic word here is “palatalization”, especially palatalization of historical /k/.
GOOD post
It is if you use wade giles
K covered the hard C sound already so C was available!
Ts is still found as an older spelling, but usually not for c.
Tsingtao (beer) is Qingdao in Pinyin.
Zao already exists and is a different sound to cao. 早 and 草
I think they put the apostrophe after ts in some transcription to indicate the modern pinyin c, i.e. 曹操 Ts’ao Ts’ao
Huh, I haven’t encountered that Ts. Or at least I don’t recall encountering it. Just Tsingtao Beer and Tsinghua University
It’s pretty uncommon, from the wade giles romanisation. I only recall seeing it in texts from like, the 1800s
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肏屁
For context this is where I heard it
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Redo the script with the correct translation or leave as is for the comedy? It’s Musou time!
Newer games actually started pronouncing names correctly. Idr where it started but I was amazed when it turns out you don’t pronounce it Cow Cow either.
Yeah I think it was when I heard an Chinese American let’s player pronounce his name correctly as Taso I was like “ohhhhhhhh”
Conversely the first time I heard a British friend pronounce it “cow cow” I cried with laughter
I wouldn’t know, i play musou in its original Chinese dub
Them warriors do be dynasting
Nickolas and Alex variants sound like “fuck” and “pussy” in Arabic respectively, Caleb sounds like “dog”, Zach sounds like “butthole”
So you’re saying that if the Romanovs ever come back the Arab comics are gonna have a field day roasting their princely names
Khrechov means “see shit” in arabic
Caleb was the first I thought of with this too.
Common English words can unintentionally cause offense or embarrassment abroad due to similar-sounding vulgarities in other languages. Key examples include “kiss” (sounds like “pee” in Swedish), “puff” (slang for a brothel in German), “payday” (sounds like “I passed gas” in Portuguese), and “lull” (sounds like “penis” in Dutch)
According to gemini (god I hate having to rely on this thing instead of getting actual relevant search results)
“Puff Daddy” Being “Brothel Daddy” is actually not very far off…
kiss sounds like piss, which is swedish for piss
I thought I knew an English word that sounded bad in Japanese but I googled and I learned I was wrong. Or mostly wrong anyway. In any case - how about this?..
Chin-chin! How a Chinese drinking toast became popular in Europe
The Mandarin phrase ‘qing qing’ is historically used for drinking rituals in China but rarely used today. Toasting is so important in Chinese culture that children are taught from an early age how to do it properly
Chin-chin is a childish way of saying penis in Japanese. It means “wee wee” or “pee pee”.
i feel like the first dumb fake sentence i learned in year 7 japanese was “chinchin o tabemas”
I mean it’s not a fake sentence if you eat dick
Carapace!
One of the reasons it was renamed in calpico in some markets
The nicknames ‘Zeezee’ and ‘Zizi’ sound like ‘le zizi’ which is a childish word for penis in French. The names “Gary” (when spoken with an American accent) and “Geri” (when written) mean ‘diarrhea’ in Japanese.
Not exactly in the spirit of the question, but “fish ball cat” sounds like “I did a blowjob” in portuguese.
Mates ask me where i was last night and i tell em i sun quan or two drinky poos with my boi cow pee
I mean, there are English names that sound funny in English, so it stands to reason.
From an anglophone perspective, I think Thai names often seem kind of funny in a similar way, at least in how they are transcribed (starting with Thailand’s capital being Bangkok). The morpheme “phon,” meaning “blessing,” appears a lot in names, and it is also sometimes transcribed as “porn.” I’m not sure how it’s actually pronounced though, I’ve only seen it in writing.
There is a synthpop musician from Thailand called Pornphan Wannaporn
A synthpop musician, you mean.
my bad
Ah the British colonizer disease of transcribing long/open vowels with r. That’s also how you get the Korean name Park, which in reality is more like Paak.
Common nonrhotic L
the name has always sounded funny to me in chinese as well, because the pi sounded like “butt” or “fart” in chinese anyways.
