Quote:
Originally Posted by Kanji_The_Wanderer
So you are saying that Japan is called Japan due to a cultural mistake? What I don't understand is, wouldn't the Japanese people want everyone in the rest of the world to call their country Nihon like they do? If a word was used to describe my country that doesn't exist in my language, I know that I would want to have it corrected....Since most people their country is what they care about the most...
Oh yes, during my studies of Asian culture in High School, I found out that the Japanese adopted over 30,000 characters/symbols from the Chinese language. Over the years, the system has changed and has become much more unique. Someone who knows Eastern culture well, can tell the difference between Japanese and Chinese writing, a long time ago, it was much harder.
|
i think you missed the point of the topic, we are not talking about Japanese taking the Chinese writing system. this is something i believe everyone should know here if they are studying Japanese. we are talking about them taking the pronunciation of the words into their language.
If you read my explanation for the name of Japan you would see it was not a cultural mistake. I personally prefer that my country has different names in different countries. Even if we used the correct names do you realise how hard that would be to pronounce. not many people in western countries without chinese background can even pronounce Shanghai correctly. they read it as if it was a word in our own language so it is pronounced incorrectly. this is essentially how the names for China and Japan came about, from taking what the people or ruling dynasty is called and then it slowly fits into the English language better but over time the sound has changed. this is the evolution of language and words.
as for your point about people calling your country a name you understand in your language, my question is what does it matter? if they are talking to you they will use English and therefore call countries by their English name. a Chinese person is not going to call America 美国 "mei guo" when speaking English. Just like when i speak Japanese to Japanese people I say
日本 "nihon" so you would never have to worry about what other people call your country in their own language unless you speak it also.