Chinese and Japanese
It’s so cold I have a headache. Ow.
Okay, time to wail about where this post (and its responses) went wrong. I tried to let the thing slide into ‘I forgot’ territory, since my attention span is the equivalent of a retarded bunny, but I forgot to disable emailing comments. So I got this comment in my inbox today, and I’m going to complain.
(Summary: Some chick decides Japanese and Chinese are pronounced the same, and assumes different pronunciations = two different names. Other people agree, also throwing in the fact that one’s name stays the same between languages. German, Spanish and English are a few of the languages that are used for comparison. In short, nobody believes that, in Chinese, Sakura’s name is ‘xiao ying’. Everyone thinks it should be just Sakura, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a moron).
1. My language is not your language.
It was rather shocking to see the amount of arrogance and assumptions everyone had in thinking Chinese and Japanese were pronounced the same and calling other people morons for thinking otherwise, or that Chinese was part of some odd universal language law that said people’s names stay the same when crossing between the language barrier.
Yes, throw in German/English, Spanish/English, Language learned in high school/English as your basis for comparison. Hey, if GERMAN/SPANISH/LLIHS does that, then it means EVERY LANGUAGE does it too!
No, it does not. Coming from a community that has already shown itself to accept that every single rule is subjective (even with topics of incest, bestiality and rape), it just made me wonder how on earth they managed to lump languages under one single umbrella with a Universal Rule to rule them all. Even English in itself doesn’t follow its own rules; why should every language need to have something in common?
The problem lies with the Japanese kanji and Chinese characters. Chinese does romanize (or Chinesefy?) English names, but the Japanese kanji creates a new rule altogether. Kanji is, essentially, traditional Chinese. Some phrasing has changed over the… decades? Millennium? (like how the kanji for ‘teacher’ are the Chinese characters for ’sir’), but regardless, kanji names are still pronounced the Chinese way when speaking in Chinese, simply because they are Chinese characters.
They are not different names. Simply because the kanji characters are pronounced differently doesn’t mean they’re two unique names with no relation to each other. Think Latin and English. In Latin, the endings of names change depending on their case, but in English it stays the same. They’re still the same person, even though they have like, 4 different versions of their names. (For the record, I took Latin too, so I have the relevant knowledge to make this parallel).
2. No one is a moron. Only you.
Go ahead and backpedal by saying the Japanese/English speakers don’t pick up on the different intonations, so for some reason, the rant is still valid(???), but that makes you look more of the moron. You don’t know for sure if the Japanese can pick them up – you’re not a native Japanese speaker. I learned both Japanese and Chinese (and Latin, hee), I can tell the difference, and that is the limit of my experience. Don’t overstep your boundaries by proclaiming that no one can tell the difference just because you – the native English speaker – can’t.
And yet again, I see projection all over. I find it incredibly infuriating when people assume things they don’t know about applies to everyone else at large, and think themselves knowledgeable when they draw parallels between languages that don’t actually exist. Look, if you don’t know the language and how it works, don’t draw parallels, because you don’t know what the other line actually looks like.
I think it will be extremely heartening to see people rein this this psychological mindset when talking to a public. I too, like to submit to projection when making snarky remarks, but not in terms of making logical arguments that will be judged by the public, in which this rant obviously did. Said person ignored my comments and continued her tirade of ribbing the fanfic author whom she was complaining about.
The lack of knowledge in people isn’t what bothers me. It’s the assumption of knowledge that creates this horrid atmosphere of ignorance and arrogance.
In short: Don’t rant about languages you know nothing about.
Moral Relativism
Having someone call me a ‘moralfag’ the other day made me wonder about my position on moral relativism. I’ve always held the position that nothing is inherently good or evil – it completely depends on the social situation and culture. Gwen and I had a pretty long discussion about that for her Philosophy 101 class, and she was arguing on the side of absolutism while I was on relativism. The people who interviewed me at SMU a long time ago were also Not Happy on my views of relativism. They mentioned something about paedophilia but in my anxiety, I cannot remember what nonsense I spouted in defense of relativism.
Anyway, there was an argument raised against moral relativism that I read about quite recently. Abolishment of slavery can be considered moral progress, but according to relativist theory, Lincoln was a bad man, because he acted against the cultural norms of his era.
I’m not quite sure what to think of this. Lincoln was unpopular in the South at the time, and he was certainly seen as a bad man for freeing slaves. Right now we see abolishment of slavery as moral progress, but that itself lends to the argument that morals are relative in differing cultures (or eras).
Consider the reasons why slavery is a bad thing. It subjugates an entire race; it inflicts pain and suffering; it results in social classes; it causes discrimination. Yet, all these can be argued. Stereotyping, prejudice and discrimination are automatic processes in our brains, and it is the social norms that prevent us from actively discriminating. The obligatory question is then ‘why is discrimination a bad thing’? Why do we consider equality as important? If equality is so important, why aren’t we all turning Communist? Why did countries that adopted Communism fail, then? This then lends itself to the even bigger question of the social structures in any given country and the psychology of people… which is mind-boggling, frankly.
What is more concrete, however, is pain and suffering. Pain is the body’s way of telling to GET THE FUCK OUT OF WHATEVER YOU’RE DOING (BDSM not included). It’s then quite natural that removing human-inflicted suffering from an entire race of people is considered ‘good’.
If so, then isn’t there some things that are inherently good? Removing pain is good, inflicting pain is bad? The body that reacts negatively to something (universally) is considered bad? However, pain doesn’t quite answer the morals of more abstract things, like copyright infringement… and other things that doesn’t cause physical damage.
I get the feeling that copyright infringement or theft of property hearkens back to the ages when food was scarce, and people had to barter for goods. Any sort of theft meant a lower chance of survival. I’m sure this is pretty much the evolutionary theory of something, and any type of evolutionary theory, in my experience, is a load of hogwash.
Are constructs of the human mind then supposed to be considered morally good or bad? Are there things that everyone in the entire world universally share? Expression of feelings, like smiling and anger, seem to be shared by many different cultures and are considered universal… does the same go for moral values?
Anyway, I should read up more on moral relativism. I shouldn’t be so clueless about this when I’m in support of it.
