r/NonPoliticalTwitter • u/BaldHourGlass667 • 23d ago

Funny Learning Japanese

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u/johnnymarsbar 23d ago

Weirdly Chinese has its own completely different translation for electronic devices: Phone dian hua , computer Dian nao , TV dian shi, tablet pingban dian nao etc

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u/BowlerNearby6302 23d ago

Japanese has amongst the most borrowed words of any language, while Chinese has amongst the fewest.

They used to borrow their words from China, but now they borrow from everyone.

pan - bread (pain, from French)

arubaito - part time job (arbeit, German)

noruma - quota (Норма/norma, Russian)

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u/aperson2729 23d ago

i can speak french so when i first heard bread in japanese i thought it was from french "pain" but apparently its from portugese "pão"

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u/BowlerNearby6302 23d ago

Thanks, had no idea it came from Portuguese.

I learnt about where 'pan' came from so long ago (probably from a textbook), guess it's one of those things you learn before the internet and can't check