/lit/ - Literature

Got a question about language and not sure where to ask.
In Mandarin Chinese, they represent modern electric appliances with the character 电, which is used in words such as 电话 (telephone),电影 (film),电视 (television)or 电脑 (computer)。The traditional forms of these characters are 電話,電影,電視,and 電腦。
電話 (telephone) is the oldest of these words. It’s actually a 日本汉字 (Japanese national character, or 国字) which was imported to Chinese. The Chinese didn’t invent the characters 電話, they come from Japan.
Now I have two questions about this:
1. why didn’t the Japanese use katakana and an approximate pronunciation, like they usually do for loan words? You’d think they’d say テレフォン or something.
2. Why didn’t the Japanese keep using 電 for these devices like the Chinese did? For films, they either use the Chinese characters 映画 or the loan word フィルム;or television, they use the loan word テレビ;and for computers they use コンピューター。
It’s just such a weird little anomaly. Anyone know anything about when these devices came to Japan and China, and how it was decided they were to be named?

>>23163850
Cao Cao most based warlord did literally nothing wrong, the han dynasty was pretty much finished and he was the only one with a plan to rebuild it into something better. Its a shame that his heirs and clansmen were all greedy literal retards that didnt know what to do with all that power they had.

>>21973523
King/subject
Father/son
Husband/wife
Older brother/younger brother
Friend/friend

Hardcore history

>The Great Wall of China was finished at its northernmost location. The construction work moved up from the south-east and south-west and joined at this point. The system of building in sections was also followed on a small scale within the two great armies of workers, the eastern and western. It was carried out in the following manner: groups of about twenty workers were formed, each of which had to take on a section of the wall, about five hundred metres. A neighbouring group then built a wall of similar length to meet it. But afterwards, when the sections were fully joined, construction was not continued on any further at the end of this thousand-metre section. Instead the groups of workers were shipped off again to build the wall in completely different regions. Naturally, with this method many large gaps arose, which were filled in only gradually and slowly, many of them not until after it had already been reported that the building of the wall was complete. In fact, there are said to be gaps which have never been built in at all, although that’s merely an assertion which probably belongs among the many legends which have arisen about the structure and which, for individual people at least, are impossible to prove with their own eyes and according to their own standards, because the structure is so immense.
>Now, at first one might think it would have been more advantageous in every way to build in continuous sections or at least continuously within two main sections. For the wall was conceived as a protection against the people of the north, as was commonly announced and universally known. But how can protection be provided by a wall which is not built continuously? In fact, not only can such a wall not protect, but the structure itself is in constant danger. Those parts of the wall left standing abandoned in particular regions could easily be destroyed again and again by the nomads, especially by those back then who, worried about the building of the wall, changed their place of residence with incredible speed, like grasshoppers, and thus perhaps had an even better overall view of how the construction was proceeding than we did, the people who built it.

>>21441490
If you know, you know
If you dokt know, you don't know
Simple as
- Confucius

>The Great Wall of China was finished at its northernmost location. The construction work moved up from the south-east and south-west and joined at this point. The system of building in sections was also followed on a small scale within the two great armies of workers, the eastern and western. It was carried out in the following manner: groups of about twenty workers were formed, each of which had to take on a section of the wall, about five hundred metres. A neighbouring group then built a wall of similar length to meet it. But afterwards, when the sections were fully joined, construction was not continued on any further at the end of this thousand-metre section. Instead the groups of workers were shipped off again to build the wall in completely different regions. Naturally, with this method many large gaps arose, which were filled in only gradually and slowly, many of them not until after it had already been reported that the building of the wall was complete. In fact, there are said to be gaps which have never been built in at all, although that’s merely an assertion which probably belongs among the many legends which have arisen about the structure and which, for individual people at least, are impossible to prove with their own eyes and according to their own standards, because the structure is so immense.
>Now, at first one might think it would have been more advantageous in every way to build in continuous sections or at least continuously within two main sections. For the wall was conceived as a protection against the people of the north, as was commonly announced and universally known. But how can protection be provided by a wall which is not built continuously? In fact, not only can such a wall not protect, but the structure itself is in constant danger. Those parts of the wall left standing abandoned in particular regions could easily be destroyed again and again by the nomads, especially by those back then who, worried about the building of the wall, changed their place of residence with incredible speed, like grasshoppers, and thus perhaps had an even better overall view of how the construction was proceeding than we did, the people who built it.

Hello /lit/, I struggle with self-confidence and have extremely lower opinion of myself, I read self-help books but realised those are full of bs, I find reading works of philosopher much fruitful and effective.

/lit/ could you please recommend me some philosopher or their works so that I can work on my self-esteem and confidence. I am open to non-philosopher's books too but no self-help bs like Joe Dispenza, Napoleon Hill, Rhonda Bhyrne etc

>read Zhuangzi
>involuntarily utter 'based', 'btfo' or 'pbuh' under my breath every second sentence

>>17367500
Yeah reading classical Chinese sounds like probably the hardest literary feat to accomplish for a native English speaker. I can't think of anything more alien than that. Good luck with your studies.

>>17347646
Chinese is more applicable in a "real world" sense. Way more job opportunities in China, more Chinese people to potentially talk to, massive Chinese diaspora everywhere. It's probably better if you're into political texts too. I might be biased but I kind of feel like China has "more" to discover in terms of history, culture, old texts, etc. It really depends on what you want to do with it. >>17347832 is also somewhat correct too. Chinese is much more future-proof time investment.
t. waiguoren studying Chinese

>The culture of Japan has changed greatly over the millennia, from the country's prehistoric Jōmon Period, to its contemporary modern culture, which absorbs influences from Asia, Europe, and North America.[1] Strong 9,000 year old ancient Han Chinese cultural influences, including the 8,000 year old ancient Han Chinese writing script,[2] are still evident in traditional Japanese culture as China had historically been a global superpower, which has resulted in Japan absorbing many elements of ancient Han Chinese culture first through what as then the Imperial Chinese tributary vassal state of Korea, then later through direct cultural exchanges during China's Sui and Tang dynasties. The inhabitants of Japan experienced a long period of relative isolation from the outside world during the Tokugawa shogunate after Japanese missions to Imperial China, until the arrival of the "Black Ships" and the Meiji period.

>Japanese is written with a combination of three scripts: hiragana and katakana were derived from the Chinese man'yōgana of the 5th century. Hiragana and katakana were first simplified from Kanji
>Kanji are Chinese characters that were imported from China, because Japan didn't have a writing system until it was introduced around 50 AD

>The Latin alphabet, rōmaji, is also often used in modern Japanese, especially for company names and logos, advertising, and when inputting Japanese into a computer. The Hindu-Arabic numerals are generally used for numbers

>Buddhism developed in India around the 6th and 4th centuries BCE and eventually spread through China and Korea. It arrived in Japan during the 6th century CE

>the early modern thought of Japan was mainly Confucianism or Neo-Confucianism, which was designated for official study by the Tokugawa shogunate
>Confucianism is a system of thought and behavior originating in ancient China

>Taoism is believed to be the inspiration for spiritual concepts in Japanese culture

>>15914246
based and amputationpilled

>>13322933
Based and fortune cookie pilled

>>7882795
>He thinks being enlightened is an achievement.
He who speaks, doesn't know.

>>7477598
>mfw I'd be sad that most of Yang Zhu's stuff is lost forever, but that would go against his philosophy

>>6406452
>not wanting to hurt others is weakness