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edenfallingI have been trying to figure out how to say "Chinese [language]" and/or "Chinese [writing]" in Japanese, and consequently driving myself up a wall.
I think, possibly, the first might be Chuuka-go, and I am really not sure what the second would be.
The idea here is that in ch. 17 of "Lemonade," there is a communication issue with the blue insect demons, and it turns out that they understand Chinese but cannot reproduce it verbally. So they try writing, and while my version of Duo can speak a little bit of bad Chinese (a handful of phrases, some curses, and a few useful sentences like "What is that called?"), he isn't anything approaching fluent, and he certainly doesn't read it. He does, however, read Japanese, but while kanji are based on hanzi, they're not identical (...I am not even going to speculate on grammar differences), and I suspect Duo reads kana a hell of a lot better than he reads kanji anyway, since I think he learned most of his languages (aside from Latin, which he actively studied partly because it was one of Professor G's pet hobbies, and partly because it reminded him of the Maxwell Church) by ear and/or by reading cheap, disposable popular fiction rather than through formal study.
So I want him to ask for Sasuke's help, but since he's talking to Sasuke in Japanese and Sasuke has no reference for any names/words relating to China (since China doesn't exist in his world), I want to render the word in romanized Japanese to give my (presumably English-speaking) readers a sense of how the word seems foreign to Sasuke.
...
This is obviously not a vital issue -- I can work around it fairly easily -- but can anyone help me out?
I think, possibly, the first might be Chuuka-go, and I am really not sure what the second would be.
The idea here is that in ch. 17 of "Lemonade," there is a communication issue with the blue insect demons, and it turns out that they understand Chinese but cannot reproduce it verbally. So they try writing, and while my version of Duo can speak a little bit of bad Chinese (a handful of phrases, some curses, and a few useful sentences like "What is that called?"), he isn't anything approaching fluent, and he certainly doesn't read it. He does, however, read Japanese, but while kanji are based on hanzi, they're not identical (...I am not even going to speculate on grammar differences), and I suspect Duo reads kana a hell of a lot better than he reads kanji anyway, since I think he learned most of his languages (aside from Latin, which he actively studied partly because it was one of Professor G's pet hobbies, and partly because it reminded him of the Maxwell Church) by ear and/or by reading cheap, disposable popular fiction rather than through formal study.
So I want him to ask for Sasuke's help, but since he's talking to Sasuke in Japanese and Sasuke has no reference for any names/words relating to China (since China doesn't exist in his world), I want to render the word in romanized Japanese to give my (presumably English-speaking) readers a sense of how the word seems foreign to Sasuke.
...
This is obviously not a vital issue -- I can work around it fairly easily -- but can anyone help me out?
