"Hippopotamus" literally means "river horse" though https://twitter.com/XiranJayZhao/status/1316076159315005442 …
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Arthur Chu Retweeted
And I'm pretty sure in many countries jeans actually are just called "vaqueros" https://twitter.com/XiranJayZhao/status/1316077176907657217?s=19 …
Arthur Chu added,
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Replying to @arthur_affect
Also, the Chinese had a symbol for "cowboy" a few hundred years ago? I wouldn't have expected that.
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Replying to @MichaelBinkley_ @JasonBruno17
The Chinese had cows and people whose job it was to take care of cows, so yes, they had cowboys
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Replying to @arthur_affect @JasonBruno17
Although, yes, a translator would probably use the more neutral term "cowherd" in most contexts to avoid the specific cultural associations (I'm told the slang term "cowboy" was originally associated with cattle *rustlers*, hence its violent and badass associations)
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Replying to @arthur_affect @JasonBruno17
Okay so I just looked this up and I was wrong, "niúzăi" in "niúzăikù" isn't the neutral term "cowherd", it actually is a calque of the English term "cowboy" ("cow" + "boy") Before they adopted it from English it would've meant "male calf"
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That's interesting, but I guess after all American pop culture was already all over the world in the 19th century, people reading Westerns anywhere they sold popular books
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