Reminder to everyone that we are officially transitioning from the Year of the Rat to the Year of the Ox, so update your diets accordingly
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I've always been kind of interested by the "standard translations" used for the animals In Chinese the zodiac signs are a single character, and the English translations are often more specific than that word
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鼠 by itself most commonly gets interpreted as "rat", sure but the word by itself applies to all rodents Mice and rats are more specifically 老鼠 ("old rodents", idiomatically "common rodents"), with mice 小鼠 ("small rodents") and rats 大鼠 ("large rodents")
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Replying to @arthur_affect
I always wondered what the deal was with "lao" in that word
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Replying to @Nymphomachy
"Lao" literally means "old" but is a term of respect, unlike "jiu" which is "old" in the pejorative sense of "obsolete" Idiomatically, it's often used to mean "common", "familiar", "well-known", "primary"
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy
So when personifying a typical person from a country you'd call them "Lao X" A standup comedy routine talking about how "Chinese people do X, Americans do Y" would talk about "Lao Zhong" and "Lao Mei" (a typical person from "Zhongguo", China, and "Meiguo", America)
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It's a little bit like "Good Ol' Charlie Brown" or whatever
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