• Varyk@sh.itjust.works
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    10 months ago

    Well, if you have an unrelated McDonald’s anecdote…

    Your grasp on either these languages or the main premise of the argument is sorely lacking.

    To humor you, if you truly believe that you can ask in English “do you like ice cream?” and expect to receive the answer " I like it", then we’ve determined which language you understand less.

    Then again, The Chinese noun and verb for love is "爱“, not the McDonald’s phrase you quoted, so maybe you don’t understand either language as well as you would like.

    But hey, you know McDonald’s lore, so there’s that.

    • Joncash2@lemmy.ml
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      10 months ago

      How do you know so little about language. It’s baffling. The whole point is in Chinese it would be odd to say I love it because love is reserved for living things. But that doesn’t mean the word love doesn’t exist in Chinese. That’s why the McDonald’s slogan was the way it was. And trust me, McDonald’s team knows much more about translation than you do.

      • Varyk@sh.itjust.works
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        10 months ago

        You might want to go climb up to the top of this thread, that’s not what this thread is about at all.

        My simple example one can easily extrapolate from is a response to a commenter claiming that sanctions won’t work against China because they are strict, but if the US treated China like a parent treats their child, manipulating and urging them onward with soft encouragement, the US could get that they wanted from China without the need for sanctions.

        My point is that if even the word “yes” is not directly translatable in Chinese languages, and they have a couple tens of thousands of words, and China has an entire historical set of behaviors and culture separate from the US with unique calls and responses, it’s insulting and unreasonable to expect a desired response using manipulations that work differently in different cultures.

        Separately, you haven’t demonstrated much capability in either language you’re theorizing about and as a result haven’t earned that trust.

        • Joncash2@lemmy.ml
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          10 months ago

          Look up “I like it” in Google. There are literal songs written for that response in English. Your understanding of cultural responses is so ignorant you have to question how little you know. Entire songs have been written that proves you don’t know what your talking about.