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In most components of Northern nations like Canada or Russia, we’ve one phrase for snow: “snow”. If we need to be actually exact, we’ll distinguish between dry snow and moist snow as a result of moist snow is heavy and shoveling it out of your driveway is likely one of the extra widespread strategies of inviting a coronary heart assault. However on this planet’s far North the native Inuit folks have greater than 30 phrases for snow as a result of they stay with it for a lot of the yr and minor variations in snow traits can significantly have an effect on looking and survival. We’ve names for issues which are necessary to us.
For instance, one of the crucial necessary classes of issues in North America is alcoholic drinks. The fundamental classes are beer, wine, and spirits (that are distilled), and plenty of merchandise not becoming simply into these classes.
- We’ve beer, bitter, ale, stout and lager; cider, mead, kumis and sake.
- We’ve Chianti, Bordeaux, Beaujolais and Burgundy.
- We’ve purple wine, white wine, rosé wine, fruit wine, desk wine, glowing wine, ice wine and champagne.
- We’ve candy wines, dry wines, fruit wines and potato wines.
- We’ve fortified wines like Port, Madeira, Sherry and Vermouth.
- We’ve absinthe and Aquavit; we’ve brandy, cognac and Armagnac.
- We’ve schnapps and fruit brandies.
- We’ve gin, vodka, rum, scotch, bourbon, rye and sake.
- We’ve tequila and Ouzo.
- We’ve dinner wines, desk wines, aperitifs, cocktails, combined drinks, straight drinks, neat drinks.
And we’ve particular locations for getting drunk.
- We’ve bars, wine bars and music bars.
- We’ve dance bars, topless bars and homosexual bars.
- We’ve cocktail lounges.
- We’ve pubs, beer halls, taverns and beer gardens.
And I have not even begun.
And what does China have? Nearly nothing.
One phrase — jiu — for something with alcohol in it.
And if we need to be exact, we’ve beer (pi jiu), grape wine (pu tao jiu) and the white stuff that ought to kill you however one way or the other would not — bai jiu. And China has no locations the place folks go to drink alcohol; no taverns, no pubs, no cocktail lounges, no nothing. You should purchase beer, wine and spirits in any grocery store or comfort retailer, however you drink these at house (or within the park, or sitting on the curb). You’ll be able to in fact get them organized in most eating places. However that is all. Nearly nothing to drink, and virtually no place to drink it.
Within the class of household, within the West the “household” is the mom, the daddy, and the child. That is it. We’ve uncles, aunts and cousins, and we’ve grandparents, who usually are not household however are “family”, that means we do not like them however had been born with them and had no alternative. However in China, “household” means your complete prolonged household plus, often, favored outsiders and even foreigners, in whole comprising maybe 50 folks sharing not solely emotional however usually monetary bonds as properly.
Within the West, we’ve solely a handful of names for relations, typically ending with second cousins. However in China we’ve probably a whole lot of names for relations, far past mom, father, son and daughter. We’ve names for youthful and older brothers, names for the daddy’s older and youthful brothers and people of the mom’s and father’s mother and father, their youthful and older brothers and sisters. We’ve names for the grandmother’s third cousin on her father’s uncle’s aspect of the household. It would not finish. You’ll be able to see that in China, we waste all our phrases on trivial issues like relations whereas within the West with our democracies and American values we save our phrases for actually necessary stuff like issues you will get drunk with. Clearly, China wants to vary its perspective.
An American acquaintance as soon as requested me if all Chinese language folks had “American” names. I attempted to deflect that by saying they had been ‘Western’ names slightly than ‘American’ however she countered by saying, “Properly, that is the identical factor”. But it surely is not the identical factor. Her title, Theresa, is French. Her husband’s title is Russian; her son’s title is English. There isn’t any such factor as an American title. Truly, that is not fairly true. There are three classes of American names. Pocahontas is an American title, as are women’ names that finish in ‘i’ like Whoopi and Bambi. The third class is the sometimes-cute names that black moms give to their football-player sons, like Jemahl and Freezone. That is the listing. However to People, who copied all their names from folks of different nations, the names are actually as American as Coca-Cola.
Besides that Coca-Cola is Spanish.
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