Re:Japanese writing system basics
by JimDabell on Saturday August 20, 2016 @08:22AM
(#12326242)
Isn't that the same in most languages though? For instance in English "electronic mail" became "e-mail", which became "email". "Web log" became "weblog", which became "blog". "Cellular phone" became "cell phone".
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And indeed in older books and articles it is not unusual to see people writing "electronic brain" to refer to a computer.
A lot of non-English words for computer terms in various languages are translations of outdated English terms for the same that stuck around after the English terms changed.
English tends to sneakily disguise its words with Latin or Greek. So you may not think about the literal meaning of a word like "predict", while in German "vorhersagen" (to say before) is the exact same thing, just more obvious.