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私の音楽的生活 sweetrendez-vousさん
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マジャ… マイケル・ジャンキー、略してマジャ！さん

As everybody already knows, each Chinese character has its particular meaning. For example, 山 has meaning of a mountain. Likewise, 手 has meaning of a hand, and 紙 has meaning of a piece of paper. And connection between Chinese characters makes new meanings. Here is a good and funny example. Before referring to that, what do you associate “手紙” ? Actually, in Japanese, it means “a letter.” You think that it has an appropriate meaning, don’t you? While in Chinese, to my surprise, it means “toilet paper.” The Chinese character is same, but its meaning is different. When I learned the meaning at first, I was surprised very much. Fortunately, I learned the meaning on TV and I don’t forget the meaning. If I didn’t know the meaning and communicate with Chinese people, it would have occurred an ashamed happening. In fact, when Japanese people who cannot speak Chinese well make conversation by means of writing. If I don’t know the meaning of “手紙” and I write that “I am very grad to hear from you,” Chinese people would misconstrue what I said as “I am grad to receive toilet paper from you.” On the other hand, if Chinese people who don't know Japanese well make conversation by means of writing that “I want a toilet roll immediately!”, Japanese might begin to write a letter to him/her immediately.

The above situation may be too exaggerated, but more serious problems may be occurred by such a misinterpretation. I think that differences of words’ meaning or phrases’ meaning prevent us from understanding the exact meaning. I would like to devote increased attention to their differences.

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