Oh thanks, now I canât say squirrel.
Russians insist on pronouncing it âmoosandsquirrelâ.
Um, itâs actually pronounced "Shootinâ Froidinâ "
One of the brothers from Five Children and It is nicknamed âSquirrelâ, presumably on the understanding that it rhymes with Cyril.
I recently saw an Ai Wei Wei exhibit.
Wow, so few artists are so brilliant and political at the same time.
As I slowly progress through my study of the Chinese language, I slowly get the impression that they are not doing it willfully at all. The better I get at Chinese, the more trouble I have in understanding my fellow students when they make typically European pronunciation mistakes.
Austrians (and probably Bavarians) traditionally challenge others to pronounce the Austrian/Bavarian dialect term for âsquirrelâs tailâ, which is âOachkatzlschwoafâ. They usually fail.
What is it about squirrels that makes them inherently difficult in more than one language?
Well, China doesnât have the resources for that, the NSA does. Theyâll just have to cooperate on this matter, which will be a very good thing for world peace in the long run. 
Only, this is not about state censorship of everyday speech. Itâs about the regulations for state TV.
Itâs the same thing in principle as banning the word âfuckâ from American daytime TV, though a bit more extreme.
Imposing rules like that is just as easy as making sure every bleeping use of bleep is censored. And I donât see why anyone should expect it to influence everyday usage much.
I guess itâs misguided conservatives honestly concerned about Chinese cultures there⊠those âidiomsâ, are very much an important part of Chinese culture and seem to be cherished much more than equivalent phrases in western languages. Itâs just the sort of thing that smart people will base their puns on to create yet more cultural richness, and that grumpy conservatives will want to remain untouched and unsullied. They want their ancient idioms used The Way God (or rather, QĂn ShÇhuĂĄngdĂŹ) Intended Them To Be Used!
This is not about the government-critical puns that are used to circumvent censorship in China. I highly doubt those are allowed on state TV by the old regulations, either.
Thatâs true - I find that Chinese is more difficult to speak intelligably, while German is more difficult to speak accurately. Especially at the start, you have no idea how to use the correct case and gender with nouns, but you could say das for everything and people would still know what you were saying. There are so many homophones or near homophones in Chinese and tones have the same the kind of function that phonemes have in other languages, so itâs really easy to get it wrong when you havenât trained your ear to recognise the distinctions.
After having too much trouble trying to get people to say my name correctly, we specifically chose a name for our daughter that just about everyone could pronounce (Megan). Our sonâs middle name (James) was partly because it sounds so different in different languages (SĂ©amus in Irish, Hamish in (anglicised) Scottish, Jaime/Santiago/Diego in Spanish, Jakobus in GermanâŠ
@zathras 2000th âlikeâ!
After distributing a few more likes, now I can say that one like given is worth 0.5 likes received. And balance is restored (or it would be, if I just deleted 58 59 posts without any likes).
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