Recent comments in /f/history

luxtabula t1_j77gkff wrote

Reply to Caribbean breadfruit traced back to Capt. Bligh's 1791-93 journey by Culturedecanted

I was born in Jamaica, and have been back several times to visit family.

A lot of people don't know that Jamaica has tons of plants not native to the island due to it having a tropical biome closest to the UK. As a result, you can find plants there that would be located on the other side of the planet.

Breadfruit is a common delicacy in Jamaica. Usually is eaten for breakfast and fried. It has an almost potato like quality to it.

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seatangle t1_j773zez wrote

Reply to Caribbean breadfruit traced back to Capt. Bligh's 1791-93 journey by Culturedecanted

I’m from Guam and breadfruit was an indigenous staple carbohydrate before modern rice was introduced to the island from Asia. I didn’t realize people also ate it in the Caribbean until I was in my 20s living in a Carribean neighborhood in Brooklyn, which is when I learned about this history. It was a nice reminder of home to be able to have breadfruit in NY.

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perrothepotato t1_j7705b9 wrote

Reply to comment by Goetterwind in Why didn't Japan excise Chinese characters from the Japanese language, when Japan hated China so much? by 3cana

Oh, I’m sorry. No it wasn’t a criticism at all. Your comment just made me think.. so it was more just me thinking out loud in a response. Haha.

Yeah traditional characters have been reformed (standardized) but it was usually for unification (mostly for ease of trade and government organization purposes). Which would probably be the same reason the Japanese didn’t abolish it. It was needed for communication during a period where their leaders and scientists (unit 731 & other sites) were spread throughout the whole Asia Pacific region.

The evolution of language is fascinating. I wonder if the Japanese had won, if kanji would have been phased out… I think that would have been slightly more probable. It wouldn’t make much sense to under go a whole language reform during empire building.

And yeah, 手纸 is toilet paper/letter in Chinese/Japanese. But if you break the word apart, it literally means “hand paper”. So given the context that it’s written you’d still be able to derive the correct meaning from it (and a bit of a laugh too probably). And even 込 komi: to include. If we pulled it apart into its original radicals, it’s 辶 and 入，which literally means walk in. So again if the character is in context, you would still be able to derive it’s meaning from its semantic indicators. Which takes us back to the OP question, this example of the evolution of kanji, to use the original Chinese semantic indicators to create their own vocabulary, is a great illustration of how deeply embedded kanji is and how difficult it would be to simply remove it.

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