Do not greet the Chinese Consulat general with "Konichiwa!"

[Shirley_Ujest]

Iceberg, Goldberg, what’s the difference?

One has a bar mitzvah.

[Kythereia]

@Cerowyn

Konichiwa is “good day” (used from about 10 am until sunset). I think part of Muad’Dib’s joke is about the fact that currently, Sino-Japanese relations are at an all-time low (but not low enough that China’s going to give back that $30 billion or so that they took in aid from Japan thirty years ago). It’s kinda like saying “zdravstvuite” to an American diplomat during the Cold War.

Hijack: what’s the origin of the prefix “Sino-” in “Sino-Japanese”?

[Ferret_Herder]

@Kythereia

Hijack: what’s the origin of the prefix “Sino-” in “Sino-Japanese”?

Appears to be from the Latin Sinae, through Greek and Latin, and probably from the Chinese Qin. (Considering that “qin” is pronounced rather more like “ching” but without a strong g on the end, that derivation isn’t too outlandish.)

[Ashes_Ashes]

@Raguleader

They usually start to key into the fact that I’m pulling their leg when I get to the part about saddling them and herding cattle.

Well yeah; Jackalopes are small, what with being horned jack rabbits, see? Next chance, say ranchers hate them because, being natural enemies, Jackalope packs attack the cattle and start stampedes. Vicious little boogers they are.

[Dark_Side_of_the_Floyd]

If otostannous isn’t a word, it should be. I rather like it.

[The_Weird_One]

@Dark Side of the Floyd

If otostannous isn’t a word, it should be. I rather like it.

I’m already spreading it around. What’s the correct pronunciation, though?

[Cerowyn]

@Doctor Jackson

Bless y’all. Must be something going around.

Russian flu.

[Malacandra]

@The Weird One

I’m already spreading it around. What’s the correct pronunciation, though?

As the coiner of this neologism, I claim the right to say: oh-toe-STANN-uss.

How cool would it be if it made it into the dictionary?

[Hostile_Dialect]

Yeah, and when you find the first girl in your life who has a vague interest in getting to know you sexually, and she tells you she’s 3/4 Chinese and 1/4 Taiwanese, don’t say the Taiwanese is basically the same and she’s all Chinese in your book.

@Malacandra

How can someone be so otostannous as not to be able to tell UK English from Australian English?

To us, that’s like telling the difference between Alabama and Georgia English. Unless you live in one of the two places, you can’t tell and it’s probably not really that important to you.

@Shirley Ujest

This is right up there with the doper who had the faux pas in german as a kid and said, " I shit the naked lady!"

When I first met my girlfriend, a native Spanish speaker, I tried to tell her in Spanish that I had left the military because I didn’t want to go to the war. What I ended up telling her was that I had left the military because I didn’t want to go to the blonde.

[Cunctator]

@Excalibre

Obviously there’s plenty of uniquely Australian slang, but on a purely phonetic basis, a lot Australians have accents that sound pretty indistinguishable from British to me. I dunno - maybe Australian accents sound very distinct to Brits, but you sound fairly similar to one another. I doubt I could tell an English-speaking South African apart from a Brit either.

It’s like all other differences in accent - just a matter of familiarity. Australians, New Zealanders and South Africans can distinguish between each other immediately.