See query. I’m asking about both
1: The bioscience word; and
- What everybody calls it, if different, in regular talk or even newscasts or public announcements.
Thanks.
According to this page:
I assume that’s Mandarin.
The second one might still be common, but is officially discouraged. The Chinese govt complained when US Secy of State Pompeo referred to it as Wuhan Corona Virus in English the other day. They say it isn’t clear where the virus originated and that name is pejorative.
The Chinese wikipedia page for the general topic is titled “2019冠狀病毒病疫情”, 2019 corona (冠狀) virus (病毒) epidemic outbreak (病疫情).
Mandarin is basically just a particular pronunciation of those characters that would be different from the Cantonese one (or Korean pronunciation, which is what it sounds like in my head, though the Korean language uses a different term). The Cantonese dialect would not have its own different official name as in different characters, it’s possible nicknames common in one part of the country or other might be different characters.
My Taiwanese wife says that the local TV stations in Taiwan are saying that the government in Taiwan refuses to go along with the UN/WHO mandated name, Corona 19. Apparently, China pressured (bribed?) the WHO to change the name so as to make the world media call the virus something other than the name of a large city in China. Therefore, in Taiwan (in Mandarin) it is called 武汉肺炎 (Wǔhàn fèiyán).
In Cantonese, it would be written using the same characters, but the pronunciation would be different. This is true for all Chinese dialects; same characters (although many characters have been simplified in mainland China), different pronunciation.
Nope. Once again we see how conspiracy theories spread when they chime well with preconceived notions.
But back in 2015 the WHO updated the rules on disease naming, following perceived stigma attached to the Ebola river / region of West Africa.
You can find the rules here in this PDF link. See table B.
What’s the derivation of 冠狀 for ‘corona’, then? Is it a Chinese term for ‘crown’, a homophone of the Latin word ‘corona’, or something else?
冠 means ‘hat’ often appearing in combinations where it connotes ‘crown’, 狀 is ‘form’ or ‘shape’. Pronounced ‘guānzhuàng’ in Mandarin per Google translate. It’s a pre-existing word also equivalent to ‘coronal’ or ‘coronary’ in English, for example coronary artery=冠狀動脈, same term in Korean (although in Korean you just spell out ‘ko-ro-na’ in the Korean alphabet for the virus).
My Chinese friends in Texas are usually calling it “guangzhuang bindu.”
Guanzhuang Bingdu
冠 is pronounced guān in Mandarin