This is making the rounds of all my friends - Tropical Storm Longwang, heading towards Korea and Japan.
One sec.
<beavis>Longwang. snicker. He said “long wang”. Heh heh.</beavis>
Ok, it’s out of my system. But seriously, is this an actual name somewhere, and this is just a coincidence? I know in the US we have a list of names we pull from for tropical storms/hurricanes - is there something similar in that region?
I dare any western meteorologist to keep a straight face while reporting on Hurricane Long Wang:
Long Wang is gaining strength…
Nothing the size of Long Wang has been seen this season…
Long Wang has left the area drenched with moisture…
The effects of Long Wang are going to be felt for some time…
I should point out that the word doesn’t actually sound like “long wang”. The ‘o’ actually uses the “oo” sound as in “cool.” The ‘a’ is the “ah” sound. And even the ‘w’ has a hint of ‘v’ in it, sort of like a hybrid of the English ‘w’ and the German ‘w’.
This is, though, just the sort of thing that happens when going between languages. Take, for instance, Microsoft’s entry into the Chinese market. They chose the literal characters for “micro” and “soft”, but apparently to native Mandarin speakers the anatomical connotations are, well, overwhelming.
Again, one has to imagine the newscasters getting copy like:
*<micro><soft> is down in after-hours activity.*