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>>By the way, did you hear the one about the phone being answered with: "Hello! This is the fridge; the answering machine is on holidays."
No, I haven't heard that one.
But if the answering machine picks up, the caller can say,
"Is your refrigerator running? You'd better go catch it".
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>another example is your typhoon, which doesn't mean big wind. the "tai" is the same tai as in sen"dai" and "tai"wan<
William, you're right and I'm wrong - teach me to post without checking my facts!
I just looked up typhoon in my English-Chinese dictionary and interestingly enough it shows the character as in 'tai'-wan, BUT with the addition of a wind radical. So the one in day-to-day use is just a simplification.
Neither of my Chinese-English dictionaries shows this character, but my Japanese one (Nelson's) does. Curiouser and curiouser.
..I used to have a marvellous thing called just 'Karlgren', which showed the derivation (including three to six stages of character development over the years) and classical Chinese pronunciations of characters, along with all their ancient meanings. It was just a heap of photocopies - not sure if the original was ever published - I'll try to dig through my chests and see if it has stuck with me through my travels.
(BTW yes, I knew 'if if' was a joke.)
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funny thing is, typhoon is a big wind! so that IS what it means in a way, but i can't find out why! japanese does tend to simplify chinese characters doesn't it, as well as take combinations as they are. i don't know any chinese at all (and not that much japanese!) so these things are tough!
ne
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Carpal Tunnel
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Re karlgren
I punched Karlgren Chinese into Google and came up with a bunch of web sites.
Example
www.cohums.ohio-state.edu/deall/chan.9/articles/period-a.htm
His first name was Bernhard.
TEd
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OK, y'all Nipponophones (I made that up, someone pls correct me): the Japanese Pokemon (movie, cartoon, trading cards) is a big deal among kids in the US. I was told the name comes from Pocket Man, meaning small person. Anything to do with Walk Man? And is this story true?
And by the way, how did we come up with the term animé to mean Japanese animation?
And BTW2, johnjohn, for me 'Walkman' has become generic. I wouldn't know what else to call it..... *wandering off, wondering what the plural of Walkman is*.....
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Carpal Tunnel
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I was told that it is Jamaican in origin, and was descriptive of an ambler, also known as a (slow)poke mon.
All seriousness aside (I LOVE that phrase!) pokemon is derived from Pocket Monster.
Walkman is singular only. After all, you can only use one at a time.
Cf. mongoose:
I have two mongeese.
No, I have two mongooses.
Dammit.
I have a mongoose. And, oh yes, and I have another one.
TEd
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extraordinarily edifying, Mr Ted 
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>And by the way, how did we come up with the term animé to mean Japanese animation?
a very good question, it being French for animation. and while we're engaging in BTWs, one of the reasons that this particular art form is so popular with young American males supposedly is the absence of political correctness -- which brings us full circle back to Walkman....
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"And by the way, how did we come up with the term animé to mean Japanese animation?" What is this I see before me? A question that is not only on track with the thread but that I can answer? Quick, I'll jump in before william gets on-line... The Japanese adopted the word animation from English. Transliterated into Japanese writing and then retransliterated (?!?) back into English, it would spell a-ni-me-sho-n. But that's all too much of a mouthful so the Japanese abbreviated it to a-ni-me. And when it then came back into English, in order to represent the 'me' as a full separate syllable rather than an add-on consonant plus silent e, it picked up an accent. See what I mean about English-Japanese-English? Cool, isn't it? 
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>the Japanese abbreviated it <
Something they do a lot. Compare Pokemon earlier. This is probably now the most famous example, although the one that always used to get quoted when I was learning Japanese was wa-pu-ro.
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