Brand Pronunciation Differences | Chinese VS Korean VS Japanese

Keep watching:
Chinese VS Korean VS Japanese | Chopsticks Differences & Dining Etiquettes
Chinese & Korean & Japanese Swap Snacks
These Japanese Brands Are Translated Completely Differently in Mandarin!

[Kentalot]

I actually have a theory of why Chinese tends to translate while Korean and Japanese tends to transliterate. Korean has an alphabet while Japanese has a syllabary. Therefore transliteration is relatively straightforward and therefore people can memorize the transliterations much easier since you can jumble sounds together and it's no problem. The problem (and good part in some cases) is that Chinese uses characters and characters usually pack a lot of meaning density, so character meanings are generally much more important than in languages that use alphabets and stuff. Those languages, each letter or syllable doesn't have meaning at all, but each character in Chinese does. Therefore if you try to transliterate, it's actually difficult for many reasons:
1. Because each character has meaning, people that make up the Chinese name for it has to try to choose things that have nice meanings like 美 for the -me in America. This limits the number of valid characters and sounds usable.
2. Similarly, if you just randomly throw characters together that have no related meaning and then say that's the name, it's hard to remember which character was used for the transliteration since we have so many homophones and we can't rely on the meaning of the character anymore if it's a pure transliteration.
3. Sounds are limited to Chinese character sounds. This is a similar restriction as all languages, but is exacerbated by the fact that if you want increased precision like every consonant be represented like how Japanese does it. It becomes long, like Japanese, but long in Chinese is much more inconvenient to write since characters have so many strokes and the problems listed above also increase with a longer transliteration.
4. Translation is easy and obvious for some things (take Star in Starbucks, transliteration would be at least two characters, or three or four if you want precision, while star is just do easy to translate and remember) so rather than go through a big process of thinking of the best, most concise, most precise, most good meaning transliteration, translation ends up being easier to do and easier to remember and easier to write.
5. Somewhat related to the others, sometimes to get a specific sound, you have to choose a very rarely used word which also makes it harder to remember.

The holy grail is of course transliteration with good, easy to remember characters that have the same meaning as the original (i.e. is a good translation too), and sounds similar. I'm sure there's some like that but I can't think of any for now. Coca-Cola almost hits those points but since even English has no meaning it's obviously not a translation, but they used characters with a related meaning as a beverage, which is great since that helps with remembering the name.

[nctzenblinkstay]

Hello Jessie!
I have been learning Chinese since an year and your videos are helping me along as well. ❤

[simeao]

Man Jessie is so nice in host, nice voice, speak well and clearly, congrats.

[crushivintage]

Chinese with Jessie always is truthful and wonderful!

[razie_]

I like how the other pronunciations really tried to match the original but Chinese just picked some characters and was like “Eh, close enough”

[Taka-bwex]

虽然看到的机会不多，但是其实日本也有Lay's哦~
我们说レイズ(reizu)，跟韩文蛮像的。
Actually, you can buy Lay's in Japan, too. It's just not famous as other brands. We call it レイズ(reizu), it sounds quite similar to the Korean pronunciation.

[davidsanders]

Haha. The only three languages I have ever tried to learn (and failed at badly). I can tell you (though you probably already know) that the reason Japanese is so long is because their grammar has so many honourific prefixes and suffixes. Plus they much prefer a noun ends in a vowel so, if it's an English loan word, they often have to extend it to ensure a vowel at the end. I love these comparison videos you make. Thank you.

[shellfishtani]

Makudo means McDonald's in Kyoto dialect.
Makudo also means "we got company let's get outta here".

[junbum]

In Korea, if some place have Mcdonalds or Starbucks, It's similar as Station Influence Area, Hyperlocal. There property prices will be high. Thanks for inviting!!

[luvscatz._]

We can learn Chinese, Korean and Japanese at the same time, so cool 🤩💖

[BrockMak]

4:20 Same as Lays, the UK equivalent is Galaxy. Australia and NZ also sell the UK equivalent.

[lenguyenxuonghoa]

If you have chance, you can do a video about the Chinese loanwords between each Sinosphere country, you could include Vietnamese in that video bcuz their language has a lot of Chinese loanwords

[mbank]

If only the countries they came from can get along like these three, this world will be a peaceful place

[ElementEvilTeam]

how about japanese brand in chinese/korean/japanese?

[PongoXBongo]

This is endlessly fascinating. I would have thought that brand names were like people's names in that they do not change depending on which country you're in; only being pronunced with an accent. Like, my name shouldn't go from "Steve" to "Wang bo fan" just because I hop on an airplane (just maybe become "Steebu" or something).

[BrockMak]

0:46 It would translate as M's, but that could also mean "menstrual cycles", or me confusing them as McFlurrys (becuase it has M & M's in it).

[BrockMak]

Because Bucks means dollars or White-tailed deer, but that's more associated with Milwaukee Bucks, the basketball team from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, but Starbucks is from Seattle, Washington. If it was translated, it would make no sense.

[QuizmasterLaw]

5:21 that japenese guy clearly fears bears! 怕熊
for example

[QuizmasterLaw]

I have enough trouble learning Mandarin but you and Lee might enjoy 808CJK which is a youtube channel that does comparisons of Chinese Japanese and Korean including hanzi/kanji

[buddhisminvietnamandoverseas]

You should do a comparison with Vietnamese.