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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   3538 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 14, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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I thought Japanese solved the issue of homophones with pitch accent

This is more of a thing with commonly used words. When you get to more technical or literary vocabulary it gets a lot harder to parse the meaning from etymology based on pronunciation alone compared to the less homophonous Greek or Latin derived technical vocabulary in English.

For literary vocabulary i could see that this might be an issue but isn't most technical vocabulary imported words from English and German?

I guess it depends on how you count (e.g. by dictionary entry vs weighted by usage frequency). Names for drugs like aspirin will be direct imports from English. Words for things like economics, maximum, limit, exchange, chemistry, heart attack, etc. will be words constructed from Chinese characters.

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