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Sep 2, 2019 at 17:49 comment added Hasen 電影光碟 could be a VCD, it definitely doesn't specifically mean DVD. Chinese use the word DVD. I studied Chinese in China and DVD was used even in official Beijing Chinese language teaching materials, both written and audible. Also anyone you meet in China uses the word DVD. It's not unique to Chinese anyway, many languages contain English words, and equally for example English contains many French words. Even acronyms that aren't in common use in China, like USA, FBI, NASA etc, STILL require a way to refer to these types of words...hence my original question.
Sep 1, 2019 at 7:27 comment added Tang Ho You are confusing "mixing English elements in Chinese" with "treat English elements as Chinese. "看DVD" is Chinese mixing with English, "看電影光碟" is pure Chinese; "叫 Taxi" is Chinese mixing with English; 打的 is pure Chinese even 的 originally came from Taxi
Sep 1, 2019 at 7:02 comment added Hasen Actually they do use letters even in words that are not English at all. Like B超 for example. Building numbers, building departments etc also often use letters so you see them in addresses and such. But even the words that do come from English like DVD etc are in common use in China, - since there's no other word for DVD in China, that's the word they use, so they still need a way of describing these types of words. Just like western punctuation was also not a part of ancient Chinese, but in recent years, full stops, question marks etc were introduced and are now part of modern Chines too.
Aug 31, 2019 at 5:23 comment added Tang Ho @Hasen Chinese language really doesn't have alphabets. We use characters. When you see English in Chinese sentence--Those English parts are still English,
Aug 31, 2019 at 5:16 comment added Hasen "Chinese doesn't use alphabet" That's not correct at all. If it were, then none of these terms would exist. Chinese use the letters of the alphabet all over the place in fact, even though it's not strictly part of their language historically, it is a part of the modern language. And of course Chinese use the alphabet to refer to things like DVDs and such. I find Chinese and their language doesn't like to make distinctions between things (e.g. they use 羊 to refer to both goat and sheep) so it wouldn't surprise me if they did use 缩写 for everything. But for me I wanted to know what was correct.
Aug 30, 2019 at 4:01 comment added Tang Ho Similarly, the correct statement should be "中央情報局 的 簡稱 是 中情局", but Chinese often say "中央情報局 的 缩写 是 中情局"
Aug 30, 2019 at 3:59 history edited Tang Ho CC BY-SA 4.0
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Aug 30, 2019 at 3:53 comment added Tang Ho @Hasen Chinese doesn't use alphabet therefore we don't really use(首字母)缩写. acronym and initialism are all the same to us. The main translation of "abbreviation" is "簡稱" (simplified name). But most Chinese would call (首字母)缩写 as "簡稱" too. For example, the correct statement should be "CIA 是 中央情報局的缩写" , but people don't care if you say "CIA 是 中央情報局的簡稱"
Aug 30, 2019 at 3:29 comment added Hasen "Basically 缩写 is a correct translation of all three terms" That's the same as saying that 'abbreviation' is a correct description of all three terms in English though. Which is also true, they're all forms of abbreviation. But typically we use abbreviation to describe a word simply shortened. Like Application to App.
Aug 30, 2019 at 3:27 comment added Hasen Yes I'm aware of the meanings of the three words in English. Acronym and initialism are different in English, are you saying that they don't differentiate between the two in Chinese?
Aug 29, 2019 at 3:28 history edited Tang Ho CC BY-SA 4.0
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Aug 28, 2019 at 21:34 history edited Tang Ho CC BY-SA 4.0
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Aug 28, 2019 at 21:26 history edited Tang Ho CC BY-SA 4.0
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Aug 28, 2019 at 21:21 history edited Tang Ho CC BY-SA 4.0
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Aug 28, 2019 at 21:12 history answered Tang Ho CC BY-SA 4.0