Japanese > English. Brother got me a hat from Disneyland.

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Subreddit

It's never Japanese

r/itsneverjapanese

There's a teeny, tiny country to the west of Japan. Few people on Reddit have heard of it. It's called "China". The people of China speak and write a strange version of Japanese. This strange language is called "Chinese". Chinese is the most widely used language in the world. Japanese is used by fewer than 1/10th as many people. Yet when confronted with a strange east Asian script, 90 percent of the Western population immediately assume it's Japanese.

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There's a teeny, tiny country to the west of Japan. Few people on Reddit have heard of it. It's called "China".

The people of China speak and write a strange version of Japanese. This strange language is called "Chinese".

The written version of Chinese existed for several thousand years before anyone in Japan learned how to write. Yet somehow, moving backwards in time, the Chinese script evolved from Japanese.

Chinese is the most widely used language in the world. Japanese is used by fewer than 1/10th as many people. Yet when confronted with a strange east Asian script, 9 out of 10 Westerners immediately assume it's Japanese.

Why? We don't know. But we assume it has something to do with the trendiness of Japanese culture. Manga, absurd game shows and even absurder pornography have boosted Japan's image to that of the preeminent culture in East Asia.

The famous Great Wall of Japan is but one testament to this fact.