lmao, the kanji that represents France is the kanji for the Buddha/Buddhism

Me seeing this graphic in a Youtube video

"Buddha-type valve???"

(These are the three types of valves you find on bicycle tires: Presta, Dunlop and Schrader, often also called French, English and American valves, respectively)

I somehow didn't know this before and I find it really funny

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If anyone's wondering why, it's called ateji: writing foreign loanwords with kanji that have similar sounds but not necessarily much correspondence in meaning. Nowadays people just write things using katakana (a phonetic script where each character represents a single syllable), but ateji used to be the standard. That said, it's still very common to see single-character abbreviations for countries which use the first character of their ateji names (e.g. 独 for Germany, 豪 for Australia, and the aforementioned 仏 for France) in headlines as well as compounds like {日豪|にちごう}{関係|かんけい} (Japan-Australian relations) or, apparently, {仏式|ふつしき}バルブ.
The more astounding thing is that the kanji for "England" means outstanding or heroic. What makes England so outstanding? Their imperialism? Their utter failure to maintain a functioning state? Their train-replacement bus services?
- It's phonetic
  江戸時代ではイギリスのことを「エゲレス」と発音し、明治や大正時代では漢字で「英吉利」と書かれるようになり、その後「英国」と名付けられました source https://ryugaku-uk.net/2020/06/08/origin-of-igirisu/
  My haphazard attempt at a translation
  During the Edo period, England's pronunciation was 'Egeresu' and during the Meiji and Taisho Periods the kanji 英吉利 (eigiri?) were used. After this it was given the name 英国 (eikoku)
  So the 英 comes from the phonetic abbreviation. It's the same in Chinese where 英国 yingguo comes from 英格兰 yinggelan. In phonetic transcriptions, characters with good meanings are chosen over characters with negative meanings, so the 英 meaning heroic is incidental
  
  I love those sorts of terms in Japanese, like popcorn is ポップコーン (poppukōn) and katsuretsu, shortened to katsu, is from the English word cutlet.
- It's still a pretty generic concept like most of the other country ateji. 仏 on the other hand is heavily associated with Buddhism which you'd think could lead to a lot of unnecessary confusion.
  Whenever I see that character from now on I will think of Fr*nch people
Here's a pretty good explanation, in case anyone is curious: https://www.sljfaq.org/afaq/beikoku.html
Next time Amerikkkans
and refer to Asians as rice eaters or make a fuss about not using inch/foot/yard leave them a 米 (コメ) and remind them that they are from 米国
fuckin presta valves ugh
- Finally someone who gets it, fuck Presta valves
  
  "let's use an objectively worse system because we don't want to use the normie schrader valves"

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