A curious thought occurred to me on my drive home. I've known for a while that Japanese people often use very old/obscure kanji for their names, and for the longest while I reckoned this a tremendous pain. What if, however, instead of having a comprehensive knowledge of these characters, the typical Japanese speaker simply learns how to write the character? It's easy once you get the hang of it; all you need is a meaning, even if it's just the name of your best friend. I further compared this to how the typical English speaker can effortlessly pronounce most modern English first names, yet have very little idea what those names actually mean. "Scarlet" and "Autumn", certainly, but what about dear Ingram and Lambert, Aubrey and Samantha? Even the unassuming "Alice" has a history so obscure, one could spend an entire lifetime tracking it down.
The name Alice is a girl's name of German origin meaning "noble".
Alice was derived from the Old French name Aalis, a diminutive of Adelais that itself came from the Germanic name Adalhaidis. Adalhaidis, from which the name Adelaide is also derived, is composed of the Proto-Germanic elements aþala, meaning “noble,” and haidu, “kind, appearance, type.” Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland popularized the name in modern times.
Languages are so much fun. I wish I had more time to spend learning them.
LucianDreamer wrote:
Say goodbye to most normal type speedruns, because some crazy glitch discovered on my favorite game now allows speedrunners of this generation to waste only a tiny amount of their energy supply for a brief 15 to 30 minutes and only done from the very beginning of the game. I might as well sit back and go LOL when they go ultra-fast and lucky. XD
Yeah... I watch Summoning Salt's mini-documentaries on speedrunning scenes sometimes, and the tricks they pull off for the margins they get are freakin' crazy. Literal milliseconds could mean the difference between victory and anguish.