Re: Myth/debunk?

On Fri, 11 May 2007 07:19:26 -0400, Chris Kern wrote:

"Let’s take Japan for a moment. Truman’s advisors were very sceptical
about the prospects for democracy in Japan, as were most of the
“experts” of the time. And there were good reasons to be sceptical. This
was a country with virtually no exposure to the West for centuries.
Japan rigidly hierarchical society, and unique culture was seen as
antithetical to democratic life. In fact, when the concept of rights was
translated into Japan it took a compound word consisting of four
characters to express it."
(Natan Sharansky)

Can anyone help me with this idea that the concept of rights "took a
compound word with four characters to express it" in Japanese? Where
does it come from? How would the concept of rights have been translated
into Japanese during, say, the Meiji period?

Well, even before that, that kind of statement shows a complete
ignorance of linguistics -- the number of letters or characters a word
takes has nothing to do with this at all.

Couldn't agree more. What's interesting is that the term term for
democracy is 民主　- where the first character means people and the second
character means master. The English word democracy comes from the Ancient
Greek where the first part comes from the Greek 'demos' meaning common
people and the second part comes from the Greek 'kratia' which means power.

So, it looks like Sharansky is out in left field - the English and Japanese
terms are quite similar.

Phil Yff

.

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