Re[2]: [tied] Re: The Philistines

At 10:17:14 PM on Wednesday, March 12, 2003, Glen Gordon
wrote:

> Chinese do this to foreign names all the time. Take a look
> at the Mandarin word for "America" which is a phonetically
> similar /meiguo/. While the word is in part taken from
> English "America", it has been reanalysed according to
> native elements such that the word literally means
> "beautiful country" (/mei/ "beautiful" + /guo/ "country").

As I understand it, it isn't a matter of reanalysis.
Rather, a appropriately meaningful phrase is intentionally
found that is phonetically similar to the foreign target.

Brian