i’ll never understand why we don’t call countries the names they actually call themselves
like, i know this is a weeaboo-sounding example, but let’s start with Japan. They call themselves Nippon or Nihon depending on… i guess, the speaker’s accent??? or their level of formality while speaking??? I dunno. But we still called them Zipangu for like a few hundred years. And now we call them Japan.
All because Marco Polo asked someone in China about that island over there and they said “oh that’s Cipangu” and Marco Polo was like “Oh, Zipangu, cool.” And then he went back to Italy and said “Y’ALL THERE’S THIS DOPE-ASS ISLAND CALLED ZIPANGU” and people back in Italy were like “An island called Giappone? Dope.”
And this pattern of people mishearing people kept repeating until we got to “Japan.”
And we still call them Japan even though we know better. Because fuck you, Marco Polo asked the wrong person 500 years ago and misheard them and we’re sticking to that, I guess.
that was literally just the world’s worst game of telephone
That is the exact spot my parents found a stray kitten. Nice little addition to the family, but would have been a terrible addition to the pavement had she not been very vocal OTL
No joke, the place where that cat is resting in this picture is called a “dead cat hole” it’s an automotive term. Don’t believe me, look it up.
This is also where I found a stray cat, she was up in there during a thunderstorm and I begged my dad to let me being her inside and that’s the story of how I got my first cat.
Please don’t skip over this without reading it and making a mental note. Even if you don’t have a car, tell your parents or whoever, and make sure to do this. You think that’ll never happen but that’s what everyone thought who had this happen and didn’t check, and that poor cold cat met with a terribly sad end.
