Alt text:
Astronomers are a little unsure of the applicability of this index, but NASA's Planetary Protection Officer is all in favor.
this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2024
458 points (98.3% liked)
xkcd
8839 readers
98 users here now
A community for a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Ah, it is Chinese, interesting. I'm guessing it's not the gonggong in 公共汽车, because that's a bus.
What, it almost literally is. It's 共工, like "work together"... but not like, go to work together (on the bus).
umm.
These characters have multiple entirely different meanings. How does one find out what the supposed meaning is? Or is it up to the reader to decide?
Context, apparently the word "set" has 430 meanings in the Oxford dictionary. So there's a lot of ambiguity. It's very confusing but I think we give as good as we get in that regard.