Thursday, March 19, 2015

How to Avoid Brainwashing Yourself and Those Around You

Tim Maddog posted on his facebook page a valuable list of words that were inserted into the language usages in order to brainwash people.

Don't use words and phrases like these — they belittle Taiwan:

大陸 / the mainland

島嶼 / the island

兩岸 / the two sides

內地 / the interior

國語 / the national language (referring to Mandarin)

全省 / provincewide

外省/本省人 / people from outside/within the province

台灣省 / Taiwan Province

中華民國 / ROC

民國年 / ROC year

中國新年 / Chinese New Year

中華台北 / Chinese Taipei

台灣地區 / the Taiwan area

龍的傳人 / Descendants of the Dragon

炎黃子孫 / Descendants of the Yan and Huang Emperors

我們中國人 / we Chinese

我們都是一家人 / we are all one family

Here is an editorial on choice of words and their affect.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

國語 / the national language (referring to Mandarin)

This one always been a big hit on me : which one to use ? 中文?普通話?漢語?華語?I always thought best is just 中文 for 中國的語文. Because 普通話 sounds a bit like common language (who whom ?), 漢語 emphasis on the ethnic aspect of language and can be turned against Taiwan too, 華語 just seems archaic.

So your list is good, but you should offer best replacement for each of them ;-).