Also there's a non-zero chance that Kahl is going to end up calling Lan Wangji "brother".
...and I already spent time figuring out how that would translate into Mandarin, since Mandarin is so much more specific than English about family, and Kahl comes from a very specific, non-Western cultural context. Therefore: Kahl would probably use 兄弟/Xiongdi for LWJ, because he'd use it for everybody, apart from the absolute babiest of siblings.
And when I say everybody, I mean everybody. People older than him. People half his age. People others would call "elder sister" or "shifu" or "an ancient biomechanical war machine". It doesn't matter, as long as Kahl identifies someone as sharing enough common experience with him, they're a brother. And that means they're a peer, with Kahl making a deliberate, intentional rejection of hierarchical structure. Hence, Xiongdi is the closest translation of that feeling. ...Which still might not entirely translate, because Kahl looks older than he probably is, but
i can't help it, i saw a chance to get nerdy about linguistics, and i just had to
no subject
Also there's a non-zero chance that Kahl is going to end up calling Lan Wangji "brother".
...and I already spent time figuring out how that would translate into Mandarin, since Mandarin is so much more specific than English about family, and Kahl comes from a very specific, non-Western cultural context. Therefore: Kahl would probably use 兄弟/Xiongdi for LWJ, because he'd use it for everybody, apart from the absolute babiest of siblings.
And when I say everybody, I mean everybody. People older than him. People half his age. People others would call "elder sister" or "shifu" or "an ancient biomechanical war machine". It doesn't matter, as long as Kahl identifies someone as sharing enough common experience with him, they're a brother. And that means they're a peer, with Kahl making a deliberate, intentional rejection of hierarchical structure. Hence, Xiongdi is the closest translation of that feeling. ...Which still might not entirely translate, because Kahl looks older than he probably is, but
i can't help it, i saw a chance to get nerdy about linguistics, and i just had to