here is Yoneyama (old name of Yonex) in Kanji:

looks like "rice mountain" in chinese. :D

first character looks (to me) like a rising (or setting) sun reflecting on an ocean

any relation to Yonex Sunrise?

Dunno about that.

It looks like the word for 'rice'...the uncooked version.

Interesting, definitely YY is a rice hill for Yoneyama San,

after all rice hill means sth like "gold mine " in Chinese.

Chinese and Kanji have same meaning, but difference in pronunciation.
The first character in chinese pronunciation is 'Me' (like I, My, Me) and it means Rice (uncooked).
The second character in chinese pronunciation is 'Sun' (like Star, Moon, Sun) and it means Mountain or Hill.
In this case Kaffie is right : "rice mountain".

yes. in Chinese culture, rice is linked to wealth and prosperity. really interesting observation from Bbn, a gold mountain indeed for Mr. Yoneyama.

Ok, it's 'uncooked rice mountain'. What does rice have to do with badminton or Chandra Wijaya, anyway, apart from that he and the Yonex engineers eat it, of course... :D

Personal joke? Lol, no reason y the name should make sense in the context of the product, i mean wut does carlton have to do with baddy?

Seriously, I think it's the name of the founder, I guess. Since the Japanese have names with four letters, it's quite often their surnames are used as the company name, and their surnames are rather colourful. Hikaru (or is it Utada?) is "bright farm" no?

Grandchildren of Mr Yoneyama, anyone?

oh. yes. sorry i wasn't clear (i thought that's well known). Mr. Yoneyama is the founder of Yonex. the brand was originally Yoneyama and later on (70's) changed to Yonex.

the guy is still alive. you see him giving out prizes in the AE and JO all the time...

What's so diff between Chinese or Japanese or Korean?

Eg. Lin, Lim is Hayashi etc etc

Japanese count 1 to 10-

Ichi, Ni, San Shi, Go, Rok, Nana. hachi, kiu , Ju

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Of course there are regional differences and also formal, informal variations too.

A Korean student of mine (no Ha Tae-kwon jokes) told me once that 90% of their Korean language is made up of Chinese words, pronounced quite close to Chinese.

Japanese, as Bbn had said, is actually almost the same as Chinese but pronounced very differently. I once read a magazine that some part of Northern (or Southern?) Japan, the writings there are 99% Chinese.

I wonder if a Japanese would understand if you give them a phrase or sentence written in Chinese?

Yes, they would. On my brother's trip there, his wife got stomach upset and went to pharmacy there ... the only way they could communicate was through written Chinese.

-dave

Originally posted by wilfredlgf
A Korean student of mine (no Ha Tae-kwon jokes) told me once that 90% of their Korean language is made up of Chinese words, pronounced quite close to Chinese.


Yes, I talked with some young Korean neighbors and their parents before, and since their parents do not understand English, they have to translate English into Korean, to my surprise, I found out many of Korean words pronounced can be recognized as one of South China dialects that I speak. For example, The word "statistics" was pronounce exactly same.

Hey Kwun!

Shouldn't this post be in General Discussions or Chit Chat? ;)