In languages such as Japanese and Mandarin, that don't use a Latin alphabet, are phrases such as "That hallway is 'L' shaped" still used?

Oh I already graduated with a minor in East Asian studies and Japanese, but thanks :)

Congratulations! (Seriously.)

Like I said in my other comment, they don't use letters as descriptors very commonly.

The question is simply, "Do they use phrases such as 'L-shaped'?" The answer is an unequivocal yes. Is usage restricted? Naturally.

It's cool to know it's been happening more and more, but wasn't something I've heard people say before or read much about. Still not finding too many examples of it in what I'm looking up right now.

Again, the question does not pertain to frequency.

Also I stand by my last comment of your use of a specific economic branch being a "gotcha" for letter-like descriptors. There's a lot of not translated math terms across language groups and imo it doesn't prove much. This is a much better example, thanks :)

Japanese only borrows letter-shape descriptors from languages that use Roman script when the term is well-established international context and Japanese has no existing alternative? Whyever else would it describe shapes in terms of Latin letters?!

/r/NoStupidQuestions Thread Parent