Love-country = patriotism

“爱国（aìguó）- ‘patriotic’”

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Today is National Day in China, celebrating the foundation of the People’s Republic of China on October 1st, 1949. Obviously there is a lot of talk of patriotism.

The word for being patriotic in Chinese is wonderfully simple. The first character, 爱 means ‘to love’, and the second character, 国 means 'country’, so it’s literally 'to love one’s country’.

This word has spilled over into languages in countries near China that make use of, or have used Chinese characters and words, much like Latin words in English. In Japanese and Korean the same characters are used to make the word for 'patriotic’. In Japanese it is pronounced あいこく (aikoku) and in Korean it is 애국 (aeguk).

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This post was imported from my Tumblr, which I used for blogging between 2014 and 2015.