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From: stevemac@bud.indirect.com (Steve MacGregor)
Subject: Dialect/Language
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Date: Tue, 16 May 1995 18:20:37 GMT
X-Disclaimer: I'm not overweight; I'm underheight!
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According to (*Expletive Deleted*) thedavid@clark.net ():
>
>Which reminds me: a Chinese friend said that the "Japanese" (WW2)
>characters for "kamikaze" could also mean "mentally ill."  True???

  There may be a Japanese word pronounced that way with that meaning, but 
the word "kamikaze" is generally written in Chinese chraracters.  It's a 
compound meaning "heaven-wind", coined some centuries ago when a rather 
large storm destroyed an invading Korean fleet.  They saw that storm as 
being of divine origin.
  I can see the WWII-era imagery being of a "storm" of aircraft destroying
the invading American fleet. 

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