Bing = Disease, how come I didn't realize that?

Bing is exactly mean disease in Chinese Mandarine, even the intonationa (4th downword tone) is correct. Now, I feel like MS is promoting disease Bill should terminate it because it is exactly opposite of what he is doing.

This is nothing new; you know "Windows Vista" means "Chicken" in Latvian?

Granted, they could have done more research, but name like "Bing" or "Kumo" are just contrived. They have well-recognised brands like MSN and Windows Live, they should deliver a quality product that does its job as advertised, a rose by any other name...

W3bbo said:

This is nothing new; you know "Windows Vista" means "Chicken" in Latvian?

Granted, they could have done more research, but name like "Bing" or "Kumo" are just contrived. They have well-recognised brands like MSN and Windows Live, they should deliver a quality product that does its job as advertised, a rose by any other name...

I'm quoting anonimously from an internal email:

"For a single-syllable word, you pretty much are guaranteed that *some* reading in Chinese will be a word with a negative connotation. Not only does Chinese employ tones (giving you 4 to 8 [depending on the dialect] possible pronunciations for what in English all map to the same spelling), the language is also rich in homophones. For example, "bing" spoken with a low tone can mean "third place", "to reject", "brilliant", or "luminous"; spoken in a  falling tone, it can mean "happy", "nightmare", or "illness". Speakers of the language rely heavily on context to disambiguate the multiple meanings.

 Even if you pick a "how could anybody possibly object to this?" word like "hao" (good), by mixing up the tone, and exploiting homophones, you have alternate readings which mean "to pull weeds", "to bawl", "air-raid shelter", "heroic", "to waste money" or "bright".

 So a negative connotation for one reading of a single-syllable word in Chinese really doesn't mean much, IMO. You can do that with pretty much any single-syllable Chinese word."

Bing is a Chinese term for flatbread http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bing_(Chinese_flatbread)"> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bing_(Chinese_flatbread) Is the intonation different?

brian.shapiro said:

Bing is a Chinese term for flatbread http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bing_(Chinese_flatbread)"> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bing_(Chinese_flatbread) Is the intonation different?

"bing" (bịnh) in Vietnamese also means sickness...

But, like Paolo said, we can apply 6 tones (neutral, rising, falling, extended-falling, questioning, extended-questioning) to any sound, and "bing" actually have more than 6 meanings in VN if you applied each of the tones...

You're gonna offend somebody anyway, it's the content that counts.

Although, the "nova" was true to its name, wasn't it 

brian.shapiro said:

Bing is a Chinese term for flatbread http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bing_(Chinese_flatbread)"> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bing_(Chinese_flatbread) Is the intonation different?

冰 (Chinese simplified for ice) in pinyin is also pronounced bing... as far as I'm concerned the meaning is derived from the sentence in spoken language anyway and since the Chinese are usually very positively oriented people, they don't always think of horrible things in the first place.

Minh said:

brian.shapiro said:

*snip*

"bing" (bịnh) in Vietnamese also means sickness...

But, like Paolo said, we can apply 6 tones (neutral, rising, falling, extended-falling, questioning, extended-questioning) to any sound, and "bing" actually have more than 6 meanings in VN if you applied each of the tones...

You're gonna offend somebody anyway, it's the content that counts.

Although, the "nova" was true to its name, wasn't it 

Interestingly, 'sick' in English slang also means something positive

brian.shapiro said:

Bing is a Chinese term for flatbread http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bing_(Chinese_flatbread)"> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bing_(Chinese_flatbread) Is the intonation different?

The flatbread is 3rd intonation. Going low voice.

Sadly bing in Eglish is 4th intonation, going down like saying "Yes, I do", which is disease.

I guess you can make acception in Chinese webpage using 1st intonation, flat like saying "I", which is ice.

Dodo said:

brian.shapiro said:

*snip*

冰 (Chinese simplified for ice) in pinyin is also pronounced bing... as far as I'm concerned the meaning is derived from the sentence in spoken language anyway and since the Chinese are usually very positively oriented people, they don't always think of horrible things in the first place.

Ping is more like 拼. or 聘.

"Now, I feel like MS is promoting disease" .. perhaps they were hoping its popularity would spread like a disease..   but tbh from that video preview I think its weak, definitely wouldn't get through my highly impenetrable immune system

littleguru said:

Just rebrand it for China. Like Google did What's the problem?

Google didn't rebrand for China, they're still called Google over there.

PaoloM said:

W3bbo said:

*snip*

I'm quoting anonimously from an internal email:

"For a single-syllable word, you pretty much are guaranteed that *some* reading in Chinese will be a word with a negative connotation. Not only does Chinese employ tones (giving you 4 to 8 [depending on the dialect] possible pronunciations for what in English all map to the same spelling), the language is also rich in homophones. For example, "bing" spoken with a low tone can mean "third place", "to reject", "brilliant", or "luminous"; spoken in a  falling tone, it can mean "happy", "nightmare", or "illness". Speakers of the language rely heavily on context to disambiguate the multiple meanings.

 Even if you pick a "how could anybody possibly object to this?" word like "hao" (good), by mixing up the tone, and exploiting homophones, you have alternate readings which mean "to pull weeds", "to bawl", "air-raid shelter", "heroic", "to waste money" or "bright".

 So a negative connotation for one reading of a single-syllable word in Chinese really doesn't mean much, IMO. You can do that with pretty much any single-syllable Chinese word."

But according to Dr. Qi Lu, who thought about going back to live in his native China before accepting Steve Ballmer’s offer to head up Microsoft’s search effort, Bing means something a little more positive in Chinese: "Bing" also resonates with an audience Google is yet to dominate: China. "The actual Chinese characters are two characters, 'Bi' and 'Ing' and combined these two characters mean 'very certain to respond' and 'very certain to answer'," Dr Lu said. "That's a terrific representation of what our brand stands for in the Chinese language."

From http://liveside.net/main/archive/2009/05/29/some-quick-takes-on-bing.aspx

GoddersUK said:

PaoloM said:

*snip*

But according to Dr. Qi Lu, who thought about going back to live in his native China before accepting Steve Ballmer’s offer to head up Microsoft’s search effort, Bing means something a little more positive in Chinese: "Bing" also resonates with an audience Google is yet to dominate: China. "The actual Chinese characters are two characters, 'Bi' and 'Ing' and combined these two characters mean 'very certain to respond' and 'very certain to answer'," Dr Lu said. "That's a terrific representation of what our brand stands for in the Chinese language."

From http://liveside.net/main/archive/2009/05/29/some-quick-takes-on-bing.aspx

Bi-ing? I guess he means, Hundred Win. Something like Hundred Win Must Succeed 百贏必勝(although I maybe just made that up).

oh FFS... Let the rest of the world just call it American Bing like they did for Football.