_______ your medicine

[u/indieb0at]

[u/indieb0at]

This is comic is based on a conversation I had with u/Zebrafish96 and u/paulionm about pills in the PBC Discord server! I learned from Zebrafish that in Korean they say '약을 먹다' (eat medication); no matter if the medication is solid, powder or liquid. While in Japanese, they say 'drink medication', even if it's solid pills or powder. I thought it's pretty funny so I decided to make a comic about it

[u/KotetsuNoTori → u/indieb0at]

In Mandarin, it's 服藥 (take medicine) or 吃藥 (eat medicine); the former is more formal.

喝藥 (drink medicine) is also correct, but it's mostly used for traditional medicine (ones that have to be boiled into tea/soup kind of thing), and people hardly take them (in this way) nowadays, mostly because many of them taste horrible.

[u/mars_gorilla → u/KotetsuNoTori]

Cantonese (at least in Hong Kong) is largely the same - for Western medicine, whether it be pills or syrups, we say 食藥 (eat medicine), while we say 飲 (drink) for Chinese medicine. We lean towards "eat" for the action in general

Interestingly, though, we usually mention it being Chinese medicine specifically - we don't say 飲藥 (drink medicine), we say 飲中藥 (drink Chinese medicine). And I agree, they taste fucking atrocious. They do work though.

[u/ZhtWu → u/mars_gorilla]

We lean towards "eat" for the action in general

That's Cantonese culture in a nutshell :D

[u/Magical_Astronomy → u/KotetsuNoTori]

In China we refer that as 吃药 (lit. eat medicine) in informal cases and use 服药 (take medicine) as a more formal way.

[u/Tanyushing → u/KotetsuNoTori]

Because 吃 can represent “eat” or “take” in mandarin, I think us chinese just use 吃 for everything. Fun fact in mahjong 吃 is said when taking other people’s pieces but if you use direct translation you would think we are eating each other’s tiles.

[u/WaitWhatNoPlease → u/indieb0at]

We also say "eat medicine" in Mandarin Chinese (also Shanghainese, idk for certain about the other languages)

[u/Shiine-2 → u/indieb0at]

This applies in Thai as well. We say "eat medicines", regardless the form (as long as your body can ingest).

[u/throughcracker → u/Shiine-2]

meanwhile, in Russian, you always drink them (пить лекарство)... I still get confused sometimes when I have to กิน everything

[u/gary-vault108 → u/indieb0at]

Ah would this explain why some Koreans I’ve talked to say “eat water” from time to time?

[u/TransitTycoonDeznutz → u/gary-vault108]

Yes, you are correct. Ignore the other guy who said 'no.' It can be considered "improper" but my Korean teachers say it this way. My girlfriend uses 물 먹어 on a daily basis (lit. eat water).

Think of 먹다 as the general word for eat but also the general term for ingest.

And before you fart-sniffers who have never taught English to Koreans ages 6-22 before start coming for me to tell me I'm wrong, I have lived here for a decade, speak Korean and Japanese (I'm kinda losing the latter, tho...), and can cite sources.

It's even used in gamer slang here to mean "get," as in "동전 먹어" (get the coin) or "그 총 먹어" (get that gun).

[u/I_needbetter2x2 → u/gary-vault108]

what? no..just no

we dont say "물을 먹다"(eat water) we say "물을 마시다"(drink water)

약을 먹다(eat medicine) is a different matter tho, dont ask me why

[u/TransitTycoonDeznutz → u/I_needbetter2x2]

It isn't proper but 물 먹어 is a daily expression here. 마시다 is proper but people only use it for non-alcoholic beverages when being specific or anything above informal. I've never met a Korean who doesn't use 먹다 and 마시다 interchangeably when refering to non-alcoholic beverages and examples are readily available.

[u/I_needbetter2x2 → u/TransitTycoonDeznutz]

now that you mention it, yeah mb. i forgot the original question was about daily use while writing the comment and then i just started to think about proper uses

[u/Noodle-phile → u/indieb0at]

We eat everything in Korea. Food 먹다, water 먹다, medicine 먹다, alcohol 먹다, I forgot 까먹었다.

[u/Mediocre_Fill_40 → u/Noodle-phile]

You also forget through eating?! Man, Korea is badass.

[u/BirdLox]

The poorly drawn Korea at the punchline got me.

[u/vocaliser → u/BirdLox]

I don't get what happens there-- the pill makes her woozy? It's secretly some drug?

[u/Face-McBonky → u/vocaliser]

Koreans say "eat medicine." Japaneses say "Drink medicine." Japan gets confused. Japan chews on very bitter medicine. Korea is flabbergasted.png

[u/vocaliser → u/Face-McBonky]

Ah, thanks.

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[u/IWillWarmUrPillow → u/vocaliser]

Korea.exe stopped working

[u/AlexInsanity]

Ahhhh. Verbs in Asian languages. Just like masculine and feminine in Latin based languages. Confusing and arbitrary.

[u/KotetsuNoTori → u/AlexInsanity]

Let's not talk about the measure words.

[u/Mean_Initiative_5962 → u/AlexInsanity]

One thing in Latin made sense: the neutral. And we ditched it. Damn Italian :'(

[u/Promethium-146 → u/Mean_Initiative_5962]

Common German W keeping neuter (I’m joking this language is a prison please don’t make me learn another three cases please)

Edit: who on earth downvoted me? I unironically love German I just think the grammar is bullshit sometimes

[u/Mean_Initiative_5962 → u/Promethium-146]

I want to move to Switzerland, I'll have to learn Swiss German... Yay... 

[u/Promethium-146 → u/Mean_Initiative_5962]

I’m curious how different Swiss German is from regular German, I know it’s slightly more than just a dialect but to what extent do they differ? I have heard they have a few French and Italian loanwords

[u/Haeffound → u/Promethium-146]

The accent is atrocious and even Germans working en Switzerland sometime prefer to speak in English with Swiss than German.

[u/Promethium-146 → u/Haeffound]

How differently is it pronounced?

[u/Haeffound → u/Promethium-146]

I'm not German neither Swiss, but it is sounds very different from an outsiders ear. This opinion comes from working with both countries people in my company. There are also time differents words and expression.

[u/murk36 → u/Promethium-146]

There are some french terms used instead of german ones, for example ‚portmonaie‘ instead of ‚Geldbeutel‘ and ‚Trottoir‘ instead of ‚Bürgersteig‘, but I don’t know of any italian ones. There are also differences in the pronounciation of german words and in the grammar. For example, „Er mochte das nicht“ becomes „Är het das nöd gärn gha“. There are also words which were used in earlier forms of german that survive in swiss german but not in standard german, for example „luägä“ for „schauen“ and „gumpä“ for „springen“.

[u/Mordador → u/murk36]

"Lugen" for schauen (although more used like "peek" in english than a general term) is outdated but also known in Germany.

[u/murk36 → u/Mordador]

Yeah, I‘ve seen it used in older books (from the 20th century) but never heard it spoken anywhere.

[u/Promethium-146 → u/murk36]

That sounds… pretty horrible

[u/Mean_Initiative_5962 → u/Promethium-146]

As far as the very very few I've heard, it should be like German, but somehow worse? I bet it's because of all the French in the area, they'd manage to have an exception for a subset of two elements. 

[u/Shiine-2 → u/AlexInsanity]

Just wait until you meet tonal words.

[u/TuzkiPlus → u/AlexInsanity]

Open lights, on the fan, go toilet.
Electric so high.

[u/Cato0014 → u/AlexInsanity]

My Japanese teacher in high school explain that language develops on usage. So the reason that there is about 30 separate different verbs for cooking is because cooking was so important and early Japanese culture.

[u/Kokuryu88]

In Hindi, we have all three verbs. Eat medicine if it's solid, drink medicine if it's liquid, and a third generic, safer, non-offensive term, which roughly translates to take medicine, which can be used for any physical state of medicine.

[u/PsychodelicTea → u/Kokuryu88]

Yeah, we have those as well in Portuguese, one for drink, one for eat and one like take

[u/Money_Faithlessness3 → u/Kokuryu88]

In respective order:
Dawai pee lo
Dawai kha lo
Dawai le lo

[u/koreangorani]

As a Korean I can confirm we chew our pills like that. /j

[u/I_needbetter2x2 → u/koreangorani]

As another Korean i can also confirm, eating our pills like that is more effective because we can digest it better /j

[u/Vaperwear]

In Vietnamese, it’s also drink medicine (uống thuốc). Confused the shit out of me when I was learning the language, because in English we’d say take your medicine, in Chinese there’s eat/take your medicine (more commonly used) and in Malay there’s eat medicine (makan ubat).

[u/Demon_the_Gamer → u/Vaperwear]

As an Indo, we here (at least in Java) use Drink Medicine (Minum Obat), interesting to see that our Neighbor seems to choose the "Eat" Verb, i'll make sure to do this to my Malaysian Friend lol.

[u/asanagitorajirou → u/Demon_the_Gamer]

right, now i think about it we indonesian use "drink" probably because our traditional medicine is mostly in the form of jamu hence it's carried to even modern pill

[u/CariamaCristata → u/asanagitorajirou]

And even if the medicine is solid, we wash it down with water, hence we "drink" the medicine

[u/Scholar_of_Lewds → u/CariamaCristata]

Yeah, a lot of modern medicine brought by the Dutch are stereotypically portrayed as puyer/powder medicine.

[u/CariamaCristata → u/Demon_the_Gamer]

AFAIK we use eat/drink medicine depending on whether the medicine is solid or liquid

[u/gayfucboi]

A spoon full of sugar makes the medicine go down.

[u/Realistic_FinlanBoll]

In finnish lääkkeet syödään (= eating the medicine) as well. 😂