• DeeEmCeeTooBestGaem [she/her]
    ·
    7 hours ago

    In Japanese the official name is 新型コロナウィルス肺炎 (shingata koronawirusu haien) which is more or less equivalent to the Chinese, “new-type coronavirus lung inflammation”, but it hasn’t really been called that by anything other than government since 2020. Most of the time it’s just 新型コロナ (shingata korona), “new corona”. コロナ禍 (koronaka), literally “corona catastrophe” is the common term for the pandemic.

  • Erika3sis [she/her, xe/xem]
    ·
    edit-2
    7 hours ago

    In Japanese there's a similar term, しんがたはいえん (shingata-haien) — "new type lung inflammation" — however it seems more common to just call it コロナ (korona).

    In Norwegian Sign Language, Statped provides this diagram for how to sign "COVID-19"

    Show

    You don't need to be a fingerspelling expert to recognize that this sign starts with the letter C for Covid. The second part of the sign is the numeral 19. It feels a bit ironic, though, that the term Statped provides for COVID-19 actually violates COVID-19 mitigation guidelines, since you literally have to touch your nose to pronounce it, according to the diagram.

    I should note, however, that a video I found used a completely different term for the virus, that doesn't involve touching your face — this alternate name consists of the letter K for korona followed by the sign for virus/infect/epidemic/pandemic. It's very interesting to me that Norwegian Sign Language apparently doesn't distinguish viruses from epidemics from pandemics from the act of infecting someone, but I guess that isn't really a distinction you need to make, is it?

    Edit: I feel a bit silly for not realizing it was just the numeral 19.

  • tetrabrick [xey/xem, she/her]
    ·
    7 hours ago

    In Spanish it is also covid, but it's not clear about the gender of the word. Some say it is "la" because of "la" Covid disease and some say "el" from "el" covid virus

  • BashfulBob [none/use name]
    ·
    8 hours ago

    Honestly, I feel like calling it "lung inflammation" would get people's attention so much better than just the COVID shorthand.

    Much more literal and straightforward.

  • SummerIsTooWarm [any, undecided]
    ·
    7 hours ago

    In Germ*ny the term Corona is used colloquially and in formal communication it's refered to as COVID 19. Though calling it inflammation disease would be much better to highlight the dangers it still brings