You know, when terms get transferred from other languages, they don't always retain the meaning from the original language and may undergo a semantic change in the destination language. For instance, nobody is going to characterize the modern usage of "demagogue" (originally just meaning "a popular leader" from Greek) as "purposefully misleading", and you shouldn't be doing that for these Chinese terms either. Also I don't know where you're getting this "intended cultural exclusion" thing from when that's what you yourself are doing in your comment by insisting your outsider interpretation of these terms in a different cultural context is correct. Thanks!

> I'll be sure to correct any chinese coworkers I have using these purposefully misleading phrases instead of the correct ones. Thanks!

People communicating with other people using native language? We can't have that! Please revert to proper international languages like latin or esperanto immediately!

Or for those who wish to cross the lack of baggage of latin with the popularity of esperanto, there's Peano's (yes, that Peano) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latino_sine_flexione ...

So passive aggressive lol. It’s ironic that your username says “zen”.

I’ve never even heard a native Chinese coworker use these terms before. It seems you haven’t either.