• Cyborganism
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    10 days ago

    I’m not a native anglophone even though I’m pretty fluent. But I don’t know how to pronounce “kowtow”.

    Does it sound like “cow-cow” or more like “cow-toe”?

    • RedAggroBest@lemmy.world
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      10 days ago

      Both halves rhyme with cow. It’s a Chinese (iirc?) word used in most of the east Asia to refer to deep bows or prostration used as a sign of deep respect (or more often a deep apology in a modern context) but in the west it has much more of an insulting use to imply someone is an ass-kisser.