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by toufka 3540 days ago
'Karaoke' too. Originally, 'kara'-'okestura' - a compound word short for 'box-orchestra'.
1 comments

The kara is not 空 as in empty?
It is.
A weird detail is the Chinese transliteration of "karaoke":卡拉OK. It starts out with two Chinese characters pronounced "ka" and "la", and then tacks on the English "OK": ka-la-OK. So the English word "orchestra" turned into "OK" after two transliterations.