Talking about writing letters, instead of using "敬启者" (To whom it may concern) or something like "尊敬的XX" (Dear XX) for a start, I like using "前略" (Dispensing with the preliminaries).
Then I just found out this "前略" is not a valid Chinese word. It's actually a Japanese word. The meaning can be extended as "Forgive me for dispensing with the preliminaries, but I hasten to inform you that...".
Despite it being a Japanese word, I noticed both I and my friend were totally ok to understand it. In Chinese, "前略" can be broken down into "前" front and "略" omit, which means omit the front part of opening the letter.
However, another Japanese word used in letter is "不一", which means "Very sincerely yours (valediction in correspondence)" in Japanese, but means "varying; differing; different; not uniform" in Chinese.
I wonder what happened in the history to make the word have such a big difference in meaning.
