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| Asian charactered tattoos |
| 04.26.05 (8:45 am) [edit] |
|
I hate them. I don't like them on Asians and especially non-Asians. I usually don't think people know what the characters are saying. I equate tattoo artists who don't really know how to write the characters to little kids learning to print their ABCs. But anyway, the meaning is the most important part, right? Here's a site where people didn't get their research done correctly before getting their tattoos...[url=http://www.hanzismatter.com/]Misuse of Chinese characters[/url]. One of my favourites is the cow one. I think tattooed English words are silly, too. I guess some people treat Asian characters as an art form. But it's an a-l-p-h-a-b-e-t. |
posted by: rinna (reply)
post date: 04.26.05 (2:04 pm)
Hahahaha! The heifer one was a riot!!! Some people are so bloody stupid.
posted by: lynne (reply)
post date: 04.26.05 (2:08 pm)
I always thought it would be fun to have "It isnt wise to get foreign language tattos" written on my butt in Chinese. But I dont think I'll be getting any tattoos so I guess that little joke will never happen.
posted by: mblog (reply)
post date: 04.29.05 (2:36 pm)
I'm sure you've seen people in Asia with nonsensical things written in English on their clothing.
As for tattoos, even if they get the characters correct, they are still often missing the point. If I wouldn't have the word "peace" or "destiny" tattooed on me in English, I have no reason to think it would be any less silly in Chinese. (Which BTW is not technically an alphabet.)
posted by: rosietulips (reply)
post date: 04.29.05 (2:38 pm)
Reply to: mblog
What do you call Chinese if it's not an alphabet? www.engrish.com ;-)
posted by: newbie (reply)
post date: 04.29.05 (3:56 pm)
The Chinese and Japanese use "characters".
posted by: newbie (reply)
post date: 04.29.05 (3:57 pm)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_language
posted by: rosietulips (reply)
post date: 04.29.05 (8:26 pm)
Reply to: newbie
But the whole set of thousands of characters make what?
posted by: rosietulips (reply)
post date: 04.29.05 (8:27 pm)
Reply to: newbie
Thanks.
posted by: princessapricot (reply)
post date: 05.02.05 (6:56 am)
Oops - don't look on my back - I have the Chinese characters for Grace permanently etched back there! Love the characters, love the "meaning" of them - and had a realy Asian tattoo them onto a real Asian body.
posted by: rosietulips (reply)
post date: 05.02.05 (10:10 am)
Reply to: princessapricot
Well, I can pardon you for your tattoo since it's very authentic!! ;-)
posted by: mblog (reply)
post date: 05.05.05 (10:54 am)
Reply to: rosietulips
A set of characters that represent individual phonemes are an alphabet. They represent individual sounds, and can be combined into digraphs, consonant blends, diphthongs, and so forth, and are used to make up words.
You don't "spell" things with Chinese characters.
Characters such as Hiragana and Katakana are syllabaries, since each character represents a syllable. Thus, ka,ki,ku,ke, and ko would each have a distinct symbol. In an alphabet, a combination of six symbols would be more typical.
Chinese characters are ideographic or logographic. Each one represents an idea rather than a sound, and may have a significantly different pronunciation in different dialects. The word for sun is written to look like the sun, not written to sound like the word meaning sun.
Hangeul characters in Korean may look to some like ideographs, but each symbol block represents a syllable, and is made up of distinct consonant and vowel symbols. Thus the parts of each Hangeul symbol represent a vowel or a consonant, and collectively could be considered an alphabet, although they are not combined in the same way as in western languages.
Languages such as Hebrew started out with just consonants in its alphabet, and vowels were added later to augment the letters, mostly by being placed under them or next to them, much as accent marks are used in some languages. However, it's assumed that adults already know the words, and vowels are typically omitted outside of children's books and prayer books. So, like Korean, Hebrew is not written as a linear series of vowels and consonants, but as consonants augmented by vowels.
Languages such as Vietnamese are written with the Roman alphabet, just as most European languages are, but the letters are augmented by diacritical marks. Unlike accent marks in most European languages, Vietnamese diacritical marks represent tones or voices rather than just vowel changes. As with Cantonese, a Vietnamese word will have different meanings based on the way it is stressed. While English readers might say "Ma?" "Ma!" and "ma" in different ways, they all have the same meaning. In Vietnamese, they would not. Yet, the series of letters used to represent each one would be the same, but the diacritical marks would differ.
Chinese ideographs may consist of a combination of more basic symbols, but each one represents an idea rather than a sound. Combining ideas to make bigger ideas is not the same as combining sounds with an alphabet.
An English speaker could readily identify "transglimorphication" and pronounce it "correctly" even though there is no such word. That can't be done with Chinese characters.
Thus it's possible in theory to be able to read a language fluently and correctly if it uses an alphabet even if the reader does not understand a single word and has never seen the words before. In Chinese, a reader could not learn the individual uncombined strokes and later read books because of it.
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