Engrish in your daily life - sandwiches mastered

[shootingstar]

I have often wondered if the t-shirts that were so popular in the 80's here with Chinese and Japanese characters on them were not similarly funny and non-sensical to speakers of those languages.

I'm sure alot of the popular T-shirts with Chinese /Japanese characters have single word harmless words...like 'strength', etc. Or 'woman' or 'water'. I only know the last 2 characters... My mother gave up teaching us a long time ago. And Chinese language school in small Ontario town didn't excite anyone.

Probably abit corny /banal to those who can read and write Chinese or Japanese. Like those who have such tatoos...but may not know how to read the language at all...except for that single tatoo.

[yellow]

A few gems from my trip to Mexico:

(this first one is cross posted from the handstand thread)

[OakLeaf]

It would take a better person than I to refrain from killing mosquitos when they're biting me... What is the context for that sign???

[lph]

Does that mean "don't kill the mosquitos"??

In Norwegian "mater" means "feeding", so to me it looked just like a zoo sign saying "Please don't feed the mosquitos".

Gladly.

[yellow]

It would take a better person than I to refrain from killing mosquitos when they're biting me... What is the context for that sign???

This sign was at one of the cenotes where we snorkeled. Since these are like caves, there were oodles of bats as well as some other cave-nesting birds (motmots and swallows) that probably eat mosquitoes. So it could be that they would like to preserve the mosquito population for the critters (though I doubt a couple dozen people swatting mosquitoes would affect the mosquito population!). The more likely explanation is that they don't want you to use mosquito repellent, which could affect the water quality of this very sensitive ecosystem. You are not supposed to use sunscreen either, but then you don't really need it since you're in a cave most of the time.

lph, matar is "to kill" in Espanol.

[sundial]

Drove by a house that had a sign that read For Sail.

[TsPoet]

Drove by a house that had a sign that read For Sail.

Was it a houseboat?

[maillotpois]

Was it a houseboat?

SNORT!!!

[carpaltunnel]

Like those who have such tatoos...but may not know how to read the language at all...except for that single tatoo.

I work with a young man who is now sporting a new expensive tattoo, one (he says) Chinese character. He told me what he was told it means. I asked him how he knew it didn't say "I got this sucker's money!" He wasn't amused. Anyway, its kind of a neat graphic, but would you get something tatooed on your body that you couldn't read yourself?

[Zen]

I told a guy his tattoo says "eat more chicken"

[Zen]

I was just at the 7-11 where a guy ordered something with "monetary jack cheese".

I could use some monetary jack myself

[deeaimond]

I work with a young man who is now sporting a new expensive tattoo, one (he says) Chinese character. He told me what he was told it means. I asked him how he knew it didn't say "I got this sucker's money!" He wasn't amused. Anyway, its kind of a neat graphic, but would you get something tatooed on your body that you couldn't read yourself?

when i worked in a waterpark in the US i saw alot of 'chinese' tattoos... i saw a man with 10 characters on his nape and i couldn't figure out what it was (i read some chinese) I mean, my chinese isn't fantastic but I can read a simple newspaper. So i asked him what it was and he said it spelt out his childrens' names, sally and jason...

chinese characters are not letters in an alphabet. all characters have a complete sound and meaning...

so basically it was all pure rubbish..

I also had a girlfriend who had a random character on her back, which she said was love, but i knew for a fact it wasn't... but her response to that was that she didn't wanna go around thinking that the tattoo was a wrong one so she'd rather go on believing it was what she said it was.

after that i learnt to keep my mouth shut. I mean... it would be pretty tough to know u had some rubbish that u paid alot of money for tattooed permanently on yr body

as for the tattoo parlours, they don't care. I walked into one which had displayed its chinese characters upside down.. the salesgirl pretty much snorted when i told her they were upside down. they don't care. they just wanna make money.