Go | New | Find | Notify | Tools | Reply | |
| Choose your tattoo artist carefully | Login/Join |
Has Achieved Nirvana |
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/a...japanese-bbq-7-rings
| ||
|
Minor Deity |
I heard she's smokin', so what's the problem?
| |||
|
What Life? |
similarly in English, seven rings and sings are not the same. Those 'characters' in the middle matter.
| |||
|
| Serial origamist Has Achieved Nirvana  |
Could have been a lot worse.
| |||
|
| Serial origamist Has Achieved Nirvana |
Oh, and the article is incorrect. Only the pictographic characters that Japanese borrowed from Chinese are "kanji". Two of the three missing characters from "七つの指輪" are "kana". If anyone here knows Japanese better than I, correct me if I'm wrong
| |||
|
Has Achieved Nirvana |
I think we might have just such a person...
| |||
|
| Techno-Stud Minor Deity  |
This is perfectly legit in Chinese, and means "seven round things" (could be wheels, circles, rings, etc.). Although Chinese and Japanese writing share a huge number of ideographs, Japanese written grammar requires the use of kana characters (which are phonetic) to clearly represent the desired meaning. In this case, the kana are only being used as prepositions, more or less. The suggested fix also includes the ideograph for "finger," obviously for clarity. The full Japanese "correction" means "seven round things that go on your finger." Sure, if one takes the "erroneous" tattoo as Japanese, it's funny. But taken as Chinese, it's just, perhaps, incomplete.
| |||
|
| Serial origamist Has Achieved Nirvana |
If I remember correctly, you need a "measure word" between a number (or any adjective) and a noun in Chinese. The measure word is based on the nature of the object named by the noun. I'm guessing the measure word for ring would be 个. If there is someone here who knows Chinese better than I, please correct me if I'm wrong.
| |||
|
| Techno-Stud Minor Deity |
You are probably correct.
| |||
|
Has Achieved Nirvana |
| |||
|
Has Achieved Nirvana |
Translation can be fun "OK, here's a question from left space: What was your book Slut about? Madonna: It was called Sex, my book. Blikk: Not in Hungary. Here it was called Slut. How did it come to publish? Were you lovemaking with a man-about-town printer? Do you prefer making suggestive literature to fast-selling CDs? interview. Parts are very funny.
| |||
|
Minor Deity |
Reading them in Mandarin, I’m more inclined to read 七輪 as “seven wheels”. 七环 would be closer to “seven bangles” or “seven rings (in the sense of ring roads or highways that circle around a city)”. 七圈 would be closer to “seven circles” or “seven rounds.” To get to the specificity of “seven earrings” or “seven rings (of the sort that you wear on fingers)”, I would need at least three characters to convey the meaning, four to be strictly grammatically correct. 七(个)戒指 = seven rings (of the sort that you wear on fingers) 七(个)耳环 = seven earrings
| |||
|
Has Achieved Nirvana |
 | |||
|
| (self-titled) semi-posting lurker Minor Deity  |
| |||
|
| (self-titled) semi-posting lurker Minor Deity |
That's mostly correct, except that kana function as a lot more than prepositions. In the case of 七つの指輪 the の is a preposition (except we call it a postposition b/c it comes after), but the つ isn't a pre/postposition, it actually tells you something about want's being counted. other functions of kana include verb (and adjective) conjugation, and also there are a fair amount of lexical items that either don't have kanji or are conventionally written in kana. And of course, there are two variations of kana, and one is used for foreign words. So kana have a much more complex role in Japanese writing than is often realized. Back to this tattoo... it's best to think of 指輪 not as 指＋輪 but rather as a vocab word "指輪" which means ring. Then if you see 輪 that's something else (usually tires). The interesting this about this tattoo mistake is that apparently the woman (is she a singer?) studies or has studied Japanese. In which case she might know that Japanese abbreviations are often made by deleting the the 2nd and 4th part of a longer word (so you're left with the 1st and 3rd, and usually those parts are kanji). An example would be the word for job hunting, which is 就職活動 (shuushoku-katsudou 1-就 2- 職 3-活 4-動 which is abbreviated w/ the first and third characters to get 就活 shuu-katsu. So actually, her instinct was good. It's just that that kind of abbreviation only works with compound vocab words that are all kanji. Also, one should never rely on "instinct" when choosing tattoos in a foreign language...
| |||
|
| Powered by Social Strata |
 | Please Wait. Your request is being processed... |
|