Choose your tattoo artist carefully

30 January 2019, 02:48 PM

quote:
Pop star Ariana Grande made a supremely embarrassing mistake on Tuesday when she unveiled a new tattoo that she thought meant one thing, but instead it meant something else entirely different.

Grande, whose latest single "7 Rings" recently became her second No. 1 single on the Billboard Hot 100, got a tattoo using Japanese Kanji symbols in honor of her song, which was inspired by a shopping spree with some of her closest friends and is all about wealth and excessive spending.

The correct assembly of characters for "7 rings" should've been "七つの指輪," a detail she got correct in the title card for her song's music video.

But the "Thank U, Next" singer's tattoo was written as "七輪".

Now, as Kotaku points out, those two characters separately mean "seven" and "ring."

But when combined their meaning changes altogether.

"七輪" or "shichirin" is actually a small charcoal grill used for BBQ.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/a...japanese-bbq-7-rings

30 January 2019, 03:20 PM

Bernard

quote:
"七輪" or "shichirin" is actually a small charcoal grill used for BBQ.

I heard she's smokin', so what's the problem?

30 January 2019, 03:38 PM

piqaboo

similarly in English,
seven rings
and

sings

are not the same. Those 'characters' in the middle matter.

30 January 2019, 03:42 PM

pianojuggler

Could have been a lot worse.

30 January 2019, 03:48 PM

pianojuggler

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

30 January 2019, 04:21 PM

jon-nyc

quote:
Originally posted by pianojuggler:
If anyone here knows Japanese better than I...

I think we might have just such a person...

30 January 2019, 04:55 PM

Matt G.

quote:
七輪

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.

30 January 2019, 05:15 PM

pianojuggler

quote:
Originally posted by Matt G.:
quote:
七輪

This is perfectly legit in Chinese, and means "seven round things" (could be wheels, circles, rings, etc.).

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.

30 January 2019, 05:54 PM

Matt G.

quote:
Originally posted by pianojuggler:
quote:
Originally posted by Matt G.:
quote:
七輪

This is perfectly legit in Chinese, and means "seven round things" (could be wheels, circles, rings, etc.).
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.

You are probably correct.

30 January 2019, 05:57 PM

QuirtEvans

It does take courage to demonstrate that kind of commitment to soup ...

https://youtu.be/IhwUGnv3q2g

30 January 2019, 06:03 PM

CHAS

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.

30 January 2019, 09:42 PM

Axtremus

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

31 January 2019, 05:57 AM

Daniel

quote:
Originally posted by CHAS:
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.

31 January 2019, 09:36 AM

ShiroKuro

quote:
Originally posted by jon-nyc:
quote:
Originally posted by pianojuggler:
If anyone here knows Japanese better than I...

I think we might have just such a person...

31 January 2019, 09:45 AM

ShiroKuro

quote:
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.

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...