I got this photo along with an email from a young lady in Canada a few days ago. She said when she was 16 years old; she had her grandfather’s initials “SCK” to be tattooed in “Chinese lettering”.
Although the two lower characters 安 and 空 are recognizable, the first character is only a partial of 流 (flow). The three characters do not pronounce anywhere near “S”, “C”, “K”.
this tattoo really "scks"
ReplyDeleteI think saying that 安 and 空 are recognizable is a little charitable. It looks to me like they missed the "bend" in 安, and just have crossing strokes. (Granted, some fonts downplay it and make it symmetrical, but I never liked those.)
ReplyDeleteWhat's particularly funny is that 安 can be used to stand in for the letter "n." (There's a take-off of KFC in Wuxi that calls itself DND Chicken (缔安缔乡村炸鸡).) How they got "s" out of it is quite a mystery.
Ah, to be young and stupid again....
ReplyDeleteI don't understand how on earth one could think that those characters would somehow equal "SCK". What is going through people's minds when they get these tattoos?
ReplyDeleteI live in Taiwan. Someone could do a parallel study of the way people here use totally incorrect English to be cool (especially on t-shirts and in advertising generally).
ReplyDeleteIncorrect usage of English by non-English speakers is called "Engrish" and Steve Caires already has a site for them.
ReplyDelete"What is going through people's minds when they get these tattoos?"
ReplyDeletewhere i used to live, typically Southern Comfort.
I believe that the first character was meant to be 忘 - to forget. However, wang4 =/= S.
ReplyDeleteThe top one is huang1 巟.
ReplyDeletemaybe the first one was meant to be 疏, which is pronounced "so" in Japanese (don't know the Chinese). how 安 could become C I don't know (pronounced AN or YASU) but the last one is read "kuu" in Japanese, which I think makes some sense if it's the initials it's about.
ReplyDeleteS?K
"how 安 could become C I don't know"
ReplyDeleteMaybe C for cheap!