http://www.bmezine.com/tattoo/A60629/high/bmepb296741.jpg
The middle character looked like a botched 竜 or 帝, which is nowhere near "loyalty".
This young man should have read the March of 2005 issue of FHM Lithuania edition.
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
Love Loyalty Truth
From June 29th's postings in BMEzine's gallery, this young man from Lithuania got what supposed to say "Love Loyalty Truth" tattooed on him by a tattooist known as "Blackwo".
http://www.bmezine.com/tattoo/A60629/high/bmepb296741.jpg
The middle character looked like a botched 竜 or 帝, which is nowhere near "loyalty".
This young man should have read the March of 2005 issue of FHM Lithuania edition.
http://www.bmezine.com/tattoo/A60629/high/bmepb296741.jpg
The middle character looked like a botched 竜 or 帝, which is nowhere near "loyalty".
This young man should have read the March of 2005 issue of FHM Lithuania edition.
Maybe the bottom two are 老実, "loyalty" in my J-E dictionary?
ReplyDeleteThe bottom character is 実, the Japanese simplification of 實. Based on that, I would assume the second one to be simplified 竜 rather than 帝. Are dragons loyal?
ReplyDeleteThe bottom one is the Japanese simplified 実 (實)
ReplyDeleteI thought the third one is the simplified Chinese 實.
ReplyDeletekmok: no, 実 is japanese. 实 is simplified chinese. also, not that we can rely on their consistency, but the 愛 is the form used by traditional chinese and japanese, but not by simplified chinese (爱), so hopefully we can assume the middle one is a japanese form as well.
ReplyDeletenot that this makes much more sense than 竜, but what about 意?
Alan said...
ReplyDeleteCould the bottom two be 忠実 (loyalty) in Japanese?
I was thinking 危 for the second character, which has nothing to do with loyalty (but hey, neither do the other suggestions).
ReplyDeleteOh yeh Andy you're right. Excuse my confusion.
ReplyDeleteGreat site. Obviously a great retort to those who love to rip on the Chinese for their Chinglish.
ReplyDeleteGiven that the victim thinks it says "Love Loyalty Truth", and that the first character corresponds to love and the third to truth, I doubt we're looking at compounds, but rather at three single characters.
ReplyDeleteI can't for the life of me recognise that second character, but of the suggestions in red, 意 seems closest in meaning. Somehow. At least in Japanese.
Alan said...
ReplyDeleteGiven that the victim thinks it says "Love Loyalty Truth", and that the first character corresponds to love and the third to truth, I doubt we're looking at compounds, but rather at three single characters.
If we assume that 愛忠実 are the three intended characters (which is by no means a given considering the mangled form of the second one), then "Love Loyalty Truth" might be a reasonable way to identify the three individual characters even though 忠実 together does itself mean loyalty.
Could the bottom two be 忠実 (loyalty) in Japanese?
ReplyDeleteThat's not outside the realm of possibility, but what are the odds he wrote the 心 in 愛 right, but not in 忠? 愛 is one of the more difficult places to write 心, especially for beginners.
That's not outside the realm of possibility, but what are the odds he wrote the 心 in 愛 right, but not in 忠? 愛 is one of the more difficult places to write 心, especially for beginners.
ReplyDeleteAlan said...
I think most of these tattoo artists work from stencils. Presumably the stencils for the first and third characters were made from work by competent calligraphers but the train went seriously off the tracks for the second one.
Maybe the artist lost or damaged the original stencil and decided to ad lib it himself based on some low-quality source, and then used the wrong strokes and connected them up in peculiar and spectacularly strange ways. The character looks like a mish-mash of strokes borrowed haphazard from different characters.
I think it would be a rare Western tattoo artist indeed that actually studies Chinese calligraphy, so it might be a tad futile to try to criticize their calligraphy skills.
But I guess that is what we do here, right?
I just noticed that the top character is "love". I was able to decipher this through the fact that I saw the radical for "heart" in it, and due to the general shape of the character.
ReplyDelete