Thursday, June 14, 2007

katanka

These two photos were posted in BMEzine's gallery with caption of "katanka".


http://www.bmeink.com/A70611/high/bmepb536572.jpg
http://www.bmeink.com/A70611/high/bmepb536571.jpg

I have no idea what exactly these characters' significance with each other.
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20 comments:

  1. MikeJune 14, 2007 at 10:46 PM

    The lower-right pic on this page
    http://www.bmeink.com/kanji001.html
    gave me a laugh. The caption starts with "I forgot what the kanji means"

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  2. AnonymousJune 15, 2007 at 8:29 AM

    I guess "katanka" meant "katakana", but even then, only the second character in the first image looks anything like katakana. In that case, it is "ku".

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  3. ulasJune 16, 2007 at 8:53 AM

    The picture mike has mentioned includes kanjis of 福=happiness　生=life　愛=love, which are the bodies of butterflies....not so bad, except ai (love) character.

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  4. Vivian in CanadaJune 16, 2007 at 1:49 PM

    Oh. My. Word. This looks like my first tries at drawing/writing characters - when I was 5.

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  5. NessaJune 16, 2007 at 9:12 PM

    Oh gracious, that's hideous.

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  6. HotYellowChocolateJune 18, 2007 at 10:57 AM

    I think I just threw up a little inside.

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  7. びっくりJune 22, 2007 at 8:03 AM

    At first I thought this website was entertaining, but now I cry every time I visit. I think some of these mistakes are so hideous they make baby kittens cry too.

    I am hoping to become a shuji master and I am still reluctant to paint anything to be displayed. Who are these tattoo "masters" that scar people with their arrogance?

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  8. KizyrJune 22, 2007 at 12:49 PM

    Oh my, some of the other ones on bmeink's "kanji" pages are just as bad, and equally ridiculous (there are some decent ones, nonetheless).

    BTW, I saw a car earlier today with a sticker on the back that said 態度 (attitude). I guess he/she wanted to use 'attitude' in the American English sense (like, 'that girl has a lot of attitude'). Unfortunately, the meaning is a bit more mundane in Japanese, so it sounds to me like getting a sticker that just says "disposition".

    (びっくり！: Who are these tattoo "masters" that scar people with their arrogance?)
    You should check some of the responses in the archived posts, 'cause this is a rather interesting question I had myself. Some folks who have worked tattoo parlors have mentioned that kanji/hanzi tattoos are the cheapest thing on the menu, so if you get that (and lazily don't bother checking it), then often the tattooist has no incentive to do a good job on such a cheap sale. I'm no expert, but that's the sense I got. KF

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  9. tamachanJune 23, 2007 at 3:14 PM

    oh man. if this person couldn't even get the proper romaji word "katakana" right, what hope did this person have with actual kanji/characters?!

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  10. KJune 29, 2007 at 3:09 AM

    I haven't been to Hanzismatter for about a year - glad to see you're still with us, sharing pictures of hairy white legs disfigured with these travesties. Aaaaargh. The one you said was 丰 could also be 生, at a stretch - it would explain the dot at the top left.

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  11. MongooseJune 30, 2007 at 2:39 PM

    I just want to interject that some of these errors are the client's fault, not the artists. I have kanji on my right arm. I brought the characters to the tattoo artist and he reproduced them exactly as I gave them to him, no questions. I was really worried I had made a mistake until a native Chinese speaker saw my tattoo and read "chinmoku - being quiet." PHEW!

    Point being, we can't expect tattoo artists to know enough Chinese to correct the things we bring them that may be wrong. That's probably how a lot of these mistakes happen.

    I'm glad I found this blog - it totally validates my fear of getting a totally nonsensical tattoo. :)

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  12. Alan SiegristJuly 1, 2007 at 5:30 PM

    a native Chinese speaker saw my tattoo and read "chinmoku - being quiet."

    Sorry, Mongoose, but this does not quite make sense. Chinmoku is the Japanese way to read the combination 沈黙. It would be pronounced in another manner (I believe roughly chenmo) in Chinese by a native Chinese speaker. Please realize that Chinese and Japanese are different languages.

    -Alan

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  13. MongooseJuly 2, 2007 at 6:06 PM

    Alan - I'm sure you're right. The woman speaks several languages beside Chinese and I don't hear well, so she might not have said "chinmoku" at all, or she might have been a Chinese woman reading Japanese. Still, it means "being quiet" in at least one language, and that's the main thing to me. And it looks just like what you typed, too. :)

    Next time I'll have her read the proposed tattoo before I get it done. Better safe than sorry. :)

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  14. AnonymousJuly 2, 2007 at 8:40 PM

    Oh man. I guess this could be sort of cool if you're into Engrish type stuff (like, the opposite of Engrish in this case.. which isn't as cool..) and also that cute pencil-doodle look... but I'm guessing it's supposed to be more badass than LOLorific and cute. Which just makes it the biggest FAIL I've seen in the last.. 8 or so years.

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  15. Alan SiegristJuly 2, 2007 at 9:03 PM

    Mongoose-

    I'm glad that you are happy with your tattoo and it sounds that it does mean what you think it does. If you are interested, the characters themselves are actually slightly different between Japanese and Chinese. Here they are:
    沉默 Chinese
    沈黙 Japanese

    You can increase the text size on the page and see the differences and compare them against your tattoo. Then you can figure out which language your tattoo is in.

    Good luck!

    By the way, not to be nosy, but why would you want to get a tattoo in a language you cannot read? I'd at least want to know which language it is.

    -Alan

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  16. MongooseJuly 2, 2007 at 10:25 PM

    Alan - that's awesome! Thanks so much. Looks like I got the Japanese version. Why do I have a tattoo in a language I can't read? I wanted the meaning "silence" tattooed where I can see it, but I wanted it to look cool, too. Also this way, other people can't read it. (At least most people LOL) Japanese characters look interesting and aesthetically pleasing - English would just look like I did time. :)

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  17. AnonymousJuly 9, 2007 at 2:39 PM

    The second one from the top is clearly a machete on a picnic table.

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  18. AnonymousJuly 16, 2007 at 7:17 PM

    Where did Tian go? This hasn't been updated in a month. x_x

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  19. tianJuly 16, 2007 at 7:35 PM

    I am still here, just been busy with work and traveling.

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  20. AnnieNovember 18, 2007 at 5:22 PM

    good god, that's some terrible handwriting.

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