Saturday, June 21, 2008

The Key to Harmony

I went by a local Blockbuster store today to rent There Will Be Blood (good character development, a bit slow for my taste, could've be an hour shorter) , and saw this plaque in the garb section:



The first two characters 福 and 愛 are correct, but I don't know why the character for "key", 钥, is referred as "harmony".



Odd.
at

13 comments:

  1. RobertJune 21, 2008 at 11:07 PM

    Doesn't the top of the 愛 character look a little skewed to you as well? I've seen something kind of like this in Target before. It was just the word 愛, but the top part was just a jumble of strokes.

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  2. KJune 22, 2008 at 12:00 AM

    Oh, I've been secretly laughing in this one for months now.

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  3. ZekeJune 22, 2008 at 9:18 AM

    It means weapon:

    http://140.111.1.40/cutshing/cutshingc/sc14867/c1486737.jpg

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  4. PengJune 22, 2008 at 1:10 PM

    Perhaps they are confused between 鑰 and 龢... (but there is no simplified form for 鑰)

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  5. maiJune 22, 2008 at 9:08 PM

    @Robert... It looks to me almost as if the middle and left dot (of the three dots at the top, under the line) have been pushed together too much, almost making a "7" shape.

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  6. AnonymousJune 23, 2008 at 9:34 AM

    Maybe they thought harmony meant "in key" (in tune, for music), and then looked up the closest thing they could find?

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  7. tamachanJune 23, 2008 at 3:37 PM

    @peng - actually the character shown (in the product)is the simplified form of 鑰.

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  8. AlexJune 23, 2008 at 7:46 PM

    As if anyone needed a good reason NOT to buy home furnishings at Blockbuster.

    Poor dying rental chain. Like Movie Gallery, they'll peddle anything with a giant profit margin.

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  9. AnonymousJuly 7, 2008 at 3:30 PM

    Also odd that only one character is simplified.

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  10. AnonymousJuly 23, 2008 at 1:17 AM

    well obviously the "key" to harmony are happiness and love. >.>

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  11. AnonymousSeptember 14, 2008 at 7:27 AM

    This has probably been discussed at length, but I see products like this everywhere and almost none use correct Chinese. i wonder how many Chinese people have to look at this crap during the manufacturing process and what their opinion of the Western consumer's buying habits are.

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  12. JennaSeptember 14, 2008 at 7:45 AM

    The "ai" does look a little weird. It looks like something I'd write if I were moving too quickly!

    But at least the last one, while wrong, at least isn't offensive.

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  13. David ShortOctober 10, 2008 at 1:34 AM

    I'm surprised you didn't mention the red thing on the side. Shouldn't it be in seal characters or something? What's the point in just repeating the same thing in Regular script?

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