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linguoboy wrote:The "vengeful tattooist" is something of an urban myth. I've yet to see a meaningful tattoo that meant something completely opposed to what the wearer intended. I've seen scores of bad Sinogram tattoos and the chief flavours seem to be:
1. Meaningful characters badly rendered.
2. Names spelled phonetically (often according to a fake "Chinese alphabet").
3. Mistranslations.
An example of the last is one I saw at the Highland Games that just baffled me until I realised the target was "no fear". But the guy just looked up both of those words separately so the result was nonsense.
I still find that easier to understand than (2). Transcriptions of Western names into Chinese tend to come out ugly, both visually and audially. If you care at all about Chinese culture, why wouldn't you use a proper Chinese version of your name?
Prowler wrote:Anyway, I recall Wikipedia asking for donations a couple of years of ago, which made me wonder if they were in financial difficulties. After all their service is 100% free. And I don't believe they even have ads, do they?
Prowler wrote:► Show Spoiler
False friends sure can lead to a lot of awkward moments...
Pó means dust. Polvo means... octopus in Portuguese.
kevin wrote:The same disaster would have happened with only one game.
It's probably more important that people only take part if they actually plan to make time for it and don't give their personal TACs, study groups and whatnot higher priority.
linguoboy wrote:I just learned that the Irish Dairy Board has changed its name to "Ornua", representing Irish Ór Nua "new gold". In Munster dialect, nua is pronounced /noː/ so when I said the name to myself, it sounded like "Oh no!" and I just started giggling.
vijayjohn wrote:One time, I posted a traditional Hmong song where part of the lyrics is literally the words "oh no!" (at 0:57, 1:53, and 2:47):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbkA9-uZwV0
vijayjohn wrote:Thanks, Linguaphile! I've been curious about what it actually means ever since I found that video.
Does it have a particular etymology, do you know? I don't believe I've ever heard a phrase that's very similar in any other Southeast Asian languages yet.
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