Very interesting history!and Birdy
I googled this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_writing_in_Vietnam didn't help much with that 'dirty w' - very suspenseful!
Very interesting history!and Birdy
I googled this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_writing_in_Vietnam didn't help much with that 'dirty w' - very suspenseful!
There is a popular tattoo that women often get of a Chinese character which means 'Peace and harmony.' The same character means 'Dirty whore' to the Vietnamese.
From there, all it would take is one person to actually understand the tattoo and being like "um... why does it say 'dirty whore' on your shoulder?"
"Oh no. This means peace and harmony in Chinese."
"Hmm. Well, I only speak Vietnamese and English, and these symbols can have different meanings depending on the language. It definitely means 'dirty whore' in Vietnamese, but maybe it's different in Mandarin?"
"Yeah, that must be it!"
And so the foolish tattoo recipient now has a plausible excuse for their "dirty whore" tattoo, and can at least console themselves that in ONE language it means 'pease and harmony,' even if they "can't remember exactly which one."
. And anyone with even rudimentary knowledge of Chinese characters – I'm talking elementary school level – would know that there is no way these two completely different phrases could be written with the same set of characters. The meanings would not be THAT different.
I was trying to figure out what characters, if any, could be found in both phrases. The "harmony" phrase would probably contain the character 和. The slur would need one character with the radical 女, which carries the meaning of woman (or girl). There is a possibility to take 和 for 如, but they are completely different words, and the second one, despite having the 女 radical, doesn't have a particularly feminine meaning. It is possible that the "peace and harmony" phrase would contain, say, the character 安 (which is "woman under the roof" and means "safety", among other things), but this character does not have an overwhelmingly negative meaning. So I couldn't really find anything.
I know that a phrase even in the same language* can have very different meanings depending on the dialect, and thought that interpretation of Chinese characters could be equally divergent.
*E.g. as a child, I learned the hard way that in Hawaii, the phrase "you like beef?" is NOT asking if you're a fan of burgers and steak. My innocent response earned me a beating.
...
From there, all it would take is one person to actually understand the tattoo and being like "um... why does it say 'dirty whore' on your shoulder?"
"Oh no. This means peace and harmony in Chinese."
"Hmm. Well, I only speak Vietnamese and English, and these symbols can have different meanings depending on the language. It definitely means 'dirty whore' in Vietnamese, but maybe it's different in Mandarin?"
"Yeah, that must be it!"
And so the foolish tattoo recipient now has a plausible excuse for their "dirty whore" tattoo, and can at least console themselves that in ONE language it means 'pease and harmony,' even if they "can't remember exactly which one."
Sat Nam! (Literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)
Very interesting discussion here!
Okay, I (mostly) only write in English, which is not only my first language, but the only one I know well. But I'd like to share some thoughts.
If you're writing poetry, and you want rhymes, it helps to be writing in Italian, because the vowel endings make for easy and unforced rhymes. Because (most) Chinese characters can be pronounced umpteen different ways, depending on WHICH Chinese you speak, it's one of the worst languages for rhyming poetry. But because those characters mean things in their own right (like the woman under the roof for safety), Chinese is MUCH better than English for writing poetry with visual puns and similar layers of added depth. English is somewhere in between, but closer to Italian.
Because English has so many words for the same thing, writing auditory puns in it is easy. A young man from Mexico mentioned that to me, commenting that it seemed like most of our jokes were puns. So I asked him what they joked about in Spanish. "Death" he said. So I asked how they did that, and he said by exaggerating everything. So, the language in which you write in part determines how you write jokes.
And yes, words for certain things do appear in some languages and not in others, even if the language -- and the culture behind that language -- definitely has the concept. So, for instance, my husband and I were in NYC at the Met three years ago. There was an exhibition of Chinese scroll paintings. I was examining one of them (my favorite scroll painting of all time), when a young Chinese girl (maybe 9 or 11 years old) came up to me and said (clearly trying out her school English), "This my people made..." I could tell she wanted to tell me this scroll was part of her heritage. So I said, "So, it's your heritage." The girl freaked and ran for her father. After some thought, he told me he didn't know the word either. We eventually ran it through their tablet that translated from one language to the other. Heritage came up with a string of characters, which makes me think Chinese doesn't have a single word, although it certainly has the concept. And if any of you know differently, if there really is one character/word, I'd love to know about it.
Blessings,
Siri Kirpal
Sat Nam!Sat Nam! (Literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)
Thanks, Flybird and Snitchcat! Those strings look more like what showed up on the tablet.
Blessings,
Siri Kirpal
There maybe an advantage to this, the "cumbersomeness" in one language may come off as a rather distinct and fresh "voice" in another language, so keeping some of it may give you an edge, compared to making it sound just like any other English or German book.My mother tongue is German, but I find it a very cumbersome language and have a hard time writing in a way that sounds natural and "chill". Also, English simply has the bigger reach. I have spent so much time on the international internet, that my written English is a lot more practiced than my written German, too. I've tried to translate Concrete Monsters to German to try and find a publisher here, but every German sentence presents a challenge, and when finished, a cringe.
Wow, you are saying there could be such a thing as a better language for writing. Ask someone who writes in French if they agree. I do observe that in public notices with multiple languages, like on the bus I take to work, English is always shorter than Spanish. Chinese is even shorter but it's not a fair comparison because it is made up of individual characters of the same size, so there is no such thing as a long word or short word, all words (not compound ones) are the same length.
As a result my first drafts are a horrible mix of French and English, sometimes I switch language mid-sentence, or just for a few words.
I only write in English, I started writing when I was immersed in studying English and American literature, so it felt more natural... and now everytime I try to write something in French, it feels wrong. But I do put some words in French when I have a precise idea of what I want to say but can't find the proper word in English, and translate it later.