the thing about chinese characters...

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Posted by Zimra on June 3, 2001 at 23:25:23:

...is that they don't always mean what you think they mean! This
weekend, my boyfriend was in a chinese restaurant wearing a t-shirt
with a chinese character that said "respect" in English underneath
it. The first Chinese person he ran into said "that doesn't mean what
you think it means!" (he went on to say it really meant "to go or to
travel") the second person just rolled her eyes, and the third rolled
her eyes and said "that shirt must have been made by an American!"
While it could have been much worse (remember all the japanense t-
shirts in the 80's, that had obscenities on them?), it is still a
nice example of being careful what you say in a foreign language,
when you don't know the language.

I'm so grateful for Natasha's web page and Fiona's class at Sirius!
I think I'll leave my chinese character repertoire to them.

Zimra

 

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