Tattoo Flash "Qi"
I was at Border's bookstore yesterday and saw the photo above in one of the tattoo magazines. Even though the writting for 奇 is correct, but I am not convinced about its meaning.
Like myself and several readers have mentioned before, Japanese Kanji and Chinese Hanzi share similar characters but meaning and pronounciations are different.
In this case, 奇 may mean "mysterious" in Japanese; but in Chinese it would mean "strange". Therefore whoever decides to choose this tattoo must bear that in mind.
posted by tian at
10:27 AM
6 Comments:
funny, i read a while ago about miss spears having that same "strange" tattoo
When you say "miss spears", are you actually referring to Britney "Build Another Double Wide Trailer" Spears?
Well, she is not known to be most intelligent individual in the world, therefore I am not surprised.
Just look at this photo of her: "seize the ass" trucker hat, picking her nose, and face full of semen, I mean acne cream...
guess what, my chinese is 'qi'. it means strange & it's really strange cos no one else has such a weird name! but it can mean 奇妙(marvelous) or 奇迹 (miracle)...??
I just thought I would tell you, Japanese is NOT a tonal language. It has no tones. Just thought I would inform you of that.
Justin (linguist)
In Japanese, 奇 by itself would also be strange. It's only when it's paired with other kanji that the entire word would take the meaning mysterious (e.g. 奇怪[きかい]).
In Japanese the character does mean strange. To add some more nuance, it means that because it is strange it is wonderful. It has positive associations in Japanese though people don't tend to use it to describe people unless they are playfully teasing them.
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