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Westerners' misuse of Chinese characters (hanzi or kanji)
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Re: Westerners' misuse of Chinese characters (hanzi or kanji)
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kevyip1
Re: Westerners' misuse of Chinese characters (hanzi or kanji
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Apr 6 05 12:32 PM
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But none of the sites you mentioned are in English. They mainly serve to entertain Japanese-speaking people about Westerners, just like Engrish.com mainly serves to entertain Westerners about Easterners.
Hanzismatter.com has a much more constructive purpose, I think, as the webmaster claims he serves to
inform
the Westerners, while also entertaining those Asians who are bilingual.
To the person who called me a "newbie" earlier, if you recalled my saying so in my first post, I've frequently visited this site for a long time. But I bet many of your members never visited Hanzismatter.com. Hence, my bringing up the topic here. To them, it's just not as funny as Engrish.com, and I have to wonder why...
I'm Asian, and I find Engrish.com very funny as well, but maybe because I'm not Japanese...
But I've also had Western people who told me they just didn't find Hanzismatter.com as funny as Engrish.com.
Maybe because Hanzimatter.com mentions things that Westerners probably never give a second thought to, things they are so accustomed to doing or seeing, and therefore it becomes hard for humor to form in their minds, even when they are told why they are humorous. (Except when it is an extreme case, of course. E.g. the Chinese tattoo that translates into "crazy diarrhea", or the Japanese brand name "My Pee".)
For instance, the Cantonese dialect (my native tongue) has a lot of phrases borrowed from mangled English. But since they have become such a custom, if you point them out to a Cantonese person, I doubt you'd get a laugh from him or her.
Similarly, if a European says to you, it's funny that English people say "l'oeuf" as "love" in tennis, or that Americans call the sports "football" but play it with their hands, I doubt it would elicit even a single chuckle from English speakers. Not that they would be offended, but they just wouldn't burst out with laughter. For things that have been a part of your culture for a long time, it is just hard to find humor from it.
So what I'm trying to say is, Hanzismatter is doing something unique, as it seems to have an eye for Westerners, whereas all the sites you mentioned including Engrish.com are for people who want to basically have fun behind closed doors, leaving the outsiders out of it.
At times, Hanzismatter seems like a language lesson. It often has word-for-word translations of the kanji or hanzi characters. There is no equivalent of that in sites like Engrish.com.
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