Thursday, April 14, 2005
The Dual of Engrish
The well-known website Engrish.com is dedicated to providing photographic evidence of accidental hilarity resulting from poorly informed usage of English signage and advertising in East Asia, especially Japan. The site has been around since before the blog era; in today's terminology it might be called a minimalist photoblog.
The interesting news is that there is now a blog, called Hanzi Smatter, that is a kind of dual of Engrish.com: as the blog's header announces, it is "dedicated to the misuse of Chinese characters (Hanzi or Kanji) in Western culture". I have been following the blog for quite some time now and I find it interesting that most of its examples come from people getting Hanzi writing tattooed on their bodies. I was certainly not aware of this fad before I started reading the blog.
Can Devanagari tattoos be far behind, now?
The interesting news is that there is now a blog, called Hanzi Smatter, that is a kind of dual of Engrish.com: as the blog's header announces, it is "dedicated to the misuse of Chinese characters (Hanzi or Kanji) in Western culture". I have been following the blog for quite some time now and I find it interesting that most of its examples come from people getting Hanzi writing tattooed on their bodies. I was certainly not aware of this fad before I started reading the blog.
Can Devanagari tattoos be far behind, now?
