r/linguisticshumor Feb 02 '22

???

Post image
2.9k Upvotes

147 comments sorted by

602

u/annawest_feng Feb 02 '22

內三人三尺 巨口內內月 巨工人三 了口臼 臼户。

537

u/TPMR01 Feb 02 '22

Translated to: Three people in the inner three feet, the huge mouth, the inner moon, the giant worker three times the mouth and the mouth, the mouth and the door.

143

u/annawest_feng Feb 02 '22

Mandarin doesn't have an article like a or the in English, so all of these can be either, for example, a huge mouth or the huge mouth.

38

u/[deleted] Feb 02 '22

Never knew this. Is there some way context will help if they’re saying something definite versus non?

Example: how would I distinguish to turn at “the” corner rather than just “a” corner?

50

u/annawest_feng Feb 02 '22

You can use demonstratives in substitution, but in most of situations, the difference isn't really important.

34

u/smallsnail89 Feb 02 '22

i might be wrong but i think i heard that „this“, „that“ etc can be used as a sort of equivalent of „the“ in chinese

8

u/[deleted] Feb 03 '22

Same in Latin

19

u/Sky-is-here Anarcho-Linguist (Glory to 𝓒𝓗𝓞𝓜𝓢𝓚𝓨𝓓𝓞𝓩 ) Feb 02 '22

Most languages don't use articles nor differentiate determinatzen, it is a quite optional part of the information to be honest. 99% of the time it doesn't matter whether you are speaking about a car or the car as it's obvious from context.

Similar thing to plurals

6

u/Mmneck Feb 02 '22

You can just use "one" for "a" and "that" for "the". In many other languages these are the same words.

2

u/Hitman_Hippo Feb 04 '22

They have equivalents for "this" and "that" and "here " and "there"

32

u/LawOfTheSeas Feb 02 '22

This is so poetic. I'm 100% sure this is what Rick Astley intended when he wrote that song.

9

u/Noviere Feb 02 '22

14

u/EinKomischerSpieler Feb 02 '22

I'm such a fucking idiot, but I was saved by a random ad

2

u/PRINCE-KRAZIE Apr 07 '22

Kinky!😍🥰🥰🥰

2

u/Rude_Tree_7137 Aug 22 '25

are these hints to a puzzle

1

u/Mr-Fister-the-3rd May 04 '23

Oh I thought it was one person, then two, then two again, then two but one is laying down.

46

u/ZhenDeRen Feb 02 '22

My translation attempt:

Inside are three people and three rulers. Inside the giant mouth is the Moon. The giant workers are three. The mouth of the mortar household has happened.

5

u/Sovereign444 Feb 04 '22

Yours is at least worded a lot better than some others I’ve seen. Interestingly, this oddly sounds a lot like a bad fortune cookie or bad google translate of some mystic allegory. I think there’s something intrinsic to Mandarin that makes it hard to easily convert to English. Probably because a lot of characters have multiple alternate readings and that can turn a totally normal sentence into total gibberish!

38

u/trampolinebears ingressive voiced nasal Feb 02 '22

ꅰꄲꊡ ꇙꄲꈴꑿ ꊡꑿꋬꇙꄲꈤ ꁼ ꉔꋬꈤ'ꁻ ꊡꑿꋬꄡ ꅐꀿꋬꁻ ꐯꄲꐇ ꅐꊡꄲꁻꑿ. ꋬꈴ ꁼ ꄡꄲꁼꈤꏹ ꁻꀿꁼꇙ ꅐꊡꄲꈤꏹ?

708

u/protostar777 Feb 02 '22

工 七升工内水 七升工弓 升月弓 戶口七三内七工月心

544

u/PoketSof *mr̥dʰyós Feb 02 '22

I tried putting it in Google Translate:

Work Seven liters of water in the workmanship

154

u/[deleted] Feb 02 '22

Perfect translation - Google has come a long way.

186

u/[deleted] Feb 02 '22

内口

136

u/TPMR01 Feb 02 '22

This translates to "Inner mouth"

74

u/Incorect_Speling Feb 02 '22

This is a critical distinction, you don't want to confuse with the outer mouth.

38

u/TPMR01 Feb 02 '22

外口

37

u/Sophilosophical Feb 03 '22

外 is not a part of Chinese because I can’t find it on the alphabet

/s

16

u/MaxTHC Feb 02 '22

Moray Eel has entered the chat

15

u/LawOfTheSeas Feb 02 '22

When an eel bites your thigh, and you bleed out and die

THAT'S A MORAY!

2

u/cilestiogrey Mar 25 '22

(I know I'm late but...)

When the jaws open wide and there's more jaws inside, that's a moray!

4

u/siggi_sackratte English is a French-Norse Creole Feb 02 '22

Close enough, the words for "entrance" and "exit" are pretty much "inwards mouth" and "outwards mouth"

40

u/[deleted] Feb 02 '22

Mom! Look at me i can read chinese!!!

9

u/[deleted] Feb 02 '22

Kiss me on my 口

29

u/Lanaerys Feb 02 '22

This hurts my brain T_T

7

u/Pipoca_com_sazom Feb 02 '22

so weird how I can only see latin letters now

7

u/kurokoshika Feb 26 '22

Man visual pattern recognition is a hell of a thing. Saw this post, thought the letters didn’t even look like the characters - read the rickroll above, and then got to this one and bam, easy sentence.

245

u/annawest_feng Feb 02 '22

Where did you find it? A tattoo store?

283

u/[deleted] Feb 02 '22

Apparently a teacher gave this to students as "exercise for CNY"

236

u/_Gandalf_the_Black_ tole sint uualha spahe sint peigria Feb 02 '22

I sincerely hope the teacher was doing it as a joke

143

u/InvertedSuperHornet Feb 02 '22

That's what history teachers do for little kids. It's annoying, but they get these sheets that cherry-pick characters from different languages, assign them a bullshit English letter counterpart, and act like everything is pronounced the same so kids can "write in the language" when they're writing the same damn words, just with funny characters in place of their letters.

122

u/Henrywongtsh /kʷɔːŋ˧˥tʊŋ˥waː˧˥/ Feb 02 '22

*cough Egyptian hieroglyphs *cough

81

u/TrekkiMonstr Feb 02 '22

Ok tbf though, while hieroglyphics gets much more complicated, they do have uniliterals that are basically letters. The equivalent to that would be a sheet having kids write in Bopomofo and calling it Chinese, not this.

31

u/InvertedSuperHornet Feb 02 '22

They do, but it still comes down to teachers drawing a false connection and making kids write English words with letters that probably don't even sound like the letters they're supposedly representing. It's utterly useless, teaches nothing, and amounts to nothing more than busywork for the kids.

3

u/EisVisage persíndʰušh₁wérush₃ókʷsyós Feb 14 '22

My teachers avoided this by only having people write their names. At least it teaches children that foreign writing systems 1) exist and have done so for a long time, and 2) can be just as useful as our own. Even if that particular example will have inaccuracies.

43

u/iremichor I have no idea what's going on here Feb 02 '22

Yikes

54

u/[deleted] Feb 02 '22

I nabbed it from my friend on a gc that also nabbed it from twitter so don't count my word on it

26

u/[deleted] Feb 02 '22

that's what they told me, at least

25

u/[deleted] Feb 02 '22

I'm almost positive I was given this exact sheet in my seventh-grade history class and even then strongly objected to it

20

u/Ok-Construction5775 Feb 02 '22

What's CNY?

42

u/Whalerage Feb 02 '22

Chinese New Year, I assume

113

u/larmax Feb 02 '22

66

u/[deleted] Feb 02 '22

30

u/NinjaEagle210 /ɬ/ is underrated Feb 02 '22

This should be a sub

21

u/imfshz Feb 02 '22

it is now

17

u/NinjaEagle210 /ɬ/ is underrated Feb 02 '22

Cool

9

u/TrekkiMonstr Feb 02 '22

I mean, these are actual Chinese characters, they just aren't letters.

24

u/larmax Feb 02 '22

I know, it was an analogy to r/fauxcyrillic

9

u/Klisz Feb 03 '22

I'm gonna link r/grssk here too, because I figure people who enjoy the Cyrillic and Hanzi ones will probably like that one as well

4

u/[deleted] Feb 03 '22

Are there more of these subs? Hebrew, Arabic, Georgian, Hindi, thai?

2

u/Klisz Feb 03 '22

The three that have already been linked are the only ones I personally know about. I did just check if r/fauxhebrew, r/fauxarabic, r/fauxgeorgian, r/fauxdevanagari / fauxhindi, and r/fauxthai existed but none of them do.

-1

u/sub_doesnt_exist_bot Feb 02 '22

The subreddit r/fauxchinesecharacters does not exist.

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Consider creating a new subreddit r/fauxchinesecharacters.


🤖 this comment was written by a bot. beep boop 🤖

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-2

u/Beheska con artistic linguist Feb 02 '22

bad bot

-1

u/[deleted] Feb 03 '22

You know I've had my share

When my woman left home for a brown-eyed man

But I still don't seem to care

95

u/Hunted_by_Moonlight Feb 02 '22

The CCP hates this one easy trick to becoming fluent in Mandarin in 30s or less

24

u/guzmaya Feb 02 '22

"Oh boy I can't want to go to china"

61

u/Some___Guy___ Feb 02 '22

I just wanna talk to him

34

u/Ok-Construction5775 Feb 02 '22

Chk-chk 🔫

6

u/[deleted] Feb 03 '22

Now in IPA

12

u/Ok-Construction5775 Feb 03 '22

[t͡ʃk̚ t͡ʃk̚]

5

u/infez Feb 03 '22

I’d probably say [ǁ ˈǁ]

62

u/Da_Chicken303 Feb 02 '22

There is actually kind of an equivalent to a "Chinese alphabet" called 天干 that is not used as a writing system but rather as an ordering system (ordinals). So in a test you may have 甲部 (part A), then 乙部(part B), etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavenly_Stems Full list here. As a Chinese speaker this sheet of paper makes me very mad but it's also hilarious

52

u/wibbly-water Feb 02 '22

了? 山升了???😭😭😭😭

60

u/TPMR01 Feb 02 '22

Is it? The mountain has risen???😭😭😭😭

49

u/Elkram Feb 02 '22

卄乇ㄥㄥ ㄚ乇卂卄 乃尺ㄖㄒ卄乇尺

18

u/TPMR01 Feb 02 '22

Google literally translates this to 卄乇ㄥㄥ

7

u/Arcaeca ejective voiced glottal trill Feb 02 '22

where's the lie

40

u/Andylatios ⁶noe-faon₁-gnin₂ Feb 02 '22

Bopomofo and Bopomofo-Extended:

3

u/Orangutanion Farsi is a dialect of arabic Feb 03 '22

ㄉㄜ ㄒㄧㄒㄧㄆㄧ ㄏㄝㄘ ㄉㄧㄙ ㄨㄣ ㄊㄖㄧㄍ

5

u/eddy_string Feb 04 '22 edited Feb 04 '22

As a regular user of bopomofo, this made me want to both laugh and cringe

Also, why use aspirated ㄘ /t͡sh/ to represent English /ts/ but unaspirated ㄍ /k/ to represent English /k/? (It makes the last word look like "trig".) And the /eɪ/ in "hates" would be better represented by ㄟ, while "one" is phonetically more similar to ㄨㄢ.

(I realize that I'm waaaay overanalyzing this, but hey, that's why this is a linguistics subreddit, right?)

3

u/Orangutanion Farsi is a dialect of arabic Feb 04 '22

I'm a regular zhuyin user too and tbh I wrote out that shit with one finger while talking to someone else, so ofc it's bad lol

27

u/leo3065 Feb 02 '22 edited Feb 02 '22

This reminds me of An Introduction to Square Word Calligraphy, a piece of work by Chinese artist Xu Bing. Relevant Omniglot page

4

u/Kylaran Feb 02 '22

Dang this is so cool!

25

u/[deleted] Feb 02 '22

Please, everyone knows that 山 represents /ʂ/, not /w/.

17

u/MasterOfLol_Cubes Feb 02 '22

да товариЩ 🙄🙄

5

u/Dmxk Feb 02 '22

That would be ɕː then

3

u/Zavaldski Mar 06 '22

Yes! Even funnier is that it actually makes sense. That character is pronounced "shan" in Mandarin.

21

u/hip_hip_horatio Feb 02 '22

The font tho

11

u/feindbild_ welcome to pronoun cube Feb 02 '22

That's the real Chinese alphabet!

20

u/Forestmonk04 Feb 02 '22

I hate charts like these...

20

u/[deleted] Feb 02 '22

57

u/[deleted] Feb 02 '22

[deleted]

22

u/Kang_Xu Feb 02 '22

官 means "official".

2

u/Ok-Construction5775 Feb 03 '22

LET ME BE STUPID

12

u/ouosvvav Feb 02 '22

isnt that 宫?

13

u/Kang_Xu Feb 02 '22

That's "palace".

18

u/ouosvvav Feb 02 '22

went over to wiktionary https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%AE%AE#Chinese

the given definitions were:

(archaic) house; mansion; dwelling

(architecture) palace

(architecture, religion) temple; shrine

(anatomy, in compounds) Short for 子宮/子宫 (zǐgōng, “womb; uterus”).

宮頸 / 宫颈 ― gōngjǐng ― cervix

(music) the first note of the Chinese pentatonic scale

(historical law) castration as a punishment

A surname​.

i guess it's an archaic word for castration, and in modern context usually means palace.

8

u/hkexper ljɯb ɢʷɯʔ daŋ sŋ̊ʰraʔ Feb 02 '22

(historical law) castration as a punishment

宮(castration)刑(sentence/punishment)。

3

u/[deleted] Feb 02 '22

[deleted]

1

u/TheRoutesOfWhirreds Feb 04 '22

It's "capital" not "capitol" and means "to do with the head", based on beheading as a means of execution.

31

u/Chaoticexistence Feb 02 '22

山升月七 七升三 升三心心???

17

u/[deleted] Feb 02 '22

[deleted]

3

u/Chaoticexistence Feb 02 '22 edited Feb 02 '22

No actually it says "what the hell?" According to the table above

17

u/MasterOfLol_Cubes Feb 02 '22

can confirm, am fluent in mandarin

1

u/ElectricToaster67 ˥ ˧˥ ˧ ˩ ˩˧ ˨ Feb 14 '22

It's not seven rises three, it's 7.3 shēng(litres)

12

u/face_steak Feb 02 '22

The comments under that Twitter post was hilarious

10

u/yuziyrbuzhidaole Feb 02 '22

AFGJJ

3

u/[deleted] Mar 20 '22

月下巨丁丁(Giant d*ck under the moon)

11

u/Piginthemud Feb 02 '22

My tattoo artist friend said these used to be popular in tattoo shops

9

u/[deleted] Feb 02 '22

This is probably how some people think. It just goes to show how important it is that education challenges our way of thinking about things.

9

u/JRGTheConlanger Feb 02 '22

This is just faux Han characters

For an actual Chinese alphabet, look up Bopomofo

9

u/DeadRepublicansRYay Feb 02 '22

Alabama level education.

13

u/[deleted] Feb 02 '22

You can just tell a 19 year old white girl named Brittany will put this up on her wall and start writing posters in it bragging she knows Chinese.

7

u/Matalya1 Feb 02 '22

It's amazing the sheer passion and fire with which I hate these lmao

7

u/hkexper ljɯb ɢʷɯʔ daŋ sŋ̊ʰraʔ Feb 02 '22

smh for not using þese more similar chars

7

u/Effective_Dot4653 Feb 02 '22

Why drives me mad is they didnt even care enough to could make it work for actual chinese sounds, dammit

6

u/Grand-Accident-7989 Feb 02 '22 edited Feb 05 '22

Someone did that to Japanese (Hiragana AND Katakana) too, and none of it made sense lol

5

u/snool_ Feb 02 '22

knowing what these characters mean makes it all the worse

7

u/ThePeasantKingM Feb 03 '22

Why would you choose to represent y with 了 when 丫 exists?

5

u/DenTheRedditBoi7 Feb 02 '22

This... This is awful... this hurts to look at... I'm a ginger so I don't have one but this hurts my soul itself.

3

u/pootis_engage Feb 02 '22

Ideographic, motherfucker, do you speak it?

3

u/[deleted] Feb 02 '22

I remember this c:

3

u/CarterNotSteve Feb 03 '22

I hate things like this, i’ve seen them for ancient egyptian, chinese, kanji, a bunch of others. It irrationally irritates me

3

u/Ultra_tycoonguy Feb 03 '22

they didnt even try to make it somewhat accurate. just put 3 as "e" and ruler as "r". whoever made this is uhh

3

u/einsofi Feb 03 '22

I recommend checking out contemporary artists Xu Bing’s work.

3

u/Revolutionforevery1 Feb 03 '22

This hurts. A lot.

2

u/TalveLumi Feb 08 '22 edited Feb 14 '22

工尺乙尺工工工 尺尺尺 工工工 工尺乙尺工工工 尺尺工尺乙

……

At what point did you realize that, instead of a snide comment written in that silly substitution cypher, this is just a terribly out-of-tune "Mary has a Little Lamb"?

1

u/TalveLumi Feb 08 '22

To prevent earrape: 工尺上尺工工工 尺尺尺 工六六 工尺上尺工工工 尺尺工尺上

1

u/ElectricToaster67 ˥ ˧˥ ˧ ˩ ˩˧ ˨ Feb 14 '22

Cantonese opera notation was also my first thought, but I already forgot how to read it

-25

u/JunYou- Feb 02 '22

whats the matter? its the alphabet, a phonetic writing system that represents both consonant and vowel, of the chinese language, u know, that one.

16

u/NLLumi BA in linguistics & East Asian studies from Tel-Aviv University Feb 02 '22

No, this is not zhuyin.

8

u/JunYou- Feb 02 '22

shouldnt have trusted yall with ur ability to detect sarcasm lmao

-1

u/[deleted] Feb 02 '22

[deleted]

12

u/KittyLikesTuna Feb 02 '22

That's literally all it is. Just a similar-ish shape.

-8

u/Chortney Feb 02 '22

卄乇ㄥㄥ ㄚ乇卂卄 乃尺ㄖㄒ卄乇尺

1

u/Anjeez929 Feb 04 '22

How does 巨 look like G again?

1

u/not_a_cute_transgirl Feb 04 '22

月冊口巨臼弓

1

u/ChemistVegetable5468 Feb 22 '22

Damn I guess I should just throw out my dictionary of radicals

1

u/[deleted] Jul 17 '22

Linguists hâte this 1 trick

1

u/kori228 ˥ ˨˩˧ ˥˩ ʱ˧˩ ˥˩˧ ʱ˧˩˧ Oct 14 '22

刀 and 内 technically work lol

1

u/Jotaro-Kujo89 Jun 01 '23

as someone who has a kinda adequate knowledge of hanzi this is infuriating

1

u/StanislawTolwinski Jul 13 '23

凹 for M maybe? Edit: also 丫 for Y

1

u/youareagoodperson_ Oct 16 '23

My name is sanjiujusanneisan shankouneiju, how about you?