Hey, Scott. The best (or worst) recent example I can think of is from a guy on the bus who had these characters inked on his upper arm:
As soon as I read the characters, I knew exactly what he was trying to convey... except three of the four characters were used in the wrong context!
He obviously just flipped through a Chinese dictionary and didn't bother checking with a Chinese-speaking person.
The first character means "work" as in something made, created or composed and the verb "to do/make" or but NOT the verb "to work".
The third character is the only correct one, it means "to play".
The second/fourth character literally means "hard" as in stiff and inflexible, not as in "with a lot of effort".
So obviously the phrase the young man was going for was "Work hard, play hard". He noticed me looking at his tat and said "Nice, eh? I bet you can read what it says!" (
) I complimented the excellent, professional colouring of the characters but when I told him what the characters really meant... not surprisingly, he was floored. The guy didn't seem angry, just a little embarrassed.
This is your life lesson for the day, folks. An excellent way to kill this Thread.
