Genius!
I have two Thai characters on my arm, in a design I put together myself, but they were done by a Thai guy and I know specifically what they mean.
I think other languages’ scripts can look lovely. The fact that its meaning isn’t immediately comprehensible to others gives a layer of privacy for something meaningful to the wearer.
But for goodness’ sake make sure they’re right. There’s so much shit script out there. And, sadly, it’s become so common these days that it can be a bit of a cliché, especially Chinese characters/Kanji.
And make sure a native speaker/writer does the art for you, and understands what you’ve wanted. As I’ve recounted before, a British friend got a Thai woman to write down the word “courage” for her to have tattooed on her foot. Just before he started inking, the tattoo artist stopped and asked “are you sure you want a tattoo that says ‘curry’?” :smack:
I’m not really sure what I mean, actually. I agree with you on the world getting smaller. But I do feel a faint - oh-so-faint - hint of irritation when I see someone’s latched on to something from someone else’s culture without ever really understanding it. I’m not saying you’ve done this, after all I don’t know you - but generally this is what I find.
I don’t think “admiring someone’s culture” necessarily means adopting it. And especially in the way certain Americans do. On one hand they criticize so many aspects of foreign cultures, “they eat dog, they do this, they do that”, on the other hand they’re picking & choosing the bits they like best and taking it. I’m sure we all do the latter to some extent…but it still seems awkward to me.
But I mean - how could you understand me, just as how could I understand you? It’s not your culture that’s being made more and more comercialized and the “in thing” as time goes by. And it’s not me who lives your life. (I won’t attempt to state it, in case I get it wrong! :))
Miller, darling, my jaw dropped on that thread. Slowly though. Wow.
My brother has a Japanese character tattoo on his wrist. It’s katakana. He knows a little bit of Japanese, or at least the basic ideas behind the written language and how the characters are used to express meaning, and I know he didn’t get screwed over on it, since he basically designed it himself and double and triple checked the character shapes before allowing the tattoo to be put on. (And I admit, I checked the characters online myself after I saw it!)
Why did he get it? It’s the title of a book, that literally changed his life (and is a meaningful title, too!) It led him to cope with his depression and social anxiety, and he’s now able to leave the house, work, see friends, date, and do all those things that the mere thought of left him crippled before.
Perfectly valid reason, and WAY more meaningful than a lot of other tattoos I’ve seen.
What was the book?
For people who understand a little of the language and culture, and have a deep personal relationship to the meaning their tattoo possesses: that’s pretty cool.
Everyone else is just a douchebag with no sense of style. IMHO of course.
I have a tattoo which Chinese characters. They’re actually part of a slightly larger tattoo. My reason for another language is because I didn’t want just anyone to know what it said. Characters take up less space, but I chose Chinese because I was learning so much about Chinese culture and history at the time so that language seemed to make it more personal. I get asked what it means all the time, but usually I make jokes and say it means Gordito Burrito or Whitey Must Pay. Yeah I did research to make sure I got the right characters, but in the end you never know and since its all for me and very personal, its no one else’s business what it really says.
I don’t care if you think I’ve ripped off another culture I couldn’t possibly really appreciate or understand. I don’t care if you think the whole idea is dumb. I’d be pretty stupid to get something on MY body to please anyone but me. I don’t fault people for thier opinion though. I for one don’t get things like boob jobs (and yes, mine are quite small). 
As far as the permanence of it, I don’t really care if you understand that either. I’m not trying to convert you into a tattoo enthusiast. I look at like this, it represents who I was at the time and it was not a frivolous decision. And I wanted a permanent reminder of that time in my life. Like Glory, my tattoo serves as a testimony to what I learned about myself that I never want to forget. Besides, this is not the only choice I’ve made that had permanent consequences. People don’t seem to realize that we make decisions all the time that have lasting effects. The difference is those effects aren’t evident right away.
Will I regret it someday? Maybe. I don’t really believe in regret, but if I’m on my deathbed and the choice to get a tattoo is the one keeping me up at night, well I’d say my life turned out pretty good. Somehow I suspect it won’t even cross my mind.
I have a Kanji tattoo. I studied Kanji and Hiragana for a few years, and the word Eien (romanised) from Japanese is IMHO the most beautiful word in any language. It means forever, or eternity, depending on context. I have several “favorite words” but eien is at the top of my list. They span several languages. I happen to really enjoy the sounds of many spoken words.
It’s also ironic, which I enjoy.
It also represents my greatest fear.
So laugh if you like, but I know how to write the character, I know its roots and I can pronounce it in Japanese. The word and symbol both have meaning to me and I’m fine with that.
It looks like this: http://www.kanjisite.com/html/start/rhsinfo/r_einaga.html
It’s not Chinese or Japanese, but I’m thinking of getting a Latin phrase inked when I graduate law school: Fiat justitia, ruat caelum. “Let justice be done, though the heavens fall”. I don’t speak a word of Latin, but this is one of the great bits of rhetoric in the legal tradition, and it’s a fine sentiment to live by. And I imagine I’ll need the reminder. I’d suppose some people get Chinese or Japanese ink for the same reason.
Mr. Excellent–if you do get that tattooed, please keep in mind that Classical Latin does not use the letter J, it uses the letter I instead.
I think that’s an excellent idea. But if you didn’t want to ink it on your body, you could just make it your Message Board sig. 
Wow, are you sure you’re not the co-worker mentioned in this thread?
Because, you know, that would be pretty awkward.
I don’t have any tattoos and I have no intention of ever getting one, but I can see why people would want to get a character tattoo; kanji are frigging sweet! The different kinds of calligraphy in particular are very compelling as an art form. They do lose some of their appeal when you can read them, but even then they’re still much cooler than plain old roman letters. The calligraphic styles of roman letters have been mostly associated with Latino gangs, so unless you want that stigma attached to it, you’re stuck with less compelling forms anyway.
Even in literate societies, there is still a kind of mystical quality to writing. Many of us can remember when adults used it to convey secrets that we had no way of understanding as illiterate children. It’s a magic that becomes commonplace as we grow older and learn how to read and write, but writing still has the ability to move us in a way different from pictures, music, or speech. A different kind of writing from your own is even more special. The origins of shorthand are about as prosaic as you can get, but someone who uses shorthand is treated with just a whiff of the awe and deference that a shaman in a pre-literate culture might have when oracles were read.
Someone using an unfamiliar writing system might get reactions ranging from interest to aversion, but it is truly rare for anyone to say something like, “That’s dumb. Why would you want to use that squiggly junk to write?” Almost everyone views being able to write in a strange way as being an accomplishment. The most basic thoughts recorded in that way seem to have a deepness of meaning beyond the ordinary.
When you can’t make guesses to read it, or even find a commonality between your writing and whatever inscription you’re contemplating, it is seen as being mysterious and strange. This is amplified when you connect that writing to a different, distant, and therefore exotic culture. Compare the feeling an English speaker gets seeing a sign in Spanish, which uses no special characters and only a few diacritics that aren’t in the standard English alphabet, and one in Swedish. In some ways, Swedish is closer to English’s origins than Spanish, but because the combinations of characters are different and because it uses some glyphs and diacritics that are really different, Swedish looks more foreign.
You’re also freed from the mental constraints of attaching meaning to what you see and are able to look at it as a pure art form when the writing is completely unfamiliar. In fact, if you can’t read it you have no choice but to simply see the shape and flow of the writing. That doesn’t mean that you stop trying to attach meaning to something you recognize as writing, but the inability to decipher it makes it even more tantalizing.
There is also a strong appeal behind being one of the few to be able to understand the message. If you feel a connection with the culture that produced it, then that becomes a link between yourself and that culture.
That said, something like Glory’s approach is probably the best way to go when getting something that indelible marked on your body. You want to avoid having something that’s nonsensical or badly-formed. There are a multitude of different styles of writing the characters and it looks odd to mix them. You should be especially careful not to reverse them or drop any strokes. Dropped strokes can change meaning or make the character illegible. There’s also a whole host of aesthetics in writing the characters; white space, balance, form, and flow are all important. Non-native artists will usually not be able to judge these factors well enough to know when the picture they’re copying is nice or garbage. Even if you’ve done your research, you have to make sure to bring a good copy of the characters you want with you as a model, or face the chance that they’ll screw it up.
With Chinese or Japanese characters, it’s important to remember that native speakers rarely think of the characters themselves as carrying meaning. They know that the characters have a semi-independent meaning, but they’re almost never used by themselves, only in combination with other characters. That’s why when people choose characters based only on the core meaning, the tattoo they get often makes no sense in either Chinese or Japanese, or worse has some weird meaning in combination with the other characters. Just because it’s safe in one language doesn’t mean it’s okay in the other either. A famous example are the characters for hand and paper. This combination, read tegami means “letter” in Japanese, but means toilet paper in Chinese. Getting an actual phrase in one language or the other is a much better idea than choosing individual characters; at the very least both Chinese and Japanese will recognize it as being meaningful in J/C, even if they don’t know exactly how to read it.
Well, if you have that exact one, it is just nonsense. In Chinese, I would guess it’s two characters smushed together “da4 guo4” that make no sense together. It’s not like it says “white boys got tiny peckers” or anything.
Glory, I remember your original thread and happy the weight and tatoo have worked for you.
I’m wondering too.
He used to read these boards… oh well, I guess if he has it on his arm, it’s not really all that private is it? He does tell people what it is when he’s asked…!
The book was “Dance Dance Dance” by Haruki Murakami. I recently read it, and loved it. In fact, I have really enjoyed all of Murakami’s work (that I’ve read so far), in large part because of my brother’s enthusiasm for it! I totally understand what it meant to him (or could have meant - we haven’t discussed it deeply, I think he probably gets something more out of it than I do).
So he has the katakana writing of it on his wrist. I think he told me that the book was originally published with the katakana title, rather than the typical japanese word for “dance” which would either be in hiragana or kanji? I don’t really know…! Wiki does have the title with the same characters he has, though.
Interesting. I’ll have to check him out.
I mean the author, not your boyfriend.
Unless he’s cute?
Thanks, Mirror Image. Good to know.