A friend of mine has some plates. On the back of the plates, saucers actually, are the linked characters. It was difficult to take a clear picture.
http://imgur.com/gallery/Ud0520T
http://imgur.com/gallery/hIrJXGY
http://imgur.com/gallery/gBYAH9H
Anyone?
I can’t read them but the images need to be rotated 90 degrees clockwise.
It says “made in ____ city, main/big street”
Not sure exactly which city, sorry.
Thank you!
ETA: What language is it?
Maybe Reply will clarify, but it’s my understanding that when it comes to Chinese characters, you can’t necessarily tell what language they are representing just from the writing, since the symbols represent concepts as opposed to sounds.
The left hand vertical row (rotate photo to the right 90 degrees) is 大街造 (Dàjiē zào) or literally “street creation” or “street building”. The right hand vertical row is too unclear for me to read or look up with a dictionary. My guess is the third character on the right hand side is 市 （Shì) or “city/town”. A native speaker should have no problem. Given your context, I’m guessing it’s probably the name of the city. Which is a long winded way of saying that Reply above already nailed it. We just can’t really read the first two characters clearly to know what city.
Language is Chinese. Whether it is traditional or simplied characters is tough to say. If the first two characters were clear, it might lead to a more definitive conclusion.
Quick Chinese written language lesson.
Net-net, there is basically only one written Chinese (and you can think of traditional vs simplified as akin to print vs cursive). So, there isn’t really a distinction for writing Mandarin vs Cantonese or other dialects (and you can think of it somewhat akin to American vs British printed English).
Edit window has passed. This should read
The characters on the right are , Yokohama shi (city)
The ones on the left are not standard words. My Taiwanese wife suggests that it’s a play on words, with the character for street substituted for as they both are pronounced kai.
means reform, renovation, remodel, and adding makes it a large renovation.
It could be that Yokohama was having some sort of renovation and used the substitution of as a pub. These could be commemorative plates.
Too late to edit. The pronunciation kai is Japanese, of course.
Adding to what China Guy says, Chinese characters were imported into Japan where they are called kanji.
Kanji have different pronunciations than Chinese, although similar meanings. However, the characters are combined differently when making words.
Thank you! I had a sneaking suspicion it could also be kanji instead of Chinese, but wasn’t sure. It’s gotta be Yokohama City (横浜市).
The left three, are you sure it doesn’t say 大街造 (big street make)? I thought it might be trying to say “Made in Yokohama City, on the main street”. I could be wrong.
As others have said, it’s not always easy to tell because there are a lot of characters that overlap between China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan, but also some distinct ones. I couldn’t positively read it either because the characters of Yokohama City aren’t very commonly used, at least for my beginner vocabulary.
In this case, the Japanese plate calls it 横浜市, but the second character is different in other parts of the world. In Mainland China it’s 横滨市 (note the little “hat” over the second character), in Taiwan/HK it’s 橫濱市 (completely different character), etc. But the second part of the plate, 大街造, doesn’t seem like regular Japanese kanji to my untrained eye. Someone else will have to chime in.
Moderating
Note: I fixed a quote tag in the post above that misattributed a quote.
Oops, thanks!
Not all hanzi (Chinese characters) used in kanji (or hangul, Korean) mean the same thing as the original, especially when combines and used in phrases or sentences. A prime example is 馬鹿 (baka, idiot) in Japanese, which in Chinese translates as horse deer or refers to a specific species of red deer. Not only inoffensive, but meaningless without supporting context.
The possible origin may be an old Chinese idiom:
"Etymologies
Although the origins of baka are uncertain, Japanese scholars have proposed various etymologies and folk etymologies. The two most widely cited are a Classical Chinese idiom and a loanword from Sanskrit. First, the oldest hypothesis suggests that baka originated as a Chinese literary “allusion to a historical fool”, the Qin Dynasty traitor Zhao Gao (d. 207 BCE) from the Records of the Grand Historian.[4] This etymology first appears in the (c. 1548) Unbo irohashu 運歩色葉集 dictionary, which glosses baka 馬鹿 as meaning “指鹿曰馬” “point at a deer and say horse”.[6] Namely, the Chinese idiom zhǐlù-wéimǎ 指鹿為馬 (lit. “point at a deer and call it a horse”, Japanese 鹿を指して馬となす shika o sashite uma to nasu) meaning “deliberate misrepresentation for ulterior purposes”.
Zhao was an infamous minister who served the first emperor Qin Shi Huang (r. 246-221 BCE) and forced the second Qin Er Shi (r. 210-207 BCE) to commit suicide.“]Etymologies Although the origins of baka are uncertain, Japanese scholars have proposed various etymologies and folk etymologies. The two most widely cited are a Classical Chinese idiom and a loanword from Sanskrit. First, the oldest hypothesis suggests that baka originated as a Chinese literary “allusion to a historical fool”, the Qin Dynasty traitor Zhao Gao (d. 207 BCE) from the Records of the Grand Historian.[4] This etymology first appears in the (c. 1548) Unbo irohashu 運歩色葉集 dictionary, which glosses baka 馬鹿 as meaning “指鹿曰馬” “point at a deer and say horse”.[6] Namely, the Chinese idiom zhǐlù-wéimǎ 指鹿為馬 (lit. “point at a deer and call it a horse”, Japanese 鹿を指して馬となす shika o sashite uma to nasu) meaning “deliberate misrepresentation for ulterior purposes”. Zhao was an infamous minister who served the first emperor Qin Shi Huang (r. 246-221 BCE) and forced the second Qin Er Shi (r. 210-207 BCE) to commit suicide.”
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baka_(Japanese_word)
Possibilities for the incoherent text is that the writer was either using incorrect grammar or making a pun/statement as speculated.
I’ve posted this before, but this is a great example of how spoken phrases in Mandarin and Cantonese can’t always be directly/correctly expressed in hanzi. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e73btaVo868
Jump to 4:23 and when Carmen directly translates “Do you know how to speak English” using the Mandarin hanzi Ben uses, it doesn’t make sense.
Edit: Ben speaks in formal, Beijing Mandarin and at least to my ears, Carmen’s Cantonese isn’t fully Hong Kong dialect.
It says that but, it’s the wrong character for Japanese. is not used by itself.
To make/manufacture is written and abbreviated as . “Made in Japan” is written .
I’m checking with a native Japanese speaker now if the idea of a play on words could be possible. Her initial response to seeing the image was “I don’t read Chinese”.
A native Chinese suggests that they are fake goods.
I wrote using kanji in the above post, but since I’m posting with Tapatalk, it looks like they don’t go through. I’ll repost later.
Jeeze, I couldn’t listen to that whole thing. Ben obviously understands a bit of canto, Carmen sounds more like an overseas Chinese canto speaker to my ears. (I did live in honky town for 5 years but am by no means a Cantonese speaker).
I’m just chiming in to show off. At the beginning, Ben uses the character “to have” (有）, which is actually a pictogram of a hand holding an piece of meat. The top two lines being a “hand” and the chunk of stuff below representing meat. NOtice the two horizontal lines in the meat. The Cantonese word for “not have” (I think this is brilliant), is the same pictogram but minus the two horizontal lines 冇 . Mandarin does NOT have an equivalent and instead di-syllabisizes with “not have” or 没有。
The classical verb meaning “not have” is 無. It’s not pictographic, but such is language.
Leaffan, can you ask your friend for more information? Where were these purchased?
The characters for Yokohama are written in Japanese kanji, but the character for “made in” is not used in Japanese.
Back on the PC. The kanji for made / manufacture is 製造. For “made in Japan” it’s 日本製. Native Chinese and native Japanese speakers are both saying it doesn’t make sense. My Japanese friend doesn’t like the idea of the workplay.
I’m punting.