Some guy paid $30K to have this baby put in the Washington Post. I especially like the crack that "Taiwanese" sounds like "Taiwan Ni Sui" = "Taiwan You Die". Glad somebody is making money off this stuff.
Click on it to see the full size version on my Flickr account (click on ALL SIZES).
[Taiwan] [US] [China]
I wish I had that much money to throw around.
ReplyDeleteIn case anyone's wondering what he's going on about, he objects to the the "Chi-" in "China" because it sounds like the Mandarin verb "chāi" (拆), which means:
* tear open; take apart
* pull down; dismantle
Of course, what all this really means is that he's a loon. But one doesn't need to know any Mandarin to figure that out.
This is so entertaining ...
ReplyDelete"Dragon Time (龍的時代）" to be pronounced as "Long Time"? No, that's wrong. It should be:
"Long de sheh dai"
such that the chinese way of pronouncing "time" (as "sheh dai") is honored too.
I thought, oh yea, this kind of language revolution should have started from inside China, but not asking other countries to initiate it.
Then one thing suddenly came to my mind: Oh, no, they started it already! I've seen several pictures of Chinese textbooks they use in their English classes. Something like:
"I am very happy today"
should be:
"我今天很高興"
but you would see such a line right below it:
哀 頁母 威力 黑皮 特跌
Reading it quickly, it does sound like "I am very happy today" !
Now I know where this ads came from.
Wow. When I first saw that headline, I thought your were exaggerating. How wrong I was, that is one insane ad.
ReplyDeleteWhy is Zhongguoren Chinese and Taiwanren Taiwan people and not Taiwanese.
ReplyDeleteMark s: Thanks, I read the ad twice and couldn't make head nor tail of what he was rambling on about.
ReplyDeleteDo yourself a favor and check out the websites he has provided on the bottom. All aboard the Crazy Train!
ReplyDeleteIt takes a lot more then the sum of Engrish and Chingrish to pronounce Chinese as 拆你死. I am suprised to learn that he's from Taipei. I was wondering if he speaks some other form of Chinese dialect.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, what is the etymological root of the word "China"?
Language Log, which is the top linguistics blog in the States, has picked up on this (complete with a link back to your scan) with a guest post by Prof. Victor H. Mair. See Vitally worst: "Chinese" sounds like "to tear you to die".
ReplyDelete