“Sexy Men” in Arabic, English, and Chinese
This sign on the side of a building by my house is priceless. The store sells men’s underwear but methinks their sign is a bit misleading.
Friday, February 19, 2010
How to Say "Sexy Men" in 3 Languages
This sign on the side of a building by my house is priceless. The store sells men’s underwear but methinks their sign is a bit misleading.
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5 Comments:
Just wanted to point out, that's not Arabic, it's Uyghur. Since you've been residing in Xnijiang for the past three years or so, you should've known better.
Arabic script, Uyghur language. It's a small - but important - detail that I appreciate you correcting me on.
The fact is that despite the length of my stay in Xinjiang I can't write a single word of Uyghur. I find it more important to grasp the oral portion of a language first, and I have a long way to go with Uyghur.
Thanks for the correction, although for future reference I'm not too proud to be wrong. No reason to throw a "you should have known better" in my face, especially on such an insignificant detail.
I can read Uighur, though I found in Xinjiang that I preferred Chinese since you either know the character or you don't. Uighur has some letters that aren't present in Urdu (my native language), which makes it really tedious to read.
The Chinese looks like a plausible translation since I see male and person, but I'm not so sure about the Uighur. I think the second word there is 'man' based on translating it into Turkish, which is a similar language but written with the Roman alphabet. I'd be surprised if they translated it literally, but maybe I don't know Uighur culture that well.
More importantly, why is English 2-3 times bigger than the two languages actually used there?
@Adeel - You know, it didn't even dawn on me that the Uyghur translation could be mispelled or changed due to culture. Still, you could say that same thing about the Chinese based on the image their government likes to project.
Good question, though: why is the English so much bigger? I think it's just for shock value. Maybe Chinese people want to know how to say "Sexy Men" in English? :)
The Uyghur is correct, it simple says "handsome man" (or at least the context I have been using it in for the last few years ) Thanks for all your hard work on this blog, I enjoy reading it.
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