Question About Life

Johnny · Post by **Johnny** » 1/21/2003, 6:26 pm

Does anyone know what the Chinese/Japanese charcters in the video look like?

emily · Post by **emily** » 1/21/2003, 6:32 pm

what do you mean what do they look like? you haven't seen the video?

Joe Cooler · Post by **Joe Cooler** » 1/21/2003, 8:12 pm

They are Chinese. Japanese symbols are much simplier... than again they have a few alphabets... but im pretty sure they are chinese. Any chinese writing should 'look' like the ones in life as long as they are done with brush strokes and not a pencil or something. I'm guessing that never answered your question though.. :uh:

namkablam · Post by **namkablam** » 1/21/2003, 8:20 pm

Yea, they are chinese symbols. Here's the life symbol --> http://groups.msn.com/namkablam/misc.ms ... &PhotoID=5
I gotta get it tattoo'd soon

Johnny · Post by **Johnny** » 1/22/2003, 9:52 am

I was thinking about getting that tattooed on to me...I dont know where though

Axtech · Post by **Axtech** » 1/22/2003, 9:57 am

If you're going to get a tatoo, get "Made in Canada" on the bottom of your foot.

Or, the Life symbol on your arm or forehead.

Gimme_Shelter · Post by **Gimme_Shelter** » 1/22/2003, 12:20 pm

i got a tattoo on my forehead that says
"whitey the man is trying to keep me down"
i also apparently have a large forhead

emily · Post by **emily** » 1/22/2003, 3:05 pm

Reijin · Post by **Reijin** » 1/22/2003, 3:52 pm

The characters in the video for "Life" are in Chinese. Japanese has 3 main alphabets:

Hiragana (hee-rah-gah-nah), which is the alphabet they use for pretty much native Japanese words...certain characters are simplified versions of Chinese characters actually.

Katakana (kah-tah-kah-nah) is another native Japanese alphabet...it's used primarily for words (and names) that are foreign in origin, such as...Restaurant. In Katakana this is "resutoran" (reh-soo-toh-rahn.) The translation of katakana words can be guessed a lot of the time, since they follow a similar pattern of sounding the way they do in the language they're borrowed from. Katakana characters are like much more angular versions of Hiragana in a lot of cases, tho many don't look like their Hiragana cousins at all.

Hiragana and Katakana sylables are pronounced exactly the same way, and they are the same sylables in each, they're just written in a different way.

The third main alphabet is called Kanji (kahn-jee.) Kanji is the real meat of the Japanese language. It is the set that is borrowed directly from Chinese and is made up of tens of thousands of characters. This is where one character of Kanji can represent an entire word that might be like 8 letters in English. This is where the space problems in translating video games/anime can come in. Kanji can be very simple or extremly complex characters requiring many brush strokes.

Hope my mini-lesson helps

emily · Post by **emily** » 1/22/2003, 4:10 pm

thank you.

didn't you do the awesome cover of 4am?

Joey · Post by **Joey** » 1/22/2003, 8:04 pm

I have the Life symbol in chinese if you need it since I've been planning it as a tattoo since I first heard that song .. now I'm re-thinking that since WAY too many are doing the same thing and it's just lost all meaning now

committed · Post by **committed** » 1/22/2003, 8:11 pm

why has it lost all meaning?

Joey · Post by **Joey** » 1/22/2003, 8:14 pm

Having a tattoo that 600 other people have makes it very un-special to me now .. at the time it had a lot of symbolism for me .. now I know of people who have gotten that tattoo for no reason other than they saw it on the video and thought it looked cool ..

committed · Post by **committed** » 1/22/2003, 8:15 pm

but you still have a reason.

Joey · Post by **Joey** » 1/22/2003, 8:16 pm

I know .. but like I said .. having that tattoo become the "cool" thing to do has ruined it for me ..

Axtech · Post by **Axtech** » 1/22/2003, 8:17 pm

I can see what she means. If I was to get a tattoo, I'd want something original and unique.

committed · Post by **committed** » 1/22/2003, 8:19 pm

eh. i don't really care what other people do.

Joey · Post by **Joey** » 1/22/2003, 8:22 pm

I don't care what other people do either .. but if I'm gonna get something tattooed onto me for the rest of my life, it's not gonna be the same tattoo that dozens of other people have ..

The 3 tattoos I have now are very traditonal things that many other people have and I want to get something that represents me and me only ...

committed · Post by **committed** » 1/22/2003, 8:24 pm

get the life symbol too

Joey · Post by **Joey** » 1/22/2003, 8:30 pm

Nope .. I'll leave that to the olp groupies .. a tattoo with no meaning is pointless and a waste