jumpingjacktrash:arrghigiveup:cimness:China’s netizens are all in a twitter over the account of a ca
jumpingjacktrash:arrghigiveup:cimness:China’s netizens are all in a twitter over the account of a carpenter who was commissioned to make a cinnabar red high-backed chair with the finials at the top to be “in the shape of dragons’ heads” (chéng lóngtóu 成龍頭). Unfortunately, he misinterpreted the directions to mean “[in the shape of] Jackie Chan’s head” (“Chénglóng tóu 成龍頭”).(via Language Log » Reanalysis, Jackie Chan edition) LMAO ok so to elaborate on this absolute gem, notice how the characters provided for “in the shape of dragons’ heads” and “[in the shape of] Jackie Chan’s head” are identical? That wasn’t a typo.The thing you need to understand about Chinese names is that they all have meaning. And I don’t mean that in the sense of “if you trace the etymology back through two languages it has its roots in a Hebrew phrase that means “God is my ____” that many Western names have. I mean that in the sense of “almost all of these words are still in regular use today and my parents very literally named me “pretty [and] wise” in Chinese.(Sidenote: This is why we get annoyed at made-up ‘Chinese’ names that just pull two random vaguely Chinese-sounding syllables together. It is blindingly obvious when it’s not a real name).成(chéng) means “to become”, “to turn into”. 龍 (lóng) is “dragon”. Thus, Jackie Chan’s Chinese stage name, 成龍 (Chénglóng), literally means “become dragon”. (頭 (tóu), of course, means “head”) (Further sidenote: This is actually a bit of a pun/reference. Specifically, it is a reference to Bruce Lee, whose stage name was 小龍 (Xiǎolóng), or, “Little dragon”. So Jackie’s chosen stage name means both “become dragon”, and “become [like] Bruce Lee”)The other thing you need to know about Chinese is that we don’t put spaces between terms in written text.What all this means is that the way you’d write “[carve] into dragon heads” can be identical to the way you’d write “[carve] Jackie Chan’s head”, and literally the only difference would be where you pause when you vocalise it: before lóngtóu, or after chénglóng. XDi think the chair turned out great -- source link