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Chinese teacher translates bad Chinese tattoos, and people are cracking up

"I don't know, I don't speak Chinese" is actually a pretty good one.

@jessiez888/TikTok

For some reason, "coffin man" showed up twice.

Ever since getting Chinese characters as tattoos became a mainstream trend in America in the late 80s and early 90s (and really taking off in the 2000s) there have been stories of people thinking they got profound mantras like “serenity” and “courage” permanently etched into their skin only to realize they actually got gibberish…or worse.

And somehow, these tattoo snafus never fail to be amusing. Recently, a woman named Jessie, who teaches Chinese online, had viewers cracking up as she translated “Westerner’s Chinese tattoos” that could not have possibly meant what the tattoo owners thought.

In one video, which quickly racked up over three million views, Jessie pointed out tats that said some almost inspiring phrases like “star, laugh, love,” "captain my destiny,” and “cancer” (as in the disease, not the astrology sign), as well as straight up nonsense like “cockroach,” “low quality coal,” “pee,” “more failure,” and “coffin man”…which somehow appeared twice?

@jessiez888 Westerners’ Chinese tattoos be like #funny #chinese #tattoo ♬ original sound - Chinese with Jessie

However, folks were in agreement that the “I don’t know I don’t speak Chinese” and “check you" with the image of a bowl of soup tattoos were actually successes.

It was also pretty hilarious that, at least in the examples used in this video, women were either far luckier, or did their research, and actually came out with tattoos like “beauty strength love.”

In a follow-up video, which already has nearly 750,000 views, things seems to take an even more deranged turn, with tattoos that translated to “Oedipus Complex,” “groundhog’s true color revealed,” “dog fly to the sky dragon of,” and “kitchen paper towel,” among others.

@jessiez888 Westerners’ Chinese tattoos be like #funny #chinese #tattoo ♬ original sound - Chinese with Jessie

“The Oedipus complex one is diabolical," one viewer wrote. On the other hand, a different viewer commented, “ok but groundhog's true color revealed slaps.”

Does this make for a warning against cultural appropriation? Perhaps. But as some viewers noted, the hilarious aftermath of language barriers goes both ways. You can definitely go to places in China and Japan and see failed attempts at English phrases on t-shirts, snacks, storefronts, etc.

@k.fel English really do be a weird language tho #fyp #english #asian #foryou #fashion #tiktokfashion #language ♬ Coffee Music - Cafe Music BGM channel

Now, if you're someone who has one of those unfortunate tattoos, keeping it a secret might not be as easy as you think. According to Babbel, it is the most spoken language in the world, with approximately 1.3 billion people who speak it as their first language. So, there’s a good chance someone might have seen your “chicken soup” tattoos and is secretly snickering behind your back.

But hey, life is short and we all need something to “star, laugh, love” about. So, if a silly nonsense tattoos floats your boat, go for it. But if you do care, Jessi recommends confirming with a native speaker. Oh, and considering the font apparently goes a long way.

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Why blue was the last color to be named in every culture around the world

Turns out our language impacts our ability to distinguish between colors.

AsapSCIENCE/YouTube

The color blue is not mentioned in Ancient Greek texts or other ancient writings, with one exception.

One of the first things we learn as small children is the names of colors—stop signs are red, lemons are yellow, the sky is blue. Color naming is such a fundamental element of early language development, we might assume that it's always been this way, but apparently, it has not.

In fact, ancient cultures didn't even have words for many colors that we have now, including the most basic blue. Despite the sky and bodies of water being visual backdrops since prehistoric times, having a word for "blue" is a surprisingly recent human development.

blue sky, blue ocean, the color blue, blue, blue scene There was no word for blue in most ancient cultures, despite people seeing the sky and water all the time.Photo credit: Canva

As a video from AsapSCIENCE explains, ancient texts reveal that ancient cultures around the world lacked a word for blue. The one notable exception was the Egyptians, who were also the only people to develop a blue dye. We may think of blue as being ubiquitous in nature since the sky and water appear blue, but actual pigment-wise, it's not common at all. There are very few truly blue fruits, animals, or plants, so ancient art was created with earthy tones like browns, reds, yellows and greens. The Egyptians started mining the rare lapis lazuli, which is why they came up with a word for blue, and they figured out how to recreate the color with various minerals. But otherwise, across the board, blue simply wasn't a specified color.

In fact, when researchers looked into the historical record for words for specific colors, they found that color names emerged in the same order in all cultures worldwide. Black and white came first. Then red. Then yellow, then green (though a small percentage reversed the order of those two). And blue came last. This is across every culture, every language. The same order, with red being the first actual color named and blue being last. Isn't that wild?

Watch:

- YouTube youtu.be

Researchers have come up with two explanations for this order. The first is evolutionary. Black and white came first for the very basic differentiation between night and day, light and dark, etc. Red came next, most likely due to blood. Yellow and green helped differentiate between ripe and unripe fruits and vegetables. Blue didn't really have much usefulness as a name. The sky could be described in terms of lightness and darkness, cloudiness and clearness, and water can be described with similar terms.

The second theory has to do with our ability to create colors. Basically, the words for colors didn't enter the language until humans could make them. It was easy to make black, white, red, yellow, and green pigments. Blue, not so much. It's one of the hardest colors to create, which may be why humans didn't bother making a name for it earlier on.

colors, color wheel, human eye, how we see colors, blue The language we use affects how we perceive colors.Photo credit: Canva

Now we get into whether having a name for specific colors impacts our ability to perceive them. Early humans considered all colors as hues of black, white, and red, which is hard for us to conceptualize with our hyper-specific color names like fuchsia and turquoise and chartreuse.

But the Himba people of Namibia don't have a name for blue in their language, and it appears to affect their ability to differentiate blue from green. It takes them longer, for example, to note that a blue circle differs from a green one. However, they are able to more quickly identify a slightly lighter shade of green among darker greens because they have more words for green shades than we do in English. They literally see blues and greens differently because the language they have for various colors is different than other cultures.

blue, green, turquoise, teal, colors, color theory Where does green end and blue begin? Photo credit: Canva

Our language shapes how we see color. As the video explains, the categories we place colors into influences our ability to perceive them as separate colors and not just part of a continuum or as a shade of something else.

"Language trains our brain to see colors differently. What this means is once we have a new word for a color, there's a feedback loop in the brain and this exaggerates the differences between those colors, especially at the border areas between them. We get used to calling these colors as distinct hues, and as a result, the brain more aptly sees them as distinct hues. Without the word, you would still see the color, but you wouldn't notice or contextualize it in the same way."

Who knew that color perception was such a language-specific thing? Check out more fascinating facts about how humans interact with our environment on AsapSCIENCE's YouTube channel.

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The secret alphabet actors use that lets you pronounce any word in any language or accent

Ever heard of a "voiced alveolar flap?" Me neither.

Canva Photos & By International Phonetic Association - CC BY-SA 3.0,

Actors and elite language learners have a secret tool that rapidly accelerates their pronunciation skills.

There's a lot of talk around bad or unconvincing accents in Hollywood movies. Lines, scenes, or entire films that just don't quite sound right. But there are just as many, or more, examples that are absolutely brilliant.

One of my favorite recent examples is Tom Holland in the Spiderman films. Holland is British, and sounds like it in real life. Yet in the Marvel movies, he perfectly passes for a young American kid speaking plain old English. I can't imagine how much work it must take for him to (seemingly effortlessly) sound like an American! Andrew Garfield (ironically, another Spiderman) also does a commendable American accent, as does Idris Elba. Meryl Streep is world-renowned for her accent work in movies. Cate Blanchett is another actress that's consistently lauded for accurate dialects. The list goes on and on.

Have you ever wondered how certain actors get so good at accents? Of course, they have coaches to help them but do some people just have a natural ear for replicating dialects?

Well, yes, some people do have a natural ear and talent for accents. But there's an incredible phonetic tool that some actors use to master their accent work. It's a special alphabet that anyone can learn, and it can enhance your ability to speak any language fluently and convincingly.

And most people have never heard of it!

Learning any language, even your own native language, requires a fair bit of memorization. Pronunciation cues aren't always obvious in the written language. Duolingo astutely points out that the u in 'dude,' 'put,' and 'putt' makes a slightly different sound in each word.

We know the e at the end of 'dude' makes the long u sound. But what explains the difference between putting (like golf) or putting (as in, to put) and the difference between pudding and puddle?

Unless you've memorized the near-entirety of the English language (the way we do slowly as we grow up surrounded by it), you'd have a nightmare of a time trying to pronounce it all properly. Add in tongues, accents, and dialects that alter the rules as we know them of language, and you can imagine how difficult it would be for, say, a person who grew up speaking Spanish trying to learn a specific flavor of New York English.

This is where the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) comes in. It's a universal organizational system that categorizes all the different possible vowel and consonant sounds the human mouth can make, and writes letters and words according to those sounds—not any one specific language's writing system.

So, when it comes to that pesky letter u, when using the IPA you won't have to guess what sound it makes based on the letters that surround it.

The three U sounds would all be written differently: /u/, /ʊ/, or /ʌ/.

Conversely, there are several combinations of vowels in English that all make the same sound. 'Bead,' 'tree,' 'key,' and 'chic' all have the same vowel sound in the middle despite different spellings. Confusing! With the IPA, however, that sound would be written as /i/ regardless of what letters make up the sound. It's all about the mouth!


@vox.to.verba

Reply to @thechronictrekkie #ipa #internationalphoneticalphabet #linguistics #linguistic #appliedlinguistics #ipachart #phoneticalphabet #phonetics #phoneticsandphonology

The phonetic alphabet is incredibly detailed in its cataloguing of sounds. There are terms and annotations that refer to the shape and position of your mouth and tongue as you create the sound, words that describe how much air you're letting out, whether your tone is rising or falling. It's absolutely incredible.

For example, the voiced alveolar tap is something of an "r" sound that involves tapping the tongue on the roof of the mouth. That's not to be confused with the voiced alveolar flap which has the tongue slightly curled before tapping. Fascinating!

Imagine being an actor trying to learn an Irish accent for a role. You can listen, and be coached, by a native speaker. But it might also be extremely helpful to break your lines down into the specific sounds and mouth shapes you'll need to master in order to sound truly authentic.

accents, language, accent, english accent, foreign language, ESL, speech therapy, phonics, phonetics, actorsNot Not exactly a light read, but if you're serious about mastering your pronunciation the IPA can be a huge help.International Phonetic Association, CC BY-SA 3.0

You don't have to be an actor trying master an accent to learn the IPA and make good use of it.

Studying the IPA for a language you're trying to learn can rapidly accelerate your pronunciation. Phonetic spellings not only tell you the shape and movement of your mouth, it can also tell you which syllable in the word should get the emphasis and how your vocal tone should change throughout the word. That kind of learning can take you from someone who can merely stumble through a few sentences in a chosen language, to someone who can truly converse in it.

The phonetic alphabet is also heavily used in speech therapy. Therapists will create a phonetic transcription of a sample of speech in order to determine the nature of any errors or difficulties. That allows them to create a targeted treatment plan to address those specific errors.


@englishnativetongue

Now I know my IPA I hope you learned with me today! 🎶 The English International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) Song I saw @CoffeeCupEnglish do this song and I just had to try my best and recreate it with an American accent! #englishlanguage #englishlearning #ipasong #nativetongue

English is such a funny and tricky language. For every rule (of which there are many), there are twice as many exceptions. It's a wonder anyone can ever learn it.

And yet, English is the third most spoke language in the world, and one of the most universal. It's an extremely common second language for people in all corners of the globe, which sure is convenient for those of us born in America.

Somehow, I never knew there was an easier way to learn how to pronounce things. A way to bypass all of English's nonsensical rules and unspoken peccadilloes. If only the International Phonetic Alphabet wasn't such an eyesore on paper, maybe we could ditch the written version of English entirely. Then, of course, I would be out of a job!

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The remote island where residents speak a fascinating blend of Southern and Old English

Experts say Ocracoke's endlessly-entertaining dialect is rapidly disappearing.

BBC Global/YouTube & EZScore/Flickr

An isolated island called Ocracoke is home to a unique accent not found anywhere else in the world

American English comes in all sorts of different flavors and varieties. I grew up in Baltimore, which shares some dialectical DNA with the accent you find in other Northeastern cities like Philadelphia. Baldamor, hon! There's the New England dialects, most famously the Boston accent: Pahk the cah at Havahd yahd! The New York accent is world famous, as is the deep Southern twang, which gives way to a thick Cajun accent the closer you get to the water in Florida and Louisiana.

These are all different versions of the greater American dialect. But there is one place, a tiny island off the coast of North Carolina, where a few residents speak in such a unique way that it's not even identified as American by most people around the world.

Ocracoke, North Carolina is home to a unique dialect called the Brogue: A strange blend of American Southern, Old Elizabethan English, with little bits of Irish and even Australian thrown in.


ocracoke, north carolina, the brogue, hoi toider, accents, dialect, language, linguistics, anthropology Americans think Hoi Toider sounds English. People from England think it sounds like something else. Giphy

The Brogue, also known as Hoi Toider, is absolutely fascinating to hear in action. When you watch interviews with the locals of the island, they at first appear to be speaking a form of deep American southern — you can hear the twang the way you might in parts of Georgia of Alabama. But then, without warning, a word or phrase will slip out that sounds distinctly British. Old English even. Then you'll swear you hear a bit of Irish!

The dialect owes its roots to a surprising source: Pirates.

Pirates loved to hide out on Ocracoke as the island is incredibly remote, about 20 miles from the mainland of North Carolina. Even today there are no bridges or flights to Ocracoke; it can only be reached by a (quite lengthy) boat ride. Eventually, the island was actually purchased by the Blackbeard's quartermaster (yes, that Blackbeard), William Howard, where he created something of a pirate settlement. English sailors and Native American tribes also passed through and had their own unique impact on the culture and developing language of the island.


ocracoke, north carolina, blackbeard, pirates, the brogue, hoi toider, accents, dialect, language, linguistics, anthropology Legend has it Blackbeard himself named the island. Giphy

In case have your doubts about the island's buccaneerish roots: "In one popular island legend, Ocracoke comes from the phrase, 'Oh, crow cock,' which was spoken by the infamous pirate Blackbeard as he waited to do battle at sunrise with the governor’s forces that had come to capture him," writes a guide from NC State University.

The dialect had a lot of room to develop without much outside influence. The BBC writes, "Howard's community lived in near-isolation for almost two centuries. Electricity didn't arrive at the island until 1938 and a ferry service didn't start until 1957, leaving the islanders cut off except for the occasional supply trip to the mainland."

That's why Hoi Toider is still alive to this day, although its speaking population has dwindled. Here are a few hallmark phrases of the unique dialect:

A 'dingbatter' is anyone not from the island; a tourist. An 'O'Cocker' is anyone born on the island of Ocracoke. A 'buck' is a good male friend, while a 'puck' is a female friend. The Brogue uses 'weren't' liberally for singular nouns ("The sun weren't out yesterday.") and frequently adds an 'a' in front of verbs ("We went a-fishin' this morning").

But to fully appreciate Hoi Toider, you've got to hear it in action:


- YouTube www.youtube.com

Experts say, as awesome as the Brogue is, it will likely disappear within the next 50 years.

Though the island remains about as remote as it comes, in 2025 there's no escaping the influence of social media, television, and film. Every generation born on the island is a smidge less-adoptive of the Brogue than the one that came before.

It will probably be mostly gone in the next couple of generations, which feels like a tragedy. Instead of "dingbatter" and "buck," the kids will be saying "Skibidi toilet" and "rizz." OK, maybe that's an exaggeration, but young people growing up on the island won't be as immersed in the language as their elders and will begin to speak more and more like your average American.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

There's a concept called culture homogenization. It's the idea that over time, because of technology and globalization, unique individual cultures from around the world will all start to look more and more the same. It's why you see fast food restaurants directly next to the Leaning Tower of Pisa and people all over the globe listening to the same handful of musical artists.

Ocracoke has managed to hang on longer than most places due to how difficult it is to reach. Here's hoping that the Ocracoke Brogue can survive somehow, some way, in little pockets of the island. It's just too dang cool and interesting to go away just yet.

This article originally appeared in May.

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