Sunday, December 1, 2013

Creative Guesswork

different asian scripts and how to recognize them

Check this out, someone translated this comic into Chinese!

72 comments:

  1. Ha ha I lost it at butts. Note for myself : also works with boobs :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. And balls! We might as well complete the triumvirate

      Delete
  2. Can you add a Google+ "+1" button to your site? I'd be glad to like your comics every week :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm glad you enjoy them! Is there no +1 button? That's troubling, I'll have to look into it...thanks!

      Delete
    2. Under the share button you can access Google+.

      Delete
  3. I'm afraid the bottom-right character in the Chinese panel isn't used in Chinese. It seems to be used in Japanese, though. Funny comic, though!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Cool! Thanks for letting me know. I'll change it!

      Delete
    2. the bottom right character 倉 is a real chinese word, it's the traditional form of 仓

      Delete
    3. So it's okay as is? Or should I change one of those characters? Now I'm confused!

      Delete
    4. what he means at the bottom right character is 凪 not 倉
      凪 is Japanese Kanji (looks like Chinese but created by Japanese, no Chinese uses it)

      Delete
    5. Okay thanks everyone for the input. I replaced the bottom-right character on the Chinese panel - better now?

      Delete
    6. yup! it looks better. How amazing these Asian languages! lol

      Delete
  4. Mongolian is now using Cyrillic letters though.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah but traditional Mongolian? All knives.

      Delete
    2. but InnerMongolia is not lol

      Delete
    3. We are still using the script in southMongolia and Mongolia but unofficial in Mongolia :-(. I hope someday we can change the Russian cyrillic.

      Delete
    4. but it's not raining knives in Mongolia...May be someday rained on somebody..

      Delete
  5. Nice funny post! Greetings from Thailand.
    PS. I like the Vietnamese one with that hat. It's so cute.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Yeah, some people say that Mongolian script like raining :-)

    ReplyDelete
  7. Sinhalese looks like a bunch of elephants.

    ReplyDelete
  8. So fun. I like your feeling ^^
    But, I'm Vietnamese and i can't understand almost "Vietnamese's letters" your write :v

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. This comment has been removed by the author.

      Delete
  9. so our language is super sexy. xD

    ReplyDelete
  10. lol !! love the way u see our language... butts !!!!! haha.... proud of our sexy language :P

    ReplyDelete
  11. really love this. lol Vietnamese tôi rất thích truyện này =))) but should I use "truyện" since is this really a story? lol anyway you're so creative!!! Chinese is buildings attacked by UFOs HAHAHA by the way have you seen nón lá? A woman wearing it is like how we write : Ê (Hey) lol. I laughed at the Hangul being making fun of me, you're so interesting!!! I had to get all the way here to see more of your works!!! And burmese? butts? hahaha lolllll

    ReplyDelete
  12. Tamil! Please add Tamil! (makes me think I'm on an intergalactic ship, but have lost my glasses)

    ReplyDelete
  13. As far as I can tell the Hindi word is nonsense. Still, I laughed my Burmese off. If you do South Indian scripts, Malayalam looks like marbles, and it actually sounds like they have marbles in their mouths!

    ReplyDelete
  14. butts and boobs ....... :P our mother language

    ReplyDelete
  15. Good one. Cheers!!! Never knew that I've been writing boobs and butts all my life.

    ReplyDelete
  16. ေကာင္းေရာ..တင္စားခ်က္ကေတာ့လန္ထြက္ေနတာပဲ...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Google translate doesn't have Burmese unfortunately, so I'm going to guess that your sentence means "butts butts, butts butts boobs."

      In which case, I agree!

      Delete
    2. Google Translator now support Burmese,
      And it says :
      "Good luck --------------(INAUDIBLE)"

      Delete
  17. Nice work. :D Talk about being the butt of a joke... Butts, boobs and balls. I like being a native speaker of that sexy language. ;)

    PPA (A native Burmese speaker)

    ReplyDelete
  18. I could not possibly love this comic more.
    ...unless...maybe sometime you could take a stab at describing Baybayin (Filipino)?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ooh, that's a tough one. Looks to me like someone trying to write upside-down, backwards, and drunk

      Delete
  19. This is one of your best comics yet! Happy new year!
    ps. I have always described Arabic script as "sheet music", don't you agree? xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Aw thanks! Happy new year to you too! Yes, Arabic is quite pretty...I'll have to do a comic on that next...

      Delete
  20. What i want to know is what the Latin alphabet looks like to those who are accustomed to their own scripts. I can't tell because their actually meaning "over-rides" their looks in my brain, having grown up with it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Good question! It probably looks something like this, I would imagine.

      Delete
    2. Good question!

      Malachi, when I looked at the probably-Welsh sample the meaning didn't "over-ride" its looks because I don't know Welsh, but my knowledge of what the letters (give or take a few vowels) sound like did "over-ride" its looks.

      The Greek, Roman, and Cyrillic scripts do have some letters in common (and some letters appear in Greek and Cyrillic but not Roman).

      Thing is, at least some amount of printed English still seems to be everywhere so "Roman looks to Cyrillic and Greek readers like Cyrillic and Greek look to Roman users" probably doesn't apply. Maybe if you asked very young readers who are still getting a handle on their own native alphabets and haven't yet also been taught the full Roman alphabet in school...?

      Delete
  21. My friend pointed out to me years ago that the best way to identify Korean is that it looks like Japanese but has lots of circles.

    ReplyDelete
  22. සිංහල කියවන්න පුලුවන් පකයෙක් ඉන්නවද?

    That is Sinhala, primary language used in Sri Lanka.

    http://dhamma.sutta.org/pali-course/DBLM/olcourse/pali/sinhala_cons.gif

    http://www.visiblemantra.org/sutra/ye-dhamma-sinhala.gif

    ReplyDelete
  23. Funny post. The Hindi word doesn't mean anything though. At least not in the standard variety. How about समाचार? (News)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ooh, that's a good one. Actually, the word I believe I looked up on Google Translate was "pooping", but I may have moved some of the letters around to make it look more snake-like...

      Delete
  24. ㅋㅋㅋ 나의 한글을 받아라 외국인아

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. that means
      Take my Han'geul polygon pieces clashing, You Foreginers!

      Delete
  25. This page was hung up at a little Chinese bakery near my friend's house, that's actually how I discovered your comic! Loved it ever since.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That's the greatest thing I think I've ever heard. If you would be so kind as to take a picture of this Chinese bakery and the comic hanging in there, preferably with an adorable old person in it, I will send you a free copy of Itchy Feet: Volume One.

      You made my week!

      Delete
  26. Do not you think the font is different from?

    ReplyDelete
  27. i.imgur.com/UC0PUKW.jpg
    hiragana, katakana



    i.imgur.com/Wyc9zr3.jpg
    hiragana - shodo style

    i.imgur.com/7A4u3GM.jpg
    chinases - shufa style

    i.imgur.com/1IyTKq2.jpg
    chinese sub, kor sub, Jpn sub

    ReplyDelete
  28. i.imgur.com/8xZpKHE.jpg
    CHA BOOK TEXT

    i.imgur.com/ackw6C7.jpg
    JPN BOOK TEXT

    i.imgur.com/eJeV5I2.jpg
    KOR BOOK TEXT

    ReplyDelete
  29. 你好啊 我來自台灣
    Hello,I come from Taiwan

    ReplyDelete
  30. http://www.wikihow.com/Tell-Chinese%2C-Japanese%2C-and-Korean-Writing-Apart
    How to Tell Chinese, Japanese, and Korean Writing Apart!

    ReplyDelete
  31. The Korean letters there either means "The ten people who went" or "Liver. Ten people."

    ReplyDelete
  32. Raining knives? That's DIO's heaven.
    MUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDA

    ReplyDelete
  33. Wow!! This is the comic that introduced me to ItchyFeet.

    I was searching about how to differentiate between Japanese and Chinese and someone posted it as an answer in Quora. Since then, I became a great fan of ur comic and started reading from the current one all the way back till here.

    This has been a great passtime activity and I love it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. **introduced ItchyFeet to me

      Delete
    2. This is by far the most popular comic of mine...! Haha.

      Thanks Naveen for the positive feedback!

      Delete
  34. Got one more collection of scripts to behold: https://aslfont.github.io/Symbol-Font-For-ASL/ways-to-write.html and they're not all just for one language neither: http://www.omniglot.com/writing/signlanguages.php :)

    ReplyDelete
  35. I am Burmese,I don't understand what my language means

    ReplyDelete
  36. Not only did somebody translate it into Chinese, but it rhymes, as well!

    ReplyDelete