Posted on 02/26/2008 2:33:44 PM PST by blam
Problem solved.
Throw me down the stairs my pants.
Tujia People, Descendents Of The Ba People
TO SERVE MAN BETTER
Yep, you’re right. I can’t read it.
Oh it's decipherable alright, it says: Karl Marx was here. He is a Zhang Ass. His philosophy will lead to the people giving up all their power to a great leader who will use it to slaughter those who disobey with his cruelness, including u.......
This may be the translated text.
Not Ba’d... not Ba’d at all...
Another wonderful post.
Thank you for taking the time to share it, blam.
It says “Be sure to drink more Ovaltine.”
Merinos, decendents of The Real Ba People - accept no substitutes.
The verdict is evident:
Innocent!!!!
Before the Chinese regularized their character sets about 250 BC (and sporadically before that) there would undoubtedly have been a number of others that stood outside the mainstream of characters.
That would explain the smaller characters next to the big characters ~ just someone "updating" the book.
They re-defined their characters and changed their shapes in AD sometime and you'd have something similar going on so there should be old "books" around showing the same phenomenon but with dramatically different characters.
Looking at these they remind me a lot of what I call "kitchen Chinese" characters. They are used by uneducated or poorly educated people who work in food marketing or restaurants to indicate what's on the menu. That would date this stuff back to the third century BCE at least.
This is a "word book" by appearance, if not provably by content "yet", so the reason they can't read the "language" is that it's not in a "language" ~ some of the newer small characters probably "discuss" the older characters though ~ that's why they are calling them "footnotes".
This is a tremendous discovery. Unfortunately almost all the records written in that oldest formal Chinese character set were destroyed by various crazy emperors and invaders.
The dictionary outlives the civilization ~ as usual.
I'm going to see if they have more pages of this stuff on the net and see what it really says. May have to stand on my head while servants beat the bottoms of my feet with bamboo poles to get in to the essence of it though.
Of course this is Japanese. It says:
To the most honorable smoking guest
Smoking is not allowed inside the building if you please
Do it in the outdoor “smoking corner” we most humbly request.
Note the katakana KO-NA- = “corner” in the middle of the bottom line.
(BTW, this was a laborious effort for me, just so you know. )
Thanks Dr_Lew! The website engrish.com has a daily picture of a translation gone bad. Thanks again!
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