any japanese savvy people want to translate my shirt for me? (hanafuda, tsuka..?)

[Igniz v2]

picked up this shirt today cause i thought it looked pretty nifty, however i can only read kana and have the limited vocabulary of whatever a year of beginner level japanese has taught me. it's actually a locally produced thing, so i'm a lil nervous that it might just be gibberish, despite the fact that our resident asian population is quite high and thus there's many acute BS detectors around town. anyways..

in particular, the 4th character on the bottom line is escaping me as to what it is. looked at a kana chart and everything, but didn't seem to be there. however, i'm fairly faithful it's an actual.. character, given that the text was clearly done with a computer, and thus it would be part of a legitimate character map.

 

[striderpunk]

Its an ad for the Worlds Fair in Osaka, Japan

(note I don't read Japanese, but its kinda obvious.)

 

[Igniz v2]

haha, i know that, i'm just curious as to what the two kana lines are actually saying

 

[striderpunk]

sure is a nifty shirt though

 

[Zero Satori]

in particular, the 4th character on the bottom line is escaping me as to what it is. looked at a kana chart and everything, but didn't seem to be there. however, i'm fairly faithful it's an actual.. character, given that the text was clearly done with a computer, and thus it would be part of a legitimate character map.

My first instinct was that it was the old Hiragana version of "we" (which would be 「うぇ」 nowadays), but given the placement in the sentence, I think it's a really funky version of 「わ」 written phonetically instead of the traditional 「こにちは」。

 

[Igniz v2]

it also appears as if it could be a heavily exaggerated "ru". that's the only other thing i can really think of with the little loop at the bottom.

dunno what konichiru would mean though. sounds almost like a jisho ending. but i don't think "hello" is a verb..

guess i'll have to wait for the japanese based members to wake up or something to look at this

 

[Zero Satori]

Nah. Using "hello," I'm pretty the shirt says something along the lines of:

"Good morning, sunshine. My karma. 1970."
(not a direct translation)
「今日は、天。私のカルマ１９７０．」
...which makes sense, in a 1970s hippy shirt kinda way.

 

[Lagduf]

I hate you for buying a shirt without knowing 100% what it said.

My only hope is that that character you are stuck on is a secret word that is only known to Native Japanese speakers, Japanese Citizens, and those resident aliens living in Japan who speak Japanese.

I could only then hope that the secret word on your shirt says "retard."

You're still cool with me though Lance buddy.

I think the shirt is weird looking personally.

 

[ki_atsushi]

dunno what konichiru would mean though. sounds almost like a jisho ending. but i don't think "hello" is a verb..

Heh, it's probably a misspelling.

 

[Igniz v2]

Nah. Using "hello," I'm pretty the shirt says something along the lines of:

"Good morning, sunshine. My karma. 1970."
(not a direct translation)
「今日は、天。私のカルマ１９７０．」
...which makes sense, in a 1970s hippy shirt kinda way.

"karuma" would be katakana though..

edit - i love you lagduf <3

it's been too long since our AIM glory days

 

[Lagduf]

"karuma" would be katakana though..

edit - i love you lagduf <3

it's been too long since our AIM glory days

I don't even think I have aim on my pc anymore.

Ah well. Getting a new computer this week, so i'll be sure to install it.

 

[Zero Satori]

"karuma" would be katakana though..

Properly speaking, yes. But given the fact that the whole shirt is just kinda "funky" for the sake of being "funky," then I'd say its understandable in a hipster-ish kind of way. (If the shirt wanted to be totally correct--as you would have learned in your Japanese classes--then the こにちわ would have been こんにちは in the first place.)

 

[bokmeow]

Looks like old Japanese mate, although I'm not sure that fourth hiragana character was in use in 1970, and even then, it looks like a mistake. If you look at old hiragana charts, there used to be a hiragana character for 'Wu,' but it fell out of favor or summat, so now it's just deprecated. It looked kind of like a "Ru" on top, with "N" attached directly to the bottom, my deceased granny, who was born in the late 1920's, early 1930's, would write that hiragana into the charts when she was teaching us grandkids Japanese, but again, that character on your T-Shirt looks nothing like it.

I'm not sure what "Odanhodo 1970" even means on the top --- it certainly does not mean world fair. If it has the long sound, "Oudanhodo," which requires one more "U" hiragana after the "O," then it means "Pedestrian Crosswalk," which seems to make sense with the picture of treelined street in the picture shown on the T-Shirt.

 

[hanafuda]

Sorry, but the wife confirms this is gibberish.

Apparrently that funky character is 'i', tomake it read konichii...

Nice retro vibe though.

 

[bokmeow]

Sorry, but the wife confirms this is gibberish.

Apparrently that funky character is 'i', tomake it read konichii...

Nice retro vibe though.

Yeah, I suspected as much, it's just someone who collected a bunch of Japanese hiragana to make a T-shirt, much in the same way the Japanese collect a bunch of English to make an Engrish T-shirt. I have a cute T-shirt with a cat in a shoe next to a paragraph of semi-coherent Engrish. At least there were no typographical errors in it.

Where do you suppose they took the "Odanhodo Nippon" from? Now that I think about it, "Pedestrian Crosswalk" is actually "Oudanhodou", so it's missing not just the one hiragana character as I previously thought.

 

[hanafuda]

Yeah, I suspected as much, it's just someone who collected a bunch of Japanese hiragana to make a T-shirt, much in the same way the Japanese collect a bunch of English to make an Engrish T-shirt. I have a cute T-shirt with a cat in a shoe next to a paragraph of semi-coherent Engrish. At least there were no typographical errors in it.

Where do you suppose they took the "Odanhodo Nippon" from? Now that I think about it, "Pedestrian Crosswalk" is actually "Oudanhodou", so it's missing not just the one hiragana character as I previously though.

I think that is the word/compound they were aiming for. As in let's cross over to Japan for the expo kinda thing?

 

[subcons]

Love the shirt, regardless of what it says.

 

[ki_atsushi]

Just don't wear it in Japan.