It’s such a shitty shirt that has to explain the joke on it. Other versions of that shirt just have the sideways writing on it.
Had a ninety year old coworker named “Irv”. Coolest dude you ever met. Ww2 vet. My username is influenced by him
He always wore a gold necklace charm that looked like gibberish. People would occasionally ask about it. He would say “it’s an old yiddish expression.” Then turn it upside down and around and it read the same.
The world needs more old people with a sense of humor.
In case you’re wondering, the “Japanese” section of the shirt has a mixture of actual Katakana (usually used for “style” or foreign words) and Hiragana (used for native words and [grammar] case markers). Plus, random shapes that look somewhat like Katakana. Some appear to be backwards Katakana, while some are simply made up (like the “R” character).
Also, the shirt says you need to turn you head to read it… But traditional Japanese, which was written top-down and right-to-left, was readable without turning your head. T L K
H I I
I K N
S E D
_ _ A(edit: Vertical text is weird in Markdown)
I realize it’s meant as a joke. But if you know Japanese, even if only how to read the non-Kanji, alphabetic characters (Katakana and Hiragana), it borders on lame. Especially since they faked a bunch of the characters.
Syllabic* characters, but yes, it just looks lame if you can read any Japanese.
You’re right. I was thinking “alphabetic” would resonate more with a general audience, albeit not 100% accurate. Thanks for pointing it out!
As a bonus note, the term “mora” is used to describe a syllabic character.
(edit: typo)
You are also right!
I think you are missing the point here.
The faked characters are made to look similar to English, once you turn your head.
Since you are trying to read Japanese characters, it is making it harder for you to read the punchline. You might want to turn off your Japanese character recognition for reading this.
アホ
I once attended a class from which I remember one moment and no context.
The moment I remember is one of the teacher showing an image similar to this one and saying “who thinks it will be the same message when I turn it sideways?” My hand shot up, but no others.
Like this image, it did not read the same way. I was thus humiliated. Hopefully I learned something else from that class!
Oh no link to store this time, still think it’s an ad
Yeah the 5 day old acct is not doing it any favors.
I spent an embarrassingly long time trying to read it before realizing it wasn’t actually japanese…
Want
