Tattoo decoding...

[stefanpn]

I meet a girl, the proud owner of this tattoo and she wanted to drop me a challenge... I have to read this tattoo, but unfortunately I do not speak or read/write a word of Chinese language. So I would be really grateful if somebody can tell me what is the meaning of this, for me unknown symbols, I 've realized that Chinese script have very different system of writing and reading it has too many letters comparing to western scripts although Chinese symbols look very pretty. My mother language is Serbian (Serbo-Croatian), but I also speak and understand English, Bulgarian, Macedonian and some other Slavic languages so if anybody need to translate something form those can be free to contact me and I would be glad to help.

http://217.26.67.168/uploads/2/0/2034471/tattoo.gif

Please help...

[roddy]

File can't be viewed - try attaching it or putting it on a different server.

[stefanpn]

My bad:

Here:

[stefanpn]

here:

[HashiriKata]

It means chasing, pursuing, wooing, courting, etc.

Very interesting challenge you've got!

[stefanpn]

Thanks a lot!!!

[imron]

But I really hope her tattoo doesn't look like that. The writing is shockingly poor.

[stefanpn]

No it does not, this is just what I have remeber from last night, and I drawed it in a Paint.

And it look much prettier on her body...

[skylee]

The writing is shockingly poor.

I agree.

[renzhe]

If you actually remembered that well enough to write it out in Paint the next day, then you may have a talent for Chinese

I do agree that it looks terrible, but memorising all those strokes is not easy, respect!

[stefanpn]

Well, I would like to know to speak and write Chinese, it would be a great way to communicate with over 1. billion people, but unfortunately in Serbia (and whole ex Yugoslavia) we do not have many schools where I could learn that.

[renzhe]

There is a sizeable Chinese community in Serbia, and there are excellent textbooks available through online sites, and also excellent online resources like Chinesepod and TV series downloads.

You could do the crazy thing like many of us on this forum and try learning on your own

[johnmck]

If you want to learn Chinese by yourself you have came to the right place. A large number of us are learning via self-study. There are plenty of free resources on the internet, click on the "Wikis" button on the tool bar above.

Currently I am following a free course for speaking that I would recommend. You can download it from: http://www.fsi-language-courses.com/Chinese.aspx

It is a course that is purely aimed at speaking in Chinese and not writing or reading. Nevertheless it is a good quality course (was developed for the US diplomatic core) and is also a very long course (300+ tapes). If you spend one hour a day you can expect it to take a year to complete, I am currently two months into the course.

Once you have finished a few modules and want to practise you can look at sites such as: http://www.polyglot-learn-language.com/index_polyglot.php

I would advise that you be careful how you go about learning Chinese, when doing self-study it is easy to waste a lot of time on short courses or by being too ambitious.

Edited August 25, 2008 at 02:50 PM by johnmck

[jbradfor]

The characters are 追求. So you're really close!

[Very interesting choice of tattoo....]