Aaaaand one more moment of truth in my life

[choripepi]

Hello everybody!! I finally dare to ask anybody about it... heehee... I did this tatoo when I was an impulsive sixteen-year-old girl. I always looked older than what I am, so the guy who did it was pretty worried when somehow I happened to tell him my age after the whole procedure. I loved the exotic look of it. But anyways, now eight years went by for me and this little tatoo, and I would like to know more. It is supposed to be a chinese character meaning spirit/ghost. Is this true? Has he performed well/like a normal occidental tatooer/veryverypoorly in calligraphy?? It is done in a very private piece of skin, so not many people have access to it, which is good. Well, the real meaning for the tatoo is not anymore what it literally says, but the memories it awakes in me when I look at it, so I guess it is not that bad. Anyways it would be a relief (maybe not) to know. Please be sincere!!

Thank you!

[imron]

The character is 魂 (hún), and the meaning is more like soul/spirit rather than ghost/spirit.

Personally I don't think the calligraphy has been done very well.

[Meng Lelan]

It just happens that I was standing in line at the 超市 here in Texas, this 30-ish lady in front of me had the tatoo of the Chinese character for "love" on her bare shoulder, but it was backwards. I wasn't sure whether to tell her or not. But who would believe a 白人 in this case. So I decided not to tell her.

[Lu]

Imron is right. The character means spirit, and is written mostly right (a stroke at the top is missing), but the calligraphy is ugly.

[imron]

and is written mostly right (a stroke at the top is missing)

Plus the 丿should be one joined stroke crossing through the 白, but here it appears to be two strokes (and that's not to mention the proportions/locations of other strokes being slightly off).

[HerrPetersen]

魂 This can actually be a Kanji rather than a Hanzi. So the 白 does not have to be connected with the 儿. However the drop on top of it is missing in any case and unfortunatly I have to agree with the other posters, according to my (limited) sense of characters it does not look good in style.

[choripepi]

Thanks to all!!

[Lu]

Plus the 丿should be one joined stroke crossing through the 白, but here it appears to be two strokes

It should? From what I remember, you write the top stroke, then 田, then 儿.

[imron]

Maybe it's a difference between simplified and traditional stroke order. For simplified characters, it's definitely one long stroke. If you zoom in on the character (e.g. in the browser, or in some other application like word), you can also clearly see it is one stroke.

[imron]

See for example here.

[randall_flagg]

It just happens that I was standing in line at the 超市 here in Texas, this 30-ish lady in front of me had the tatoo of the Chinese character for "love" on her bare shoulder, but it was backwards. I wasn't sure whether to tell her or not. But who would believe a 白人 in this case. So I decided not to tell her.

Yes, this is quite a predicament! It's like the classical "XYZ" (Examine your zipper) game-theory type of choice. Do you tell the person or not? What's everybody's: Your- Chinese-character-tattoo-looks-horrible strategy? Do you tell people or don't you?

[Lu]

Imron: that would explain it, I learned to write it when I had only learned traditional.

Randall: The problem is, if you tell someone their fly is open, they can quickly zip it up, and so you actually helped them a lot by sparing them further embarrassment the rest of the day.

A tattoo is not something you can fix on the spot, and also not a lot of people would know it was wrong, only people who know Chinese would snigger about it. So if the person with the tattoo is not asking my opinion, and I don't know them, I wouldn't say a word. There are no real benefits to telling them.

[randall_flagg]

I think I'd want to know! You can't fix it on the spot, but you CAN get it removed eventually. But I guess I wouldn't approach any random strangers, either.

[Hofmann]

Well in choripepi's case, you don't have to remove anything. Only add two strokes (the 丿 on top of 田, and the final 丶).

[leigao]

It's the same in Kanji and 中文, the Japanese stroke is identical:

http://www.mahou.org/i/k/b/3A32.png

also:

http://japanese.about.com/library/bl50kanji_tamashii.htm

[skillphiliac]

It's the same in Kanji and 中文, the Japanese stroke is identical:

http://www.mahou.org/i/k/b/3A32.png

also:

http://japanese.about.com/library/bl...i_tamashii.htm

While in Japanese this may be correct, I seriously doubt that it is right for Chinese, be it Jiantizi or Fantizi. At least the "现代汉语通用字笔顺规范" is specific enough about the Jiantizi version (1154325113554).

Japanese is apparently a bit different, examples are "田，国，王 or, as expected, 魂" where the enclosure (in example one) is filled with the vertical stroke first, followed by two horizontal ones. For "国" and "王", which really are the same for this problem (except for "王" not being circumscribed like "国"), the same rule applies: 1211 (horizontal, vertical, horizontal, horizontal once again), as opposed to 1121. And finally, "魂", following the same rules and thus having a stroke count of 14, not 13.

Edit: Ok, I am taking a guess here. Turns out, there are ressources available saying that "魂" is written with 14 strokes, but at the same time having the character standing next to it clearly written with a single top to bottom-left stroke going all the way up and through the horizontal stroke, resulting in a total stroke count of only 13.

Peculiar, but I guess it was revised some time ago or something like that.

[Hofmann]

The Japanese stroke order is Japanese only (and maybe Korean). The Traditional Chinese stroke order is this.