I am back from three days in Kyiv, working on my consulting project. for two nights, I rented a rennovated studio flat on Red Army Street (it has a new name now but the street signs are still old) for less than $40 USD per night. It was fully furnished including fancy sheets with hearts. The hearts had little sayings in English - Love to Love, Two Hearts, Broken Hearted and (the winner) Love Purade
I also have a Genuine Certitied Rolex from the former Silk Alley in Beijing and a Bruse Springsteen album from a street vendor in Kyiv.
I see lots of T-shirts here with English words on them, seemingly chosen at random, usually spelled correctly but totally meaningless in combination. It is for effect only, I guess.
There is a story from years back about a woman who knitted a sweater for herself and incorporated three Chinese characters into the design, which she had seen on a menu in a restaurant. A friend of hers who was Chinese burst out laughing when he saw her in the sweater as it read "Cheap but delicious".
I've even heard of English speakers getting tattoos with Oriental characters that had very different meanings than what they thought. I would like to see some of those t-shirts.
ReplyDelete"Love Purade"! Brilliant.
ReplyDeleteSnowbrush, thanks for the comment. Tattoos would be real fun to have wrong. I'd want to bring a friend with me or have the characters vetted first, I think.
ReplyDeleteThe T-shirts are pretty funny sometimes. I saw one with a fake Live Performance Itinerary for some rock band. It was a recipe for something. I'll try to jot down some of teh strange word combinations and blog them when I get a few collected.
Absolutely amazing! I have the same on my bed cover. Im currently residing in Minsk, so im guessing my wifes grandmother bought them from Ukraine. I just saw "Love purade", and decided to google it, and your side was the first to come up ;P Just thought i'd tell!
ReplyDelete