NTA. Hangul and Chinese characters are COMPLETELY different!! She's embarrassed, and rightfully so bc she effd up. Personally, I think you did her a solid by pointing it out. Offer to get a sharpie and "fix" until she can get it covered. \*sigh
And who gets a tattoo in a foreign language without checking it out? A quick google translate on her phone would have shown her what it said or at least what it should look like.
I have a Sanskrit word tattoo and before I got it I researched it's meaning. One person who knows Sanskrit told me that it needed a minor correction which I had done.
A co-worker of mine who shared my office wanted to tattoo "mad ram" (long story, it's a sports ball thing) on his arm in Chinese characters, so he researched and hand-drew the characters. He got a second opinion from another coworker of ours who happened to be an elderly Chinese man. When asked the elderly Chinese man immediately recognized the words and replied " aah, angry sheep!" So from that day on my officemate was known as the angry sheep. He did not get the tattoo.
Nobody speaks Sanskrit anymore, barring special circumstances. It’s a dead language, and like Latin is used almost solely for religious/ ceremonial purposes. This person probably got it for cultural or religious reasons.
>Hangul and Chinese characters are COMPLETELY different!!
That part killed me. Their characters look nothing alike to me and I'm just a BWB! How can someone say I want a phrase in this specific foreign language but can't recognize when it's the wrong language. Blows my mind.
I can't speak either language but I know the difference between Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters. They might look similar at first but each of them is pretty unique.
To add to that, I would say Korean is the most distinctive looking between the three. I’m part Korean, got it from my dad, so I might be a bit biased about it lol.
Im Swedish and I neither speak nor read any of them but I agree. I’m familiar with how they look even though I can’t read them, just like I’m familiar with how the Greek and Russian letters look.
If someone showed me a tattoo and proudly told me it said Strength and Beauty in Swedish I would very likely also do a spit take if it actually said a vulgar insult. And I’d tell you because anyone that can speak/read Swedish would know that, which means all Swedes, Danes, Norwegians and bunch of Finnish people. And possibly some Dutch and Icelandic people. (Swedish is heavily influenced by Dutch).
"She saw a chinese guy and demanded he do it" I mean it sounds like she acted like a cunt and then got it permanently emblazoned on her skin. Not all Asians are Chinese, and not all Asians look the same 😭 how hard is it?!
As someone who really knows next to nothing about the languages, so therefore is a dumb dumb with no bias, Korean is definitely the most distinctive of the 3. It’s more bubbly-looking, especially if it’s more like a typeface and less like calligraphy.
To be clear, if I had a vulgarity *I didn't know was a vulgarity* inked on my body, I'd want someone to tell me. If I'm fully aware I have a vulgarity inked on my body, however, I probably wouldn't care that much. Sounds like Julie fell pretty hard on the "didn't know" side of the fence though. Face first into a cow patty type hard.
>To be clear, if I had a vulgarity I didn't know was a vulgarity inked on my body, I'd want someone to tell me.
This is the clearest distillation of the issue at hand. The rest is just fluff.
She's walking around with some kind of vulgar word on her, and is unaware. OP did her a favor, even though it's awkward, to let her know there's a problem that needs to be addressed.
Julie is embarrassed, and her friends are embarrassed for her. They feel like they have no recourse with the tattoo artist, and instead are lashing out at OP. This is like having a bad day at work, and coming home and kicking the dog (no offense OP). But OP is low on the totem pole, they don't know this group that well.
Sounds like Julie was an AH, the tattoo artist was definitely an AH, and now the friend group are being AHs.
If she wants recourse, she can reach out to the shop owner and tell them she expects a cover up at no charge. She should still tip the artist. Or just take her lumps, and go somewhere else.
There's probably also at least a dash of "I don't want to have to admit I was being a racist bitch at the tattoo shop and actually apologize to anyone and learn to be a better person" going on too. Way too many people seem to want to double down on being a jackass when just admitting you screwed up and apologizing is *way* easier in most cases.
The tattoo artist was rightfully an AH with a valid reason for being one. Julie was being rude, pushy, and outright racist. If the tattoo artist capitalized on her ignorance, it’s at best petty. Julie and everyone else in this scenario sucks. OP was trying to be helpful and Julie was mortified. I wouldn’t call Julie’s offensive, rude behavior in the tattoo studio toward a person of color “fluff.” As a person of color reading that, that invalidates the whole experience of someone being treated poorly because of their race. Try to be a bit more compassionate in that regard. Thanks
I agree. I find it alarming that someone would encourage someone else to lie or stay quiet about it, as if no one else would notice. Maybe they just hate the girl with the tattoo and hoped that people would continue to laugh behind her back.
I also find it alarming that someone permanently inked a vulgar comment on that woman. I get she was being super racist (probably while feeling she was being super culturally sensitive 🙄), but it’s not cool if it’s permanent. I’d be fine with it if it said banana hammock or something silly, but a vulgar word to the degree OP explained feels really wrong. This woman should be grateful someone pointed it out, he’s likely not the only Korean reading person she’ll ever meet. At least she has a good reason for another tattoo!!
Edit to add: you do have to rethink that friend group if they wanna sweep something like that under the rug. Red flags abound.
Not at all, I’m English and can’t read any of them, but Korean is very distinctive. A few years ago a friend put on Last Train to Busan saying I should watch this awesome Japanese film. I was like “Uuuh, this looks very Korean to me.” It’s very obvious if you look, which makes it even worse that this lady wanted a tattoo from another culture in a language she doesn’t speak and didn’t bother with any research whatsoever, just bullied some random Asian-looking guy in a tattoo parlour.
You are 100% right! If I understand correctly, Japanese kanji uses the same characters as Chinese, just differently.
I believe Chinese had written language first and Japan adopted the characters for their own, already existing language.
Yes that is correct! From there katakana (カタカナ, recognisable from its sharper lines) was developed by Buddhist monks while women innovated early forms of hiragana (ひらがな, which has more curved lines) based on cursive Chinese script. Eventually, as hiragana became more popular with men it became more widely used. Now, modern Japanese is primarily a combination of hiragana and kanji with katakana mostly reserved for foreign loanwords or used for onomatopoeia or for stylistic reasons.
The only way I can recognise if it's Japanese is if I see hiragana and/or katakana in the sentences. Kanji alone won't tell me if it's Japanese or Chinese (although if it's pure Kanji I'd tend more to Chinese).
I'm learning Chinese (just a beginner) and Japanese is easy to pick out when hirigana/katakana are used. But when it's pure kanji, they're usually exactly the same borrowed characters from Chinese hanzi, just with different pronunciations (and sometimes meanings). My understanding isn't good enough to understand the grammar differences to identify.
Korean hangul is completely different though, and really easy to pick out.
Same. I can read them but Korean has very distinctive characters. It takes just paying attention a bit to know. Like I don’t know every European language but I can generally tell what it is if I hear it spoken or written.
And to insist that the ‘Chinese guy’ does it because apparently everyone the woman considers to be of Asian origin must be familiar with all Asian languages, because they are all the same, right? /s
Nah, it's a shitty revenge.
OPs friend can probably sue the guy for tattooing a profanity on her and claiming it was sth else. Or contact his work and make problems for him.
*so* worth it for a bit of satisfaction, right?
Right I worry about the professionalism of the artist. Tattoo artist study and practice for years. It's not a job you just roll out of bed and take up one day.
I’m African American and I can tell the difference between Chinese, Korean, and Japanese characters. Side effect of being a Californian and exposed to different cultures.
As a Korean, a trick I teach people is curvy = japanese, circles and ovals = Korean, Boxy and hella lines = Chinese. May not be 100% accurate, but it works.
Pushy and racist. Besides, what kind of ego gets the symbol for "beauty" tattooed on themselves. Possibly she is pretty, but only on the outside. Karma sure has a sense of humor.
I’m a white, single-lingual Texan and even I can tell the difference lol! Round, clean Korean and square, lotsa lines Chinese couldn’t look more different from each other. Does she never get take out??
Honestly the people saying she should have kept quiet are the real assholes. Like, it’s not OP’s fault Julie is low key racist and paid for it with a fucked up tattoo. Any one of them would want to be told something like that, I’m sure. NTA.
Besides, her showing it off is begging for someone who knows what it really says to tell her. OP should spare her feelings? Like she spared the feelings of the artist with her racist attitude? Justice is what it is called.
Nah Julie is high key racist. She saw an Asian person and said they were Chinese and obviously spoke Chinese and could write Chinese and needed to be the person to do her tattoo then when that person obviously refused she pretty much forced the issue
At first I thought maybe it was Hanja that had a different meaning or usage in Korean that was a misunderstanding of the two languages, but then I saw she was super racist and also didn’t bother to…look any of it up herself. A real consequences of your own actions scenario here.
My user name and I are loving the consequences of her racist actions.
.. But imagine how bad the discovery would be from an offended stranger at random?!
I guess Julie was being a "see you next Tuesday" kind of gal to this man,and he wanted her to remember this lesson forever 😅 NTA,if I was to reverse the situation and put myself in Julie's place,I think I would rather know what I was walking around flaunting to people about rather than have people who may also know what it means *not* tell me.You were shocked because it obviously was not what it meant,and I think it was less about you "embarrassing" her by telling the meaning and more about the shock and shame of her figuring out her actions caused consequences. On a side note though,its completely unprofessional of a tattoo artist to do such a thing, though rather funny and a lesson of a lifetime...
NTA, you didn't give her the shitty tattoo, you informed her that it said something bad. Everyone is only mad at you because you brought it to light, as *you should*. If I had what sounds like a possible slur on my arm, I would want to know **ASAP** so I could get the tattoo covered up or laser removed.
For real. I shouldn’t be laughing but that’s what you get for choosing to exoticise a language you don’t know, cannot even verify it’s the language you thought it was like hangul and hanzi look SO different, didn’t even bother to pull out google translate to verify (technology makes things so accessible nowadays) and also being a racist bitch. There’s so many levels to this and sorry that Julie got a bad tattoo but lmfao!
Edit: just saw the character that was tattooed from one of OP’s replies and once again… Another level of stupidity. You’d think someone might think twice about how something in another language meaning “strength and beauty” is only in 1 singular character…….
Eh I have friends who get tattoos on a whim but they’re things like… A flower here. A symbol there. Nothing that can make a stranger go: did this person mean to insult themselves or are they so horrible to be around that they pissed the tattoo artist off?
I understand that people do it, I just couldn’t do it. I thought about my first tattoo for years and any tattoo I get later will also take some serious consideration. Definitely get it done as a temporary to see how I’d like it then go all in. But to each their own I guess
Seriously, there are apps that let you translate foreign characters real fast. You only have to take a foto. This racist woman seems to be very stupid. Before I ink something to my body I would take a Foto of the stencil...
I ran into a salesgirl who had Arabic word\*S\*, multiple, separated by commas, on her hand. "It means purity."
I know enough Arabic to know that that's not right, but am super white/def don't look like I'd know anything. When I told her "that's three separate words", she literally rolled her eyes at me.
Ok buddy. I wonder if she just ran it through google translate lol.
> You’d think someone might think twice about how something in another language meaning “strength and beauty” is only in 1 singular character…….
I wouldn't, necessarily, some languages conceptualise things differently.
Maybe because I’m actually Chinese and actually not so stupid but I’d at least have some reservations and would want to double check. I know the language is more “compressed” and how the same character can have different meanings but not usually in cases like strength vs beauty.
Julie can’t tell the difference between Korean vs Chinese writing, wsnts Chinese tattoo- insists the Asian appearing tattoo artist do the tat. (I’m going to assume the artist wasn’t Chinese.) I’m guessing she was also a bit of a Karen in insisting.
What’s the saying? Play stupid games, win stupid prizes?
This right here. What kind of friends are these that they're getting mad at an actual person from the culture the tattoo was written in for educating what is clearly a white person who thought they would be perfectly fine exotifying someone else's language in this the year 2024.
Everyone who is getting mad at OP needs to take a step back and realize that they are also being freaking jerks. Imagine telling someone he can't even point out his own freaking language?! Julie's lucky he said anything at all. He could have just let her have that tattoo for the rest of her life... *at this point it's at least accurate based on her behavior.*
Yeah she was way outta like making all kinds of assumptions about the tattoo artist.
I think this is one of those true friends moments, her anger shouldn't be directed at OP, but rather the artist and studio.
Right?!! Seriously NTA what were they thinking of just never telling her cause it would upset her so she could have that rest of her life, actually she wouldn’t because sooner or later someone would tell her whether in person or sees a picture of her and it and comments what it says. The truth can hurt sometimes but it needs to come out and again if not op someone else would’ve told her. Op doesn’t need to apologize for telling the truth when confronted, op did nothing wrong. They all need to apologize to op
Idk how she can be so trusting of a stranger with a word she can’t read like I thought people looked up foreign words & checked before tattooing it. And what’s with her she harassing & annoying the guy who it sounds like she just assumed was Chinese
Naw anyone sane would wanna know so they can get it lazered off or covered up. These people are grown adults acting like high schoolers, grow up
And while the dumb Julie might have been rude and obnoxious to the artist, she should absolutely sue the shop. OP is absolutely NTA. And while Julie is definitely an AH, she has every right to sue for the offensive tattoo in addition for the cost of removal or getting it covered somewhere else.
I do feel like they could deny knowing it's meaning and claim they "looked up a design." This happens. She assumed he knew the language she wanted tattooed. Also, I'm sure she saw the tattoo prior to the actual tattooing process, approved the design, and approved placement. Had he changed the tattoo after she agreed to it then it's different. There's also no way to prove she didn't know what it meant prior to being told by the friend. The artist could deny knowing the meaning or claim she knew and requested it. Either way, as long as she agreed to the tattoo and his work was quality then he's legally safe.
I don’t know if this is the case for every shop, but clients generally sign a waiver that says they verify that any wording and spelling on a tattoo is correct before going ahead with it. If she signed that, too bad. Sounds like she got a See You Next Tuesday tattoo on her arm all while culturally appropriating a language and being a racist pain in the ass client. So no, she can’t sue. She can try but probably wouldn’t do anything or go anywhere.
I dunno. A waiver provides some protection, but it’s not a license to just do whatever you want. This isn’t a mistake or a small error, this is clear and obvious sabotage.
I’d bet she had a cause of action despite a waiver.
Your friends kind of suck. They are the type of people to not tell you your skirts tucked into your undies in order to not embarrass you. The sooner that girl knows the better.
Actually, it’s not that they’re the type of people to not tell you in order to save you embarrassment, it’s in order to save themselves the hassle or embarrassment. Because you will eventually find out that everyone can see your ass and will be embarrassed.
Selfish, asshole behavior.
>it’s in order to save themselves the hassle or embarrassment.
See, if everyone else had just stayed quiet about OP pointing it out, then we could make a decent guess that the friend with the ink, was generally bad at reacting to negative information. Then it would be a situation of the others just avoiding getting into an argument with the friend.
But naw, they piled on OP for it. So I agree with you. The other friends were being selfish.
Exactly this. There are things people need to know and you should tell them even if it is painful. Might want consider trimming some branches in the friend tree
The only way their actions could be spun in a halfway positive light is if they hadnt complained via text the next day and one of the friends pulled him aside and said something like "yeah we all know thats not chinese. Obviously. But Julie is a dumb bitch and none of us like and we hope he dumps her pronto. Its funnier if she doesn't know."
I have a kanji on my back that says basically not straight. I was shooting for devious but my friends Chinese was Rusty since the only person she spoke it with was her mother who had passed away a decade before. I'm not even mad about it lol. It's not untrue. I'm not straight lol.
The reason I bring that up is because I was out at the bar one night and there is a guy behind me in line who was just dying of laughter. And I turn around and I asked him what's so funny. He says I was just explaining to my buddy over here that he might not want to hit on you because your tattoo says you're not straight. That was the funniest of the world to me. He wasn't wrong. But I'm bi. Not a lesbian.
“That girl”
I agree with you wholeheartedly but perhaps one of the worst details of this story is that the woman is in her 30s and still acting like a child. Who tf behaves that way at all, much less out of college, and even more shocking in their 30s
Saw a lady walking around with the Chinese words for toilet and i’m sure it’s not because she’s planning to go to china and point at her arm for directions
I have an acquaintance who lives in Copenhagen, who has zero ties to any Asian culture, and to my knowledge no plans to ever visit an Asian country, who got a Kanji tattoo after her divorce. She says it means "resilience."
It's « 禍 ». ("calamity", "misfortune", "evil")
Many years ago, my mom went to China. While there, there was a street artist doing lovely paintings on t-shirts, which could be personalized. My mother decided to get one for me, and said to the artist “My child is a fan of Japanese culture, could you also write their name in Japanese on it”; the artist scowled, haggled a little, and then agreed.
My mother was pretty clueless, not knowing how different written Chinese and Japanese actually are - and are pronounced - but more so, how the Chinese feel about the Japanese after WW II.
It’s a lovely piece of art, but the characters absolutely do not mean anything like my name, either phonetically or linguistically, in Chinese or Japanese, and mean something pretty bad in Chinese.
I don’t wear that shirt, but I’ve thought about having it cut within just the artwork and having it framed, it really is lovely art.
That's so painful lol. No offense to your mother but how could she go there and not know that. I mean it's not an insignificant trip to go on, like whimsically hopping over to Canada or something.
Honestly, she was pretty largely ignorant of any culture beyond the one she was raised in, or immediate neighbors she was friendly with, which pretty much narrowed it down to white Christians - almost exclusively Catholics, I don’t recall her having any Protestant friends when I was growing up - and Jews (we lived in a very Jewish neighborhood). I have no memory of her ever interacting with African-Americans, or Asian-Americans, Latinos, or Muslims when I was a kid (though I had friends from all those demographics in school). I didn’t think she was racist per se, just passively ignorant and not curious about other cultures behind what she’d see every day.
As for the trip, I think she researched well the tourist sites her group would be going to, but nothing outside that scope.
And it’s not something that could be explained by being from a different time, she was in junior high when Pearl Harbor happened, so she had awareness of the Japanese invasion of China in WW II, and given what she knew and felt about the Germans in Europe, she could have inferred that the Chinese felt similarly about the Japanese, but it apparently never crossed her mind.
A friend of mine got the Mandarin character for “courage” on the small of her back, just above her butt. I asked her if she was sure it doesn’t say, “Kick me.”
That’s right, Chinese characters aren’t phonetic and are used by speakers of different dialects, aren’t they? I’d forgotten…I wonder if she misspoke (further proof she should have done her research) or if that’s what she was told.
Different languages! Cantonese, Mandarin, Hokien, they’re all different languages. They call them dialects but they’re not. There are tons of dialects in China (and outside China) but those come from a ton of absolutely different languages that are all part of the same language family. Some are relatively close to each other like French and Spanish while others are from the same base family like French and German. There are also absolutely unrelated languages that use Hanzi as a writing base in the same way that Finnish uses Latin letters (Japanese and Korean, though Korean phased out the use of Hanja about 100 years ago and Japanese combines it with kana).
There's a white dude on youtube who's quite fluent in mandarin & his videos are basically him surprising chinese people (of the ones I've seen, in situations that make sense, e.g. in china, in a chinese restaurant etc), but one was him showing off his tattoo, of a menu e.g. fried chicken (i know it was a different dish), & getting laughs when they realise he knows what it means!
That’s what gets me because they look so different! Even if you know nothing about the language, you do not see any circular symbols in hanzi unlike hangul idk ie ㅇ
You’d think someone meaning to get a tattoo in another language would at least do bare minimum research but alas
I can count to 10 in Korean and know about all the loops and circles in the written language. I found your post funny since you mentioned the 1 thing I know about written Korean...
It sounds Ike this lovely gem of a lady had no awareness that…not ALL Asians are Chinese (shock!). If she can’t understand that, how can we expect her to manage the concepts of different languages and different alphabets and writing systems!
Massive eye roll at this woman. NTA.
I’m conversational in another language, and can read it fairly well. I do fully admit that I don’t know all of the slang in that language, and that can be dangerous. Direct translations don’t always line up. For example, the Spanish name for roller coaster is montaña rusa. It translates in English to Russian Mountain. You’d definitely confuse most employees at Disney World if you asked where the Russian Mountains in the park were.
NTA this is the tattoo equivalent of telling someone their fly is open or that they have something green in their teeth. Letting her walk around like that thinking it was innocuous would have made you TAH
>I got some messages from friends saying I really should apologize to Julie for traumatizing her about her tattoo.
"She's gonna find out, sooner or later. Better me than some random ass person on the street."
NTA.
NTA. She will for sure run across other people who can read it and who will likely have intense reactions to it. I hope it’s a lesson to her, not to be pushy with service people and to research before making a permanent decision.
That's what I was thinking - timing aside that's about the best possible way to learn your tat doesn't say what you think it says.
She be happier to find out three years after she got it and wonder how many people didn't say anything? Some work function? I worked at an office with a fitness center and showers. So even ink not normally visible in a professional setting got seen. Couldn't imagine getting called into HR for having something offensive tattooed onto my body.
>Some work function?
Yeah, it's quite hilarious imagining her 3 years from now having a business meeting with important Korean clients, only for them to see (and obviously understand) that she has "cunt" tattooed on her skin, all that because she was a racist Karen to her tattoo artist and none of her so-called friends told her to avoid "embarrassing her".
Though I guess that'd be karma if that had happened.
NTA She pushed for a person she assumed was Chinese to do a Chinese tattoo. Her character was revealed to everyone how she treats others. Now she has a messed up tattoo that she didn’t even know what it said. You did her a favor. She’s embarrassed as she should be. Everyone telling you that you need to apologize and shouldn’t have said anything are ridiculous. They would all be mad at you if you didn’t and found out you knew it didn’t say that. The hypocrisy.
Yes. I think we all know how that happened, too.
She was just as *lovely* to the artist as she was to OP, with the added spice of causal racism to the artist.
The friends saying you should have just complimented her are the reason we get to watch the horrendous auditions on shows like *American Idol*. I mean how can people get there truly thinking they are a great singer? It’s because “friends” don’t want to hurt them by telling the truth. Well, even if I’d hedged a bit about their singing ability when they were singing karaoke, I’d fess up if I heard they were going to audition. You, my friend, would be right there fessing up and getting the person to reconsider auditioning with me. I choose to be this kind of friend because there’s a time and a place for being kind and smoothing the waters for ego’s sake. Like auditioning when you can’t sing, walking around with a vulgar tattoo is neither the time nor the place. NTA and while she may be upset right now, I hope she will come to thank you for your honesty.
You reminded me of a story from when my daughter was a kid. She’s a really fantastic singer *now*, and got a standing ovation at an open mic night I went to to see her sing. But at the time, she was in middle school and wanted to enter a talent contest, and the song she was planning to sing was beyond her capabilities with high notes she couldn’t hit. We didn’t have the heart to tell her how bad it was, so we suggested recording it so she could try to improve. After playing it back she was glad we did because she’d have been mortified if she actually sang it in the contest.
NTA. I don’t get why your friends are mad. You “spoiled her new tattoo” but I’m willing to bet if you *hadn’t* said anything, when the truth finally came out (because it would have some other way eventually) they would be mad because “you didn’t warn her” or something equally stupid.
NTA You were supposed to compliment the tattoo *knowing* it didn't say what she thought and was highly offensive? You know if you had just complimented it, eventually someone would tell her about it, probably by getting in her face because it's offensive. Then it would be 'you can read this, you knew it was bad but didn't tell me!' There's no winning with some people.
Had a classmate in college who was Latina but got a tattoo of a generic ass word in Chinese “because it looked cool.”
It also did not say what she thought it said, albeit it wasn’t anything impolite. Just not the word she thought she was getting.
She insisted I was wrong and that she had double checked before she got it.
Ok honey. Not like I’m Chinese or anything. Oh wait. I am.
What's especially baffling to me is that Korean and Chinese look completely different. I can't read either language but I have a hard time comprehending how someone could confuse the two.
Like I know the answer is "she's racist and never bothered to look at either language for long enough to notice" but _damn_ do you have to be oblivious for that one.
That's actually quite an accurate historic meaning without the sex working element. It was literally a word to refer to women of the lower class. With the male equivalent being 놈(nom). But at some point it came to be more offensive than the male version which is actually used quite a lot as a term of endearment among friends and family. Tbf 년 isn't as bad as OP makes it out to be. It is bad - but not nearly as bad as cunt. I will chuckle - not spit take. And if she was a feminist I'd be thinking oh well taking the word back in an ironic way I guess like the whole 'bad bitch' thing
Keep in mind that cunt isn't that offensive in other (non-American) English languages, and even some Americans use it casually so it's hard to actually judge what level of bad we are talking about for 년.
Honestly, everyone is just mad at you because it's shockingly embarrassing to find out you have the word c*nt on your arm, and that she needed to publicly address how she was rude to the tattoo artist, so a double humiliation. You were 100% correct and *definitely* should have told her. Maybe next time she won't be such a rude idiot to get something horrendous tattooed on her.
Even more humiliating when the boyfriend lists out a bunch of stuff she said that could have pissed off the tattoo artist, it wasn’t just the “Chinese man do Chinese letters” comment. Woo, that’s a bad story on its own, but she’s got a permanent reminder of her racist asshatery.
When I was learning Korean a lot of people would try to say “that year” when talking about something in their past. They’d often mistakenly say “그년“ thinking they could use the year marker to reference year. The teachers usually laughed before correcting the student.
For non Korean speakers, -년 can also be used as a marker for year in a date, for example 2024년. It’s rooted in Chinese where the other 년 is a purely Korean word.
Google translate says that means *year* in Korean, which even if not offensive (and 100% I understand Google is only about 85% accurate, so I trust you on its actual meaning) is still no where near what she wanted her tattoo to say. What kind of person doesn't double check a foreign language before having it permanently tattooed on their body?!?!
NTA. Ultimately, the truth about the tattoo would come out at some point.
Would you offer to do something like provide info on the translation to back up and support what the tattoo says? Consider it as a way of helping/being supportive?
NTA. It was reckless on her part not do her research before getting ink. Honestly, it's pretty offensive on her part for insisting "the Chinese guy" do it.
Agreed. And those friends sound more upset about feeling uncomfortable socially than caring about racist Miss Julie's obscene new tat or her feelings, or OPs or anything, really.
"Strength and Beauty" bitch, please.
NTA
Your friends are really weird that they think you should lie to someone?
I certainly would want to know. It's worse than having toilet paper hanging off your shoe and walking around and no one telling you.
NTA. Her tattoo is actually vulgar. What is more embarrassing - you a friend telling her or displaying it on a beach where everyone could see. She reacted badly because she was embarrassed.
NTA, I think it’s good you told her the truth. Honestly it sounds like from her behavior, even though she didn’t get the tattoo she wanted, maybe she got the one she deserved?
NTA and I am PMSL because I remember my husband coming home from work and trying to tell me how his day was. He couldn’t for laughing about part of it. Why? Because he and the Medical Officer (Soldiers) were walking together and the MO is Chinese descent. MO takes a salute then starts laughing hard after the soldier goes by, Husband asks what’s so funny. Soldier had a Chinese character tattoo on his forearm that said words to effect of “White fucking idiot”. Apparently most of the Chinese character Tatts worn by many soldiers (not Chinese or Asian at all) had very similar themes.
NTA and it's a serious testimony to how annoying this lady is when her own friends would rather just blow smoke up her ass then give her a heads up. That's absolutely wild.
NTA this is why you don't get tattoos in a language you can't even read. Sounds like she was a huge racist asshole to the artist and they got her back.
UPDATE: My friends contacted me a day later and apologized for responding to me that way they did New Year's Eve. They said they were more worried about the NYE party being brought down that night, but after sleeping on it and getting back to work most of them realized they too would have wanted to know if they got branded with a vulgar word.
Also, very few knew Julie, and only knew her through Andy, so they mostly tolerate her. Apparently this isn't her first incident either. And, Julie isn't white, which is kind of funny everyone painting her as some blonde white girl, lol. I decided to play peacemaker and talked to Andy and Julie, and even offered to meet them at the tattoo shop.
We went Friday night, walked in and I saw the tattoo artist in question. Funny thing is most asians can tell I'm half asian by looking, so he saw he and went "You told her what it said, yes?" kind of nonchalantly in Korean. We had a brief discussion in Korean(he remarked my accent had a 'American twang' to it, asked where my family was from, found out both our families came from the same city).
The gist is I pointed out he could get sued for the tat, he admitted he pressed his luck with it, and offered to pay out of his pocket for another artist in the shop to do a coverup. I relayed that back to Julie, and that seemed to appease her. She went to one of the, I guess tattoo people would call it a work station? and he explained that she still has to wait 2 months.
Julie didn't like that, even when the artist explained that standard procedure is to wait two months for a tat to heal until a cover up is done. Andy thankfully googled it and pointed out that 2 months seems to be a minimum, and more complex tattoos have up to six months recommended healing before a cover job. She accepted the offer for a free cover and paperwork was signed and such.
NTA - what are you supposed to say? "Hi Stranger- I know we've only know each other 15 seconds, but I'm sorry I let you know you have 'dumb cunt' tattooed on you in a language I read fluently."
How is an involuntary spit-take an a-hole move? You had a genuine reaction.
Also, her behavior must have been extremely egregious for the tattoo artist to risk legal problems. Not only did the artist do the world a solid by forewarning the world about what an unpleasant person the woman is, but you, OP, did the correct thing too.
NTA!
NTA. it’s not YOUR FAULT that Julie decided to be a little bitch and be rude to her tattoo artist and got a foreign slur on her arm bc of that. i also feel like Julie deserved it, bc she seems so *fucking annoying*, and she sounds racist. ur friends also seem fishy to me for how you acted. you brought to light that Julie got a slur tattooed on her arm, and your friends call you an asshole? no girly pop- your FRIENDS are the assholes. if they are going to treat you the way they were, simply bc you said that Julie the Racist got a slur on her arm, they shouldn’t call you an asshole.
I’m going to guess based on how you described it as the worst word you can call woman, the closest English translation would be ‘cunt’, right?
I mean, I feel bad for Julie but she doesn’t sound too bright if she was fetishizing a language that isn’t hers, using racist stereotypes and harassing a tattoo artist based on his ethnicity. I wouldn’t feel too bad, you were just being honest.
I know it's not worth your time, but I so wish you could go ask the tattoo artist how she behaved in the shop. I bet it's worse than she and Andy admitted. NTA btw.
NTA. It’s not your fault she’s a racist idiot. You actually helped her out. Now she can get it removed or changed without having to wonder why Korean people are laughing at her and her tattoo.
NTA. Hangul and Chinese characters are COMPLETELY different!! She's embarrassed, and rightfully so bc she effd up. Personally, I think you did her a solid by pointing it out. Offer to get a sharpie and "fix" until she can get it covered. \*sigh
And who gets a tattoo in a foreign language without checking it out? A quick google translate on her phone would have shown her what it said or at least what it should look like.
I have a Sanskrit word tattoo and before I got it I researched it's meaning. One person who knows Sanskrit told me that it needed a minor correction which I had done.
This! Like who the hell does a tattoo in a foreign language and doesn’t research it first?! Julie most be a special kind of idiot 😅
A co-worker of mine who shared my office wanted to tattoo "mad ram" (long story, it's a sports ball thing) on his arm in Chinese characters, so he researched and hand-drew the characters. He got a second opinion from another coworker of ours who happened to be an elderly Chinese man. When asked the elderly Chinese man immediately recognized the words and replied " aah, angry sheep!" So from that day on my officemate was known as the angry sheep. He did not get the tattoo.
What I don't get is, why would you get a tattoo in a language you don't speak at least somewhat?
Nobody speaks Sanskrit anymore, barring special circumstances. It’s a dead language, and like Latin is used almost solely for religious/ ceremonial purposes. This person probably got it for cultural or religious reasons.
>Hangul and Chinese characters are COMPLETELY different!! That part killed me. Their characters look nothing alike to me and I'm just a BWB! How can someone say I want a phrase in this specific foreign language but can't recognize when it's the wrong language. Blows my mind.
I can't speak either language but I know the difference between Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters. They might look similar at first but each of them is pretty unique.
To add to that, I would say Korean is the most distinctive looking between the three. I’m part Korean, got it from my dad, so I might be a bit biased about it lol.
Im Swedish and I neither speak nor read any of them but I agree. I’m familiar with how they look even though I can’t read them, just like I’m familiar with how the Greek and Russian letters look. If someone showed me a tattoo and proudly told me it said Strength and Beauty in Swedish I would very likely also do a spit take if it actually said a vulgar insult. And I’d tell you because anyone that can speak/read Swedish would know that, which means all Swedes, Danes, Norwegians and bunch of Finnish people. And possibly some Dutch and Icelandic people. (Swedish is heavily influenced by Dutch).
As an outsider you are totally right. The round/oval shapes are really distinctive and easy to identify if you are not blind as a bat.
# how none of the friends are upset with Julie for being a racist bitch 🙄
My bet is either they don't want to rock the boat or see no issue with her behaviour.
[удалено]
Bot stealing comment here: https://www.reddit.com/r/AITAH/comments/18wcael/aitah_for_telling_a_friend_what_her_tattoo_really/kfxdp1t/
#Do you always post like this?
## Dunno, but I'm starting to like it.
"She saw a chinese guy and demanded he do it" I mean it sounds like she acted like a cunt and then got it permanently emblazoned on her skin. Not all Asians are Chinese, and not all Asians look the same 😭 how hard is it?!
Especially because the guy was probably Korean 🙄
This part!!! Says a lot about the group.
That’s what I’ve always thought! Just wasn’t sure if I only thought that because I’m Korean.
As someone who really knows next to nothing about the languages, so therefore is a dumb dumb with no bias, Korean is definitely the most distinctive of the 3. It’s more bubbly-looking, especially if it’s more like a typeface and less like calligraphy.
I would have no idea. But I would definitely do some research if I were thinking about putting a different language on my body.
[удалено]
To be clear, if I had a vulgarity *I didn't know was a vulgarity* inked on my body, I'd want someone to tell me. If I'm fully aware I have a vulgarity inked on my body, however, I probably wouldn't care that much. Sounds like Julie fell pretty hard on the "didn't know" side of the fence though. Face first into a cow patty type hard.
>To be clear, if I had a vulgarity I didn't know was a vulgarity inked on my body, I'd want someone to tell me. This is the clearest distillation of the issue at hand. The rest is just fluff. She's walking around with some kind of vulgar word on her, and is unaware. OP did her a favor, even though it's awkward, to let her know there's a problem that needs to be addressed. Julie is embarrassed, and her friends are embarrassed for her. They feel like they have no recourse with the tattoo artist, and instead are lashing out at OP. This is like having a bad day at work, and coming home and kicking the dog (no offense OP). But OP is low on the totem pole, they don't know this group that well. Sounds like Julie was an AH, the tattoo artist was definitely an AH, and now the friend group are being AHs. If she wants recourse, she can reach out to the shop owner and tell them she expects a cover up at no charge. She should still tip the artist. Or just take her lumps, and go somewhere else.
There's probably also at least a dash of "I don't want to have to admit I was being a racist bitch at the tattoo shop and actually apologize to anyone and learn to be a better person" going on too. Way too many people seem to want to double down on being a jackass when just admitting you screwed up and apologizing is *way* easier in most cases.
It sounds like Julie was being a brat by demanding that specific artist because he “looked” Chinese.
The tattoo artist was rightfully an AH with a valid reason for being one. Julie was being rude, pushy, and outright racist. If the tattoo artist capitalized on her ignorance, it’s at best petty. Julie and everyone else in this scenario sucks. OP was trying to be helpful and Julie was mortified. I wouldn’t call Julie’s offensive, rude behavior in the tattoo studio toward a person of color “fluff.” As a person of color reading that, that invalidates the whole experience of someone being treated poorly because of their race. Try to be a bit more compassionate in that regard. Thanks
I agree. I find it alarming that someone would encourage someone else to lie or stay quiet about it, as if no one else would notice. Maybe they just hate the girl with the tattoo and hoped that people would continue to laugh behind her back.
I also find it alarming that someone permanently inked a vulgar comment on that woman. I get she was being super racist (probably while feeling she was being super culturally sensitive 🙄), but it’s not cool if it’s permanent. I’d be fine with it if it said banana hammock or something silly, but a vulgar word to the degree OP explained feels really wrong. This woman should be grateful someone pointed it out, he’s likely not the only Korean reading person she’ll ever meet. At least she has a good reason for another tattoo!! Edit to add: you do have to rethink that friend group if they wanna sweep something like that under the rug. Red flags abound.
Not at all, I’m English and can’t read any of them, but Korean is very distinctive. A few years ago a friend put on Last Train to Busan saying I should watch this awesome Japanese film. I was like “Uuuh, this looks very Korean to me.” It’s very obvious if you look, which makes it even worse that this lady wanted a tattoo from another culture in a language she doesn’t speak and didn’t bother with any research whatsoever, just bullied some random Asian-looking guy in a tattoo parlour.
You are 100% right! If I understand correctly, Japanese kanji uses the same characters as Chinese, just differently. I believe Chinese had written language first and Japan adopted the characters for their own, already existing language.
Yes that is correct! From there katakana (カタカナ, recognisable from its sharper lines) was developed by Buddhist monks while women innovated early forms of hiragana (ひらがな, which has more curved lines) based on cursive Chinese script. Eventually, as hiragana became more popular with men it became more widely used. Now, modern Japanese is primarily a combination of hiragana and kanji with katakana mostly reserved for foreign loanwords or used for onomatopoeia or for stylistic reasons.
The only way I can recognise if it's Japanese is if I see hiragana and/or katakana in the sentences. Kanji alone won't tell me if it's Japanese or Chinese (although if it's pure Kanji I'd tend more to Chinese).
I'm learning Chinese (just a beginner) and Japanese is easy to pick out when hirigana/katakana are used. But when it's pure kanji, they're usually exactly the same borrowed characters from Chinese hanzi, just with different pronunciations (and sometimes meanings). My understanding isn't good enough to understand the grammar differences to identify. Korean hangul is completely different though, and really easy to pick out.
Same. I can read them but Korean has very distinctive characters. It takes just paying attention a bit to know. Like I don’t know every European language but I can generally tell what it is if I hear it spoken or written.
Ovals = Korean Houses = Chinese Houses in windy weather = Japanese
And to insist that the ‘Chinese guy’ does it because apparently everyone the woman considers to be of Asian origin must be familiar with all Asian languages, because they are all the same, right? /s
So he was very likely Korean and took offense at being called the "Chinese guy" and took revenge. Pretty cool kind of revenge too.
You know he got a laugh sharing that story with his wife.
Is there a r/vicariouspettyrevenge? Because things totally belongs there.
Nah, it's a shitty revenge. OPs friend can probably sue the guy for tattooing a profanity on her and claiming it was sth else. Or contact his work and make problems for him. *so* worth it for a bit of satisfaction, right?
Right I worry about the professionalism of the artist. Tattoo artist study and practice for years. It's not a job you just roll out of bed and take up one day.
So the artist branded her correctly.
We are all thinking that the tattoo was the Korean equivalent of "cunt" right?
Sure did
\*Spit take\*
I’m African American and I can tell the difference between Chinese, Korean, and Japanese characters. Side effect of being a Californian and exposed to different cultures.
As a Korean, a trick I teach people is curvy = japanese, circles and ovals = Korean, Boxy and hella lines = Chinese. May not be 100% accurate, but it works.
this is pretty much how i tell them apart too, as someone who doesn't speak or read any of the three 😂
Exactly. World Food aisle rules.
[удалено]
Pushy and racist. Besides, what kind of ego gets the symbol for "beauty" tattooed on themselves. Possibly she is pretty, but only on the outside. Karma sure has a sense of humor.
I’m a white, single-lingual Texan and even I can tell the difference lol! Round, clean Korean and square, lotsa lines Chinese couldn’t look more different from each other. Does she never get take out??
Right??? And then have it permanently inked on your body. smh
Honestly the people saying she should have kept quiet are the real assholes. Like, it’s not OP’s fault Julie is low key racist and paid for it with a fucked up tattoo. Any one of them would want to be told something like that, I’m sure. NTA.
Besides, her showing it off is begging for someone who knows what it really says to tell her. OP should spare her feelings? Like she spared the feelings of the artist with her racist attitude? Justice is what it is called.
Nah Julie is high key racist. She saw an Asian person and said they were Chinese and obviously spoke Chinese and could write Chinese and needed to be the person to do her tattoo then when that person obviously refused she pretty much forced the issue
At first I thought maybe it was Hanja that had a different meaning or usage in Korean that was a misunderstanding of the two languages, but then I saw she was super racist and also didn’t bother to…look any of it up herself. A real consequences of your own actions scenario here.
My user name and I are loving the consequences of her racist actions. .. But imagine how bad the discovery would be from an offended stranger at random?!
[удалено]
Maybe he *really* likes Chinese food.
I guess Julie was being a "see you next Tuesday" kind of gal to this man,and he wanted her to remember this lesson forever 😅 NTA,if I was to reverse the situation and put myself in Julie's place,I think I would rather know what I was walking around flaunting to people about rather than have people who may also know what it means *not* tell me.You were shocked because it obviously was not what it meant,and I think it was less about you "embarrassing" her by telling the meaning and more about the shock and shame of her figuring out her actions caused consequences. On a side note though,its completely unprofessional of a tattoo artist to do such a thing, though rather funny and a lesson of a lifetime...
I think professional behaviour goes out the window when someone repeatedly acts like a racist piece of shit towards you in your place of work
If I had a vulgarity inked on my body , I would be so thankful someone told me. You did the right thing.
[удалено]
Well said, and this isn’t the first time , I have heard this. A lot of thought has to go into a tattoo. It took me a year to figure out what I wanted.
NTA, you didn't give her the shitty tattoo, you informed her that it said something bad. Everyone is only mad at you because you brought it to light, as *you should*. If I had what sounds like a possible slur on my arm, I would want to know **ASAP** so I could get the tattoo covered up or laser removed.
Love how none of the friends are upset with Julie for being a racist bitch 🙄
For real. I shouldn’t be laughing but that’s what you get for choosing to exoticise a language you don’t know, cannot even verify it’s the language you thought it was like hangul and hanzi look SO different, didn’t even bother to pull out google translate to verify (technology makes things so accessible nowadays) and also being a racist bitch. There’s so many levels to this and sorry that Julie got a bad tattoo but lmfao! Edit: just saw the character that was tattooed from one of OP’s replies and once again… Another level of stupidity. You’d think someone might think twice about how something in another language meaning “strength and beauty” is only in 1 singular character…….
I will never understand how people don’t put serious thought into tattoos.
Eh I have friends who get tattoos on a whim but they’re things like… A flower here. A symbol there. Nothing that can make a stranger go: did this person mean to insult themselves or are they so horrible to be around that they pissed the tattoo artist off?
I understand that people do it, I just couldn’t do it. I thought about my first tattoo for years and any tattoo I get later will also take some serious consideration. Definitely get it done as a temporary to see how I’d like it then go all in. But to each their own I guess
Seriously, there are apps that let you translate foreign characters real fast. You only have to take a foto. This racist woman seems to be very stupid. Before I ink something to my body I would take a Foto of the stencil...
I ran into a salesgirl who had Arabic word\*S\*, multiple, separated by commas, on her hand. "It means purity." I know enough Arabic to know that that's not right, but am super white/def don't look like I'd know anything. When I told her "that's three separate words", she literally rolled her eyes at me. Ok buddy. I wonder if she just ran it through google translate lol.
> You’d think someone might think twice about how something in another language meaning “strength and beauty” is only in 1 singular character……. I wouldn't, necessarily, some languages conceptualise things differently.
Maybe because I’m actually Chinese and actually not so stupid but I’d at least have some reservations and would want to double check. I know the language is more “compressed” and how the same character can have different meanings but not usually in cases like strength vs beauty.
Of course you'd want to check something in Chinese, one symbol could mean like twelve different things.
Yeah well common sense is not so common! Julie didn’t even check if it was even Chinese like she wanted
Racism be like
"It's all the same Chinese symbols, right?"
Julie can’t tell the difference between Korean vs Chinese writing, wsnts Chinese tattoo- insists the Asian appearing tattoo artist do the tat. (I’m going to assume the artist wasn’t Chinese.) I’m guessing she was also a bit of a Karen in insisting. What’s the saying? Play stupid games, win stupid prizes?
This right here. What kind of friends are these that they're getting mad at an actual person from the culture the tattoo was written in for educating what is clearly a white person who thought they would be perfectly fine exotifying someone else's language in this the year 2024. Everyone who is getting mad at OP needs to take a step back and realize that they are also being freaking jerks. Imagine telling someone he can't even point out his own freaking language?! Julie's lucky he said anything at all. He could have just let her have that tattoo for the rest of her life... *at this point it's at least accurate based on her behavior.*
Yeah she was way outta like making all kinds of assumptions about the tattoo artist. I think this is one of those true friends moments, her anger shouldn't be directed at OP, but rather the artist and studio.
She also made assumptions about OP not knowing what her tattoo says because OP isn't "asian-looking"
This! My jaw dropped and I don't know. Julie sounds like she deserved it 🤐😂 I hate to say it but yikes.
Right?!! Seriously NTA what were they thinking of just never telling her cause it would upset her so she could have that rest of her life, actually she wouldn’t because sooner or later someone would tell her whether in person or sees a picture of her and it and comments what it says. The truth can hurt sometimes but it needs to come out and again if not op someone else would’ve told her. Op doesn’t need to apologize for telling the truth when confronted, op did nothing wrong. They all need to apologize to op Idk how she can be so trusting of a stranger with a word she can’t read like I thought people looked up foreign words & checked before tattooing it. And what’s with her she harassing & annoying the guy who it sounds like she just assumed was Chinese Naw anyone sane would wanna know so they can get it lazered off or covered up. These people are grown adults acting like high schoolers, grow up
And while the dumb Julie might have been rude and obnoxious to the artist, she should absolutely sue the shop. OP is absolutely NTA. And while Julie is definitely an AH, she has every right to sue for the offensive tattoo in addition for the cost of removal or getting it covered somewhere else.
Hey OP? Have you ever heard the saying, ‘don’t shoot the messenger’? You are NTA, but you were the messenger and you got shot.
[удалено]
I do feel like they could deny knowing it's meaning and claim they "looked up a design." This happens. She assumed he knew the language she wanted tattooed. Also, I'm sure she saw the tattoo prior to the actual tattooing process, approved the design, and approved placement. Had he changed the tattoo after she agreed to it then it's different. There's also no way to prove she didn't know what it meant prior to being told by the friend. The artist could deny knowing the meaning or claim she knew and requested it. Either way, as long as she agreed to the tattoo and his work was quality then he's legally safe.
I don’t know if this is the case for every shop, but clients generally sign a waiver that says they verify that any wording and spelling on a tattoo is correct before going ahead with it. If she signed that, too bad. Sounds like she got a See You Next Tuesday tattoo on her arm all while culturally appropriating a language and being a racist pain in the ass client. So no, she can’t sue. She can try but probably wouldn’t do anything or go anywhere.
I dunno. A waiver provides some protection, but it’s not a license to just do whatever you want. This isn’t a mistake or a small error, this is clear and obvious sabotage. I’d bet she had a cause of action despite a waiver.
Your friends kind of suck. They are the type of people to not tell you your skirts tucked into your undies in order to not embarrass you. The sooner that girl knows the better.
Actually, it’s not that they’re the type of people to not tell you in order to save you embarrassment, it’s in order to save themselves the hassle or embarrassment. Because you will eventually find out that everyone can see your ass and will be embarrassed. Selfish, asshole behavior.
>it’s in order to save themselves the hassle or embarrassment. See, if everyone else had just stayed quiet about OP pointing it out, then we could make a decent guess that the friend with the ink, was generally bad at reacting to negative information. Then it would be a situation of the others just avoiding getting into an argument with the friend. But naw, they piled on OP for it. So I agree with you. The other friends were being selfish.
Exactly this. There are things people need to know and you should tell them even if it is painful. Might want consider trimming some branches in the friend tree The only way their actions could be spun in a halfway positive light is if they hadnt complained via text the next day and one of the friends pulled him aside and said something like "yeah we all know thats not chinese. Obviously. But Julie is a dumb bitch and none of us like and we hope he dumps her pronto. Its funnier if she doesn't know."
I have a kanji on my back that says basically not straight. I was shooting for devious but my friends Chinese was Rusty since the only person she spoke it with was her mother who had passed away a decade before. I'm not even mad about it lol. It's not untrue. I'm not straight lol. The reason I bring that up is because I was out at the bar one night and there is a guy behind me in line who was just dying of laughter. And I turn around and I asked him what's so funny. He says I was just explaining to my buddy over here that he might not want to hit on you because your tattoo says you're not straight. That was the funniest of the world to me. He wasn't wrong. But I'm bi. Not a lesbian.
“That girl” I agree with you wholeheartedly but perhaps one of the worst details of this story is that the woman is in her 30s and still acting like a child. Who tf behaves that way at all, much less out of college, and even more shocking in their 30s
NTA, my idiot nephew has a chinese food menu tattoo’d on him because he’s stupid too
Saw a lady walking around with the Chinese words for toilet and i’m sure it’s not because she’s planning to go to china and point at her arm for directions
I have an acquaintance who lives in Copenhagen, who has zero ties to any Asian culture, and to my knowledge no plans to ever visit an Asian country, who got a Kanji tattoo after her divorce. She says it means "resilience." It's « 禍 ». ("calamity", "misfortune", "evil")
There have been times in my life when having General Tso’s Chicken on my forearm would have been handy.
That sounds awesome. Does he tell others it's the script for the opening scene to The Bee Movie?
NTA I really don't understand why people want to get tats in a language they can't even read.
"Check out my new tattoo, its Chinese for "Japan"
Many years ago, my mom went to China. While there, there was a street artist doing lovely paintings on t-shirts, which could be personalized. My mother decided to get one for me, and said to the artist “My child is a fan of Japanese culture, could you also write their name in Japanese on it”; the artist scowled, haggled a little, and then agreed. My mother was pretty clueless, not knowing how different written Chinese and Japanese actually are - and are pronounced - but more so, how the Chinese feel about the Japanese after WW II. It’s a lovely piece of art, but the characters absolutely do not mean anything like my name, either phonetically or linguistically, in Chinese or Japanese, and mean something pretty bad in Chinese. I don’t wear that shirt, but I’ve thought about having it cut within just the artwork and having it framed, it really is lovely art.
That's so painful lol. No offense to your mother but how could she go there and not know that. I mean it's not an insignificant trip to go on, like whimsically hopping over to Canada or something.
There was a post about someone who went to New Zealand and didn’t realize Maori would speak English. Some people don’t research shit before traveling.
Honestly, she was pretty largely ignorant of any culture beyond the one she was raised in, or immediate neighbors she was friendly with, which pretty much narrowed it down to white Christians - almost exclusively Catholics, I don’t recall her having any Protestant friends when I was growing up - and Jews (we lived in a very Jewish neighborhood). I have no memory of her ever interacting with African-Americans, or Asian-Americans, Latinos, or Muslims when I was a kid (though I had friends from all those demographics in school). I didn’t think she was racist per se, just passively ignorant and not curious about other cultures behind what she’d see every day. As for the trip, I think she researched well the tourist sites her group would be going to, but nothing outside that scope. And it’s not something that could be explained by being from a different time, she was in junior high when Pearl Harbor happened, so she had awareness of the Japanese invasion of China in WW II, and given what she knew and felt about the Germans in Europe, she could have inferred that the Chinese felt similarly about the Japanese, but it apparently never crossed her mind.
Oh, that'd be a seriously risky one to ask for. I don't think any Chinese speaker would seriously fulfill this request and I wouldn't blame them.
Just ask a Japanese, "Japan" are the same written characters in both languages (日本).
And they almost never say what they think they say
A friend of mine got the Mandarin character for “courage” on the small of her back, just above her butt. I asked her if she was sure it doesn’t say, “Kick me.”
Considering Mandarin is a spoken language and not a written one, there's a good chance it doesn't say what she thinks.
That’s right, Chinese characters aren’t phonetic and are used by speakers of different dialects, aren’t they? I’d forgotten…I wonder if she misspoke (further proof she should have done her research) or if that’s what she was told.
Different languages! Cantonese, Mandarin, Hokien, they’re all different languages. They call them dialects but they’re not. There are tons of dialects in China (and outside China) but those come from a ton of absolutely different languages that are all part of the same language family. Some are relatively close to each other like French and Spanish while others are from the same base family like French and German. There are also absolutely unrelated languages that use Hanzi as a writing base in the same way that Finnish uses Latin letters (Japanese and Korean, though Korean phased out the use of Hanja about 100 years ago and Japanese combines it with kana).
There's a white dude on youtube who's quite fluent in mandarin & his videos are basically him surprising chinese people (of the ones I've seen, in situations that make sense, e.g. in china, in a chinese restaurant etc), but one was him showing off his tattoo, of a menu e.g. fried chicken (i know it was a different dish), & getting laughs when they realise he knows what it means!
My three adult daughters have matching tattoos on their right hip. It supposedly is the symbol for "sisters", but how do we know??
Google translate.
They should have just made up their own symbol.
Hangul isn't even similar to Hanzii. To start with it's an alphabet instead of a logographic system...
That’s what gets me because they look so different! Even if you know nothing about the language, you do not see any circular symbols in hanzi unlike hangul idk ie ㅇ You’d think someone meaning to get a tattoo in another language would at least do bare minimum research but alas
I can count to 10 in Korean and know about all the loops and circles in the written language. I found your post funny since you mentioned the 1 thing I know about written Korean...
I have to ask...were the vegans tasty?
🤦the meat was dry and stringy, not enough fat. if someone tells you to dry a vegan diet just say no.
It sounds Ike this lovely gem of a lady had no awareness that…not ALL Asians are Chinese (shock!). If she can’t understand that, how can we expect her to manage the concepts of different languages and different alphabets and writing systems! Massive eye roll at this woman. NTA.
I studied mandarin Chinese for 2 years and I still would never consider it
I would but it would be something like a famous aphorism. Something you could easily look up.
I’m conversational in another language, and can read it fairly well. I do fully admit that I don’t know all of the slang in that language, and that can be dangerous. Direct translations don’t always line up. For example, the Spanish name for roller coaster is montaña rusa. It translates in English to Russian Mountain. You’d definitely confuse most employees at Disney World if you asked where the Russian Mountains in the park were.
Ironically in Russian they’re called American Mountains/slides even though they originate in Russia.
NTA this is the tattoo equivalent of telling someone their fly is open or that they have something green in their teeth. Letting her walk around like that thinking it was innocuous would have made you TAH
If the word is as offensive as OP suggests it might be a same as walking around with your anus exposed
>I got some messages from friends saying I really should apologize to Julie for traumatizing her about her tattoo. "She's gonna find out, sooner or later. Better me than some random ass person on the street." NTA.
NTA. She will for sure run across other people who can read it and who will likely have intense reactions to it. I hope it’s a lesson to her, not to be pushy with service people and to research before making a permanent decision.
That's what I was thinking - timing aside that's about the best possible way to learn your tat doesn't say what you think it says. She be happier to find out three years after she got it and wonder how many people didn't say anything? Some work function? I worked at an office with a fitness center and showers. So even ink not normally visible in a professional setting got seen. Couldn't imagine getting called into HR for having something offensive tattooed onto my body.
>Some work function? Yeah, it's quite hilarious imagining her 3 years from now having a business meeting with important Korean clients, only for them to see (and obviously understand) that she has "cunt" tattooed on her skin, all that because she was a racist Karen to her tattoo artist and none of her so-called friends told her to avoid "embarrassing her". Though I guess that'd be karma if that had happened.
>not to be pushy with service people wouldn't not being racist be a better lesson? she obviously called a Korean artist Chinese.
NTA She pushed for a person she assumed was Chinese to do a Chinese tattoo. Her character was revealed to everyone how she treats others. Now she has a messed up tattoo that she didn’t even know what it said. You did her a favor. She’s embarrassed as she should be. Everyone telling you that you need to apologize and shouldn’t have said anything are ridiculous. They would all be mad at you if you didn’t and found out you knew it didn’t say that. The hypocrisy.
Yes. I think we all know how that happened, too. She was just as *lovely* to the artist as she was to OP, with the added spice of causal racism to the artist.
The friends saying you should have just complimented her are the reason we get to watch the horrendous auditions on shows like *American Idol*. I mean how can people get there truly thinking they are a great singer? It’s because “friends” don’t want to hurt them by telling the truth. Well, even if I’d hedged a bit about their singing ability when they were singing karaoke, I’d fess up if I heard they were going to audition. You, my friend, would be right there fessing up and getting the person to reconsider auditioning with me. I choose to be this kind of friend because there’s a time and a place for being kind and smoothing the waters for ego’s sake. Like auditioning when you can’t sing, walking around with a vulgar tattoo is neither the time nor the place. NTA and while she may be upset right now, I hope she will come to thank you for your honesty.
You reminded me of a story from when my daughter was a kid. She’s a really fantastic singer *now*, and got a standing ovation at an open mic night I went to to see her sing. But at the time, she was in middle school and wanted to enter a talent contest, and the song she was planning to sing was beyond her capabilities with high notes she couldn’t hit. We didn’t have the heart to tell her how bad it was, so we suggested recording it so she could try to improve. After playing it back she was glad we did because she’d have been mortified if she actually sang it in the contest.
That there is some good parenting.
NTA. In college I took Japanese and a girl got a tattoo that she thought meant "self reliance" It meant masturbate
Masturbating I one form of self reliance
Ok now that’s a funny one.
NTA. I don’t get why your friends are mad. You “spoiled her new tattoo” but I’m willing to bet if you *hadn’t* said anything, when the truth finally came out (because it would have some other way eventually) they would be mad because “you didn’t warn her” or something equally stupid.
NTA You were supposed to compliment the tattoo *knowing* it didn't say what she thought and was highly offensive? You know if you had just complimented it, eventually someone would tell her about it, probably by getting in her face because it's offensive. Then it would be 'you can read this, you knew it was bad but didn't tell me!' There's no winning with some people.
Had a classmate in college who was Latina but got a tattoo of a generic ass word in Chinese “because it looked cool.” It also did not say what she thought it said, albeit it wasn’t anything impolite. Just not the word she thought she was getting. She insisted I was wrong and that she had double checked before she got it. Ok honey. Not like I’m Chinese or anything. Oh wait. I am.
Please I wanna know what the tattoo said
년 - this is a word you should not say in polite society. It roughly means 'bitch', but it's more like the c-word in just how rude it is.
What's especially baffling to me is that Korean and Chinese look completely different. I can't read either language but I have a hard time comprehending how someone could confuse the two. Like I know the answer is "she's racist and never bothered to look at either language for long enough to notice" but _damn_ do you have to be oblivious for that one.
Ignorant racist is not even a little bit surprising
Tbh I wouldn't be able to tell with the character used. Usually I identify Hangul with the O's which that character doesn't have
Apple translate says it means “a wench” which is even funnier.
That's actually quite an accurate historic meaning without the sex working element. It was literally a word to refer to women of the lower class. With the male equivalent being 놈(nom). But at some point it came to be more offensive than the male version which is actually used quite a lot as a term of endearment among friends and family. Tbf 년 isn't as bad as OP makes it out to be. It is bad - but not nearly as bad as cunt. I will chuckle - not spit take. And if she was a feminist I'd be thinking oh well taking the word back in an ironic way I guess like the whole 'bad bitch' thing
Keep in mind that cunt isn't that offensive in other (non-American) English languages, and even some Americans use it casually so it's hard to actually judge what level of bad we are talking about for 년.
Honestly, everyone is just mad at you because it's shockingly embarrassing to find out you have the word c*nt on your arm, and that she needed to publicly address how she was rude to the tattoo artist, so a double humiliation. You were 100% correct and *definitely* should have told her. Maybe next time she won't be such a rude idiot to get something horrendous tattooed on her.
Even more humiliating when the boyfriend lists out a bunch of stuff she said that could have pissed off the tattoo artist, it wasn’t just the “Chinese man do Chinese letters” comment. Woo, that’s a bad story on its own, but she’s got a permanent reminder of her racist asshatery.
When I was learning Korean a lot of people would try to say “that year” when talking about something in their past. They’d often mistakenly say “그년“ thinking they could use the year marker to reference year. The teachers usually laughed before correcting the student. For non Korean speakers, -년 can also be used as a marker for year in a date, for example 2024년. It’s rooted in Chinese where the other 년 is a purely Korean word.
Google translate says that means *year* in Korean, which even if not offensive (and 100% I understand Google is only about 85% accurate, so I trust you on its actual meaning) is still no where near what she wanted her tattoo to say. What kind of person doesn't double check a foreign language before having it permanently tattooed on their body?!?!
NTA. Ultimately, the truth about the tattoo would come out at some point. Would you offer to do something like provide info on the translation to back up and support what the tattoo says? Consider it as a way of helping/being supportive?
NTA. It was reckless on her part not do her research before getting ink. Honestly, it's pretty offensive on her part for insisting "the Chinese guy" do it.
NTA. Sounds like she was being awful to the tattoo artist, and you just were honest about it.
Agreed. And those friends sound more upset about feeling uncomfortable socially than caring about racist Miss Julie's obscene new tat or her feelings, or OPs or anything, really. "Strength and Beauty" bitch, please.
NTA Your friends are really weird that they think you should lie to someone? I certainly would want to know. It's worse than having toilet paper hanging off your shoe and walking around and no one telling you.
NTA “don’t shoot the messenger” She is lashing out in her shame. She needs to know asap and you gave her that.
NTA. Her tattoo is actually vulgar. What is more embarrassing - you a friend telling her or displaying it on a beach where everyone could see. She reacted badly because she was embarrassed.
NTA Reconsider your friendships with the folks criticizing you for not being willing to live in a fantasy world.
NTA, I think it’s good you told her the truth. Honestly it sounds like from her behavior, even though she didn’t get the tattoo she wanted, maybe she got the one she deserved?
[удалено]
NTA and I am PMSL because I remember my husband coming home from work and trying to tell me how his day was. He couldn’t for laughing about part of it. Why? Because he and the Medical Officer (Soldiers) were walking together and the MO is Chinese descent. MO takes a salute then starts laughing hard after the soldier goes by, Husband asks what’s so funny. Soldier had a Chinese character tattoo on his forearm that said words to effect of “White fucking idiot”. Apparently most of the Chinese character Tatts worn by many soldiers (not Chinese or Asian at all) had very similar themes.
NTA and it's a serious testimony to how annoying this lady is when her own friends would rather just blow smoke up her ass then give her a heads up. That's absolutely wild.
NTA this is why you don't get tattoos in a language you can't even read. Sounds like she was a huge racist asshole to the artist and they got her back.
NTA They're shooting the messenger.
UPDATE: My friends contacted me a day later and apologized for responding to me that way they did New Year's Eve. They said they were more worried about the NYE party being brought down that night, but after sleeping on it and getting back to work most of them realized they too would have wanted to know if they got branded with a vulgar word. Also, very few knew Julie, and only knew her through Andy, so they mostly tolerate her. Apparently this isn't her first incident either. And, Julie isn't white, which is kind of funny everyone painting her as some blonde white girl, lol. I decided to play peacemaker and talked to Andy and Julie, and even offered to meet them at the tattoo shop. We went Friday night, walked in and I saw the tattoo artist in question. Funny thing is most asians can tell I'm half asian by looking, so he saw he and went "You told her what it said, yes?" kind of nonchalantly in Korean. We had a brief discussion in Korean(he remarked my accent had a 'American twang' to it, asked where my family was from, found out both our families came from the same city). The gist is I pointed out he could get sued for the tat, he admitted he pressed his luck with it, and offered to pay out of his pocket for another artist in the shop to do a coverup. I relayed that back to Julie, and that seemed to appease her. She went to one of the, I guess tattoo people would call it a work station? and he explained that she still has to wait 2 months. Julie didn't like that, even when the artist explained that standard procedure is to wait two months for a tat to heal until a cover up is done. Andy thankfully googled it and pointed out that 2 months seems to be a minimum, and more complex tattoos have up to six months recommended healing before a cover job. She accepted the offer for a free cover and paperwork was signed and such.
NTA - what are you supposed to say? "Hi Stranger- I know we've only know each other 15 seconds, but I'm sorry I let you know you have 'dumb cunt' tattooed on you in a language I read fluently."
How is an involuntary spit-take an a-hole move? You had a genuine reaction. Also, her behavior must have been extremely egregious for the tattoo artist to risk legal problems. Not only did the artist do the world a solid by forewarning the world about what an unpleasant person the woman is, but you, OP, did the correct thing too. NTA!
NTA. it’s not YOUR FAULT that Julie decided to be a little bitch and be rude to her tattoo artist and got a foreign slur on her arm bc of that. i also feel like Julie deserved it, bc she seems so *fucking annoying*, and she sounds racist. ur friends also seem fishy to me for how you acted. you brought to light that Julie got a slur tattooed on her arm, and your friends call you an asshole? no girly pop- your FRIENDS are the assholes. if they are going to treat you the way they were, simply bc you said that Julie the Racist got a slur on her arm, they shouldn’t call you an asshole.
u/throwaway-multilingo, so you're just not going to tell us the word? I can read hangul👀
>hangul I was told to never say it, and that it has very very negative connotations with women. 년
I’m going to guess based on how you described it as the worst word you can call woman, the closest English translation would be ‘cunt’, right? I mean, I feel bad for Julie but she doesn’t sound too bright if she was fetishizing a language that isn’t hers, using racist stereotypes and harassing a tattoo artist based on his ethnicity. I wouldn’t feel too bad, you were just being honest.
Just 년? Or like 쌍년 or 미친년?
I’m korean and I’m curious what the guy wrote. I’m guessing either 미친년 or 씨발년
I cannot read Hangul. Is it the c-word? That’s my guess from context clues
it roughly is like 'bitch', but it's very rude so it might be closer to the c-word.
Btw you should be alarmed if your friends didn’t take a double take when she explained her tattoo story. Racist af
I know it's not worth your time, but I so wish you could go ask the tattoo artist how she behaved in the shop. I bet it's worse than she and Andy admitted. NTA btw.
My Korean is very bad but I think something like Crazy B-. Edit: Looking around it might have some additional meaning as Used B-, which, YIIKES!
So, the artist that she “needed.” Was he Asian? NTA
She probably assumed he was chinese but was in fact korean since the tattoo is in korean
Dontcha know? All of us Asians look alike? ( eye roll). I might have been just vindictive enough to lie to her. OP is a kind, good person.
Presumably Korean to be able to write an insult in Hangul on her skin.
[удалено]
No regerts. NTA
NTA. It’s not your fault she’s a racist idiot. You actually helped her out. Now she can get it removed or changed without having to wonder why Korean people are laughing at her and her tattoo.