Smarty Pants

What this tattoo SHOULD read is "My slutty skirt is too little."
Tonight I am officially a smartass jerk. I honestly can't deny it. I couldn't resist any longer. I told someone their "Chinese" tattoo meant jack squat. Looking online for a certain tattoo lead me to a celebrity gossip page. The author compared a tattoo on Ryan Phillippe to their own tattoo and then showed a picture of their own tattoo and mentioned the "meaning." BIG MISTAKE. Well...the meaning was crap. Completely wrong. Only one character was even close. And being my sassy self this evening I could resist no longer. I marched over to the bookshelf and found John's Chinese Dictionary. Only one problem. It was printed in the states. This means it does not function like a normal Chinese dictionary and is missing half the words (if not more) that exist. Seeing as I was looking for one of the most basic words out there, I do not believe that dictionary should be sold...ANYWHERE. EVER. After throwing that across the room, I went to good ol' trust worthy zhongwen.com and just looked up the characters. I knew they were wrong on the tattoo but just wanted to make sure I had the meanings down pat.
Before I knew it, I had replied to the poster with this:
I hate to be the bearer of bad news but your tattoo does not say "Mother, Daughter, Son."
The top left character says "woman" or "female."
The top right character says "mother" so that's correct.
The bottom character is a word used to describe something as "finished" or "complete."
Never ever, ever, ever trust tattoo shop "kanji."
Oops. Did I actually type that for real? Before I could stop myself, I submitted it. So there you have it folks. I'm a jerk, I know.
But you know what? I'm SICK and TIRED of seeing these people running around with their "kanji symbols" all jacked up on their arms claiming it says some crapola that their high tattoo artist fed to them while buzzing it into their shoulder. It's like me running around with "j;laskdfhaskl;nefals;kejfhlkdfh" tattooed on my arm and saying it says "Happiness" in English. I mean COME ON. How elementary does it have to be? Do you speak Chinese? No? Okay. Does your friend speak it? Another no? Okay...does your tattoo artist FOR REAL speak Chinese and no that does not mean reading fake translations off the flash pages in the tattoo shop?...If that's three no's or even ONE no...you should NEVER consider getting a tattoo in a language you DO NOT speak or read or understand in any shape or form unless a very trusted LEARNED person translates for you. And even then. JUST DON'T DO IT.Unfortunately for this poor soul it is far beyond too late. Thank goodness for cover-ups...or humorous stories. "Yeah I thought my tattoo said "Mother, Daughter, Son" but it actually says "Mother, Female, Finished....."...yeah I don't know either." But...I already know for a fact they'll take their stoned tattoo artists' word over mine. What do I know? He taught himself to tattoo in prison with a bic pen and I lived in China 14 years. Take your pick.
For anyone that cared: Kanji is "pictograms of Chinese" origin as one site put it. So it's basically Chinese AND one of Japanese forms of writing as Japanese has several "alphabets."
For the record: They're CHARACTERS, NOT SYMBOLS. They are not SYMBOLIZING anything. They're WORDS. Got it? If I hear "Asian Symbol" ONE MORE TIME...
The ONLY way I can see a ray of light from this tattoo fiasco is if somehow (which I highly doubt) the "KANJI" has a different meaning and those characters do in fact mean "Mother, Daughter, Son." But...I find that very far fetched. If that is the case, I'll gladly admit my wrong. But I'll be here waiting until then. Scoffing. Quietly. To self.
Okay. Jackass mode OFF.