{"id":344,"date":"2006-03-23T23:24:40","date_gmt":"2006-03-23T15:24:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/2006\/johnny-depp-and-chinese-characters\/"},"modified":"2018-08-22T12:06:10","modified_gmt":"2018-08-22T04:06:10","slug":"johnny-depp-and-chinese-characters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/2006\/johnny-depp-and-chinese-characters\/","title":{"rendered":"JOHNNY DePP AND CHINeSe CHARACTeRS"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"coverThe cover for the DVD for Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride<\/em> (Dìyù Xīnniáng \/ 地獄新娘 \/ “Hell Bride”) has what for me is an arresting usage: the roman letter “e” has been incorporated into a Chinese character.<\/p>\n

\"Tim<\/p>\n

At first I thought this substitution of “e” for the 日 portion of the shì (是) phonetic element of 提 (tí) might be meant as playfully phonetic itself: “Teem” Burton, of sorts. <\/p>\n

提姆波頓
\nTímǔ Bōdùn<\/span><\/p>\n

But then I noticed how Johnny Depp’s name was written:
\n\"Johnny<\/p>\n

There’s that e again. But this case, the character, 普, which also has its 日 element replaced, doesn’t have a long e sound in its pronunciation:<\/p>\n

強尼戴普
\nQiángní Dàipǔ<\/span><\/p>\n

“Daipu”? That sounds like a portmanteau for what’s found in dirty diapers. (Sorry. Couldn’t resist.) <\/p>\n

So it was just a case of a designer having fun. The e has no phonetic function here. <\/p>\n

But there’s something else interesting about how Johnny Depp’s name is written. The first character, 強, takes more<\/em> strokes to write in its so-called simplified form than in traditional Chinese characters. <\/p>\n

traditional (11 strokes) 強 强<\/span> “simplified” (12 strokes)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The cover for the DVD for Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride (Dìyù Xīnniáng \/ 地獄新娘 \/ “Hell Bride”) has what for me is an arresting usage: the roman letter “e” has been incorporated into a Chinese character. At first I thought … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,19,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chinese-characters","category-romanization","category-signage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=344"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7764,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344\/revisions\/7764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}