We're having a federal election, and election signs show, at a minimum, the candidate's name and party. Many candidates like to gain points with the Chinese community by showing a Chinese name, even if they're not Chinese. Consider Joe Peschisolido's campaign sign, shown on the right.
Joe's name is Italian, and in Italian peschi means fish. The Chinese characters shown are 稣立道 which (in Cantonese) sound like "su li do". It sounds like peschi has been ignored (there can only be 3 characters/syllables and Peschisolido has 5 syllables). However, looking at 稣 more closely, we see that it contains on the lower left the component character 鱼 which also means fish!
So this Chinese version of the Italian name is very clever indeed. The question is how many people actually know this, considering you have to know Italian and Chinese to find out.
No comments:
Post a Comment