Know Your Picture Characters Entry #70
A. 位理英牟 B. 閉奴利怡 C. 自与於士 D. 愛梨社倍寸
E. 榎騰和足等
Hoo boy. Theoman uses analysis of interlinguistic phonetic complexity to come up with his answers. I think that’s a bit over all of our heads. I’ll just give him a grade: 2/5. Not bad. Maybe if we understood all this technical business, we’d be better at stuff, too.
A Fan talked about movies instead, which I think I should have an easier time understanding. That is, until he starts talking about movies I’ve never seen. Maybe he should have stuck to more familiar titles, because then he might have gotten some answers right. He did surpass Theoman in one area, correctly picking Elizabeth over Mary as the most common name for English queens (apparently I failed to predict any controversy over this Mary business). In conclusion, I think Bad Dumbledore probably would have made a pretty good William the Conqueror because his primary skill is yelling, but I doubt he could have matched Laurie’s George IV.
Shirley finally provided an accurate count of all these various rulers, though nobody seemed to have any trouble with any of the boys. Soldiers do tend to hog all the attention, but I don’t see what her problem is with the color orange. Anyway, she clearly knows her monarchs. She quickly spotted William, the first (Norman) King of England in the first spot, A. Not content to rest on her laurels there, she also correctly identified C as George and E as Edward (a classic A Fan pick, though not this week. And I suppose it could have been Elizabeth as well). If anyone out there wants to know more about English kings and queens, I suggest you talk to Shirley. The real ones, that is. A Fan is still the expert on their semi-fictional portrayals.
Elizabeth proved to be the most elusive of the rulers this time around, in part because Theoman wasn’t even looking for her. Both A (William) and B (Henry) were identified by one contestant as looking “the most feminine.” The second character in B does contain a component meaning “woman,” so I guess there’s some basis to that (Sorry, Hal). Queen Bess herself is hiding out at D, emphasizing her stalwart defense (final character) of noble Albion and perhaps exaggerating her prowess as a lover (first character).
Also, I’d like to apologize to Colin Firth on Dragon’s behalf because she said he looked like D. He didn’t deserve that.
So you like heads of state, eh? I’ll give you heads of state. Let’s try it again on the west side of the ol’ pond. We’re not as big on repetition here in the colonies, so I’m giving you the names of the first five presidents.
A. 丸芝努止怒 B. 方農呂應 C. 万遅所濃 D. 仕曳八阿則沼
E. 安陀武受
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5 Comments »
September 12th, 2011 at 2:15 pm
Strictly speaking, Elizabeth II is Queen of Great Britain, not England. But anyway . . .
First five presidents, eh? Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe? I know that my strategy of matching length to phonetic complexity hasn’t really panned out so far (though I bet I would have done better if it weren’t for the Elizabeth/Mary confusion), but A & D are clearly Washington and Jefferson. I guess Jefferson is the slightly longer one because Japanese struggles with F’s. B & C’s first characters look similar, so they must be Madison and Monroe, in that order because I say so. This leaves the obnoxiously and disliked Adams hanging around at the end.
To summarize:
A: Washington
B: Madison
C: Monroe
D: Jefferson
E: Adams
September 13th, 2011 at 10:30 am
None of those look like John Hancock.
Or any of the other “first” presidents:
Samuel Huntington (March 1, 1781 – July 9, 1781)
Thomas McKean (July 10, 1781 – November 4, 1781)
John Hanson (November 5, 1781 – November 3, 1782)
Elias Boudinot (November 4, 1782 – November 2, 1783)
Thomas Mifflin (November 3, 1783 – October 31, 1784)
Richard Henry Lee (November 30, 1784 – November 6, 1785)
John Hancock (November 23, 1785 – May 29, 1786)
Nathaniel Gorham (June 6, 1786 – November 5, 1786)
Arthur St. Clair (February 2, 1787 – November 4, 1787)
Cyrus Griffin (January 22, 1788 – November 2, 1788)
Oh–Maybe you meant those LATER presidents after that new-fangled Constitution thingie was ratified. More to follow on that.
September 15th, 2011 at 1:35 pm
A. W.W. wouldn’t be so devious as to put Washington, as the first name. Would he? But not even W.W. would be so devious as to expect us to name John Hancock as the first president when that wasn’t even the federal government as we know it. Would he? But I do think he might be devious enough to put Washington first, thinking we would be looking for that. What ever, I’m calling just that.
A. Washington. After all, he wasn’t only the first president, he was first in war, first in peace and first in the hearts of his country men. And in my opinion along with Lincoln and F.D.R. (though some might argue with F.D. R.) As the first, everything he did was a precedent, which the founding fathers realized, and so made the first article a bit fuzzy, causing a spot of controversy every now and then when the party out of power denies her (or him) a particular power, even though they may have claimed it for their own presidents. But the founders knew they could trust him to do the right thing. As we all know, he could have been king if he wanted to. He could have had a third term if he wanted that. Imagine a man with so much integrity that he didn’t want power! How great is that?
B. Monroe, the 5th one, whose most memorable achievement was the Monroe Doctrine which was actually written by his Secretary of State, the much maligned John Quincy Adams, (6th president and son of the much maligned John Adams, But more of that later.) This is not one of the most memorable kanji, either. So it fits. Not that there was anything wrong with Monroe. He just isn’t particularly memorable.
C. Hard to call C. and D. since I have to fit Madison and Jefferson in there because I’m saving E. Jefferson and Madison are undeniably great men. We’ll call Madison C. He, along with Alexander Hamilton, was the most responsible for the final constitution. A towering intellect.
D. Brings us to Jefferson, probably the 4th greatest. I don’t like many things about him, but I can’t deny that. It’s just that he said and did some not nice things about and to two founders that I do like, and among other things, he approved of the French Reign of Terror. He loved the French and every thing about them. But his influence was huge. The Louisiana Purchase for instance. He really was a very good politician. We have him to thank for the first real political party. (Some might not thank him for that.) His authorship of the Declaration of Independence alone would insure his immortality, but let us not forget that the Constitutional Convention wanted John Adams to write it. John unselfishly gave up that honor to Jefferson “because you write ten times better than I do”
E. I was saving this for one of the founders I had reference to in the D. answer. John Adams, the 2nd president and, like his son, John Quincy, much maligned. He wasn’t a great, or even good, president, but he was a great man. Also like John Quincy. They were towering intellects. It’s probable that there would never had been an American Revolution without him. It was not a sure thing at that time. And it’s successful conclusion is in part due to his diplomatic activities. The Adams family is amazing. You had to be a certified genius to be allowed in the family, a wonderful political science teacher I studied under said about him. An unusual number of his descendents were notable men. If you could get beneath his prickly personality, he was witty, charming, lovable, adored by his wife, the sainted Abigail, my favorite of the presidential wives until you get to Eleanor Roosevelt. He is my favorite of the founding fathers. But I felt he had to be the odd looking E. because of his uneven legacy.
September 18th, 2011 at 6:23 pm
Washington must be D, because it looks like it would write gloomy, depressing dispatches.
Adams and Jefferson must be A and E, because you have to keep them far away from each other or they’ll fight. I’m going to say that A is Adams, because, as Theoman pointed out, matching them by length hasn’t worked very well so far, so I’m putting the shorter one with the longer character. Also, some of those characters in A look like they could get pretty obnoxious to write, and you might end up disliking them. And E is off by itself on the bottom line, probably sulking because it misses its wife.
Madison and Monroe weren’t in 1776, so I don’t know what you expect me to base my guesses on at all. Well, they do start with the same character, so that’s a good sign. I’m going to do the opposite of what Theoman did and say B is Monroe and C is Madison. That way, one of us will get it right. Or neither of us. Either way.
September 18th, 2011 at 7:12 pm
Took me a while to get back. So you are looking for Presidents 11-15 (not counting those who presided at Continental Congresses, etc. OK. The key to this is that the Japanese understand the many things are named after our presidents, so the kanji look like these:
A. That’s a perfect subway map of the Adams-Morgan neighborhood, so Adams.
B. Various items from Thomas Jefferson High School in Bloomington, Minnesota (member of the marching band, cafeteria table, computer in library, that one teacher who might be a terrorist)
C. Washington, as in the University in St. Louis;
D. State Street on Halloween Night (i.e., Madison)
E. A stylized representation of the great Leutze painting of Washington Crossing the Delaware. The Japanese clearly knew that the guy behind Washington in the boat (holding the anachronistic flag) was then-Lieutenant James Monroe (go ahead–look it up)