Ok, so GNOME comes with this kick-ass Unicode Character Map:
It shows what those crazy non-arabic symbols mean in the status bar. Anyway, here’s a funny conversation I had with James (you probably wont be able to see the japanese characters, but you wouldn’t understand them anyway):
(12:09:16) Sam Steele: 下丌
(12:09:23) Sam Steele: I made something that makes sense!
(12:09:23) Sam Steele: hehe
(12:09:37) James F: lol but its in katakana!
(12:09:46) Sam Steele: lol
(12:10:22) Sam Steele: 丈 = unit of length equal 3.3 meters; gentleman, man, husband
how are those even related? rofl
(12:10:37) James F: lol they aren’t but i can explain’
(12:11:03) ***Sam Steele waits for explanation
(12:11:28) James F: ok japanese isn’t just japanese
(12:11:42) James F: the kanji are all borrowed from chinese
(12:12:10) Sam Steele: ah, so one country’s unit of measure is another country’s husband.. I get it.
(12:12:18) James F: and sometimes when things change meanings from china, such as the origin kanji meaning of height
(12:12:52) James F: they are borrowed into the language… just like how a pound means like 5 different things in the us…
(12:12:57) James F: to hit
(12:12:59) James F: to weigh
(12:13:05) James F: to spend english money.
(12:13:07) James F: uhh…
(12:13:20) Sam Steele: that’s 3
(12:13:20) Sam Steele: lol
(12:13:20) James F: many other adopted slang references… …
(12:13:28) Sam Steele: … .. sure.
(12:13:29) Sam Steele: hehe
(12:13:35) James F: lol yeah.
(12:13:39) James F: totally unrelated.