-1

Background story: small office with ~20 people, a pretty girl saying in office chat room: "Hey, something strange. Someone put a small amount of money and this piece of paper with text in a pocket of my jacket. If someone do it by mistake or maybe he wanna to say something to me? Is it a flirting may be?"

No one response.

So I have some text on yellow paper, most likely an envelope, and want to know in which language this text is written and if text on it connected to this girl. After initial searches, I was guessing that it's Japanese characters, it looks like Hiragana or Katakana for me, but finally Japanese natives said that it's a most likely simplified Chinese and even guess that first char is 換.enter image description here

4
  • 1
    Yup it's simplified Chinese. 换左前斗片 = 'replace the front-left 斗片', it's like a request or instruction for a service contractor. I have no idea what 斗片 means in this context. It literally means 'battle card' and in Southern China it refers to the trading card games. The other possibility is 换左前4片 = 'replace the 4 pieces on the front left'.
    – NS.X.
    Commented Oct 11, 2015 at 20:41
  • I guess it's "换左前4片". And, this handwriting was very probably left by a man over 40 years old (maybe over 50) – anyone you can recall?
    – Stan
    Commented Oct 12, 2015 at 4:36
  • 1
    I’d read it as 换左前叶片, but it doesn’t make much sense to me unless you have a plant with exchangeable leaves... ;)
    – Philipp
    Commented Oct 12, 2015 at 5:21
  • @Philipp Not only can 叶片 mean leaves, but also "propeller blades".
    – Stan
    Commented Oct 12, 2015 at 5:28

1 Answer 1

3

To me it looks more like "葉片," which in simplified Chinese is "叶片."

However I am not sure if this is scratch script of another character. There was a time in China where Chinese was further simplified, for example four was simplified from "四" to "の," but later this idea was given up and returned to the nowadays simplified Chinese.

Now that I think about it, I am pretty sure it's not "片"…

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.