Multilingual signage in Manhattan

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Cameron Majidi sent in this photograph taken on East Broadway in Manhattan:

Much of the signage is routine, so I won't transcribe and translate all of it.  Most interesting, at least to me, though, is that there seems to be enough business from Tibetans in this part of town that a dentist would go to the trouble of putting up a sign in their language.

The Tibetan line at the top reads (left to right):

stabs bde'i so sman khang སྟབས་བདེའི་སོ་སྨན་ཁང
("Convenient Dental Clinic")

Lexical notes:

stabs (or thabs) bde = "convenient; skillful", like Chinese fāngbiàn 方便

so ("tooth") sman ("medicine") = "dentist"

khang = office

Other translations for the adjective besides "convenient" are "simple" or "easy."  It's used in terms like "fast food" or "convenience store".

The other Tibetan writing is simply the address (building number and the floor the clinic is on) on the bottom left and the telephone numbers on the bottom right.

The two Korean syllables just below that are ch'ikwa 치과 (齿科) ("dentistry; dental clinic").

The partially obscured green sign in Chinese seems more intriguing:

yímín lǜkǎ 移民綠卡 ("immigration and green cards")

mínshì sùsòng 民事訴訟 ("civil suits")

fángdìchǎn 房地產 ("real estate")

xíngshì fànzuì 刑事犯罪 ("criminal offenses")

The wide assortment of signs in Manhattan offers a free lesson in multilingualism and multiculturalism — if you stop to read them.

[Thanks to Bill Hannas, Douglas Duckworth, Leonard van der Kuijp, Elliot Sperling, and Haewon Cho]



13 Comments

  1. Ben Zimmer said,

    June 23, 2016 @ 8:25 pm

    Via Metafilter, here's a photo from a few years ago, showing an earlier version of the Tibetan sign and more of the green Chinese sign.

  2. David Morris said,

    June 23, 2016 @ 10:42 pm

    Among the multiple pieces of information in the other languages, the Korean reads simply 'dentist' (치과).

  3. Michael Carasik said,

    June 24, 2016 @ 9:53 am

    If the dentist is Tibetan, that would be reason enough to put up the sign.

  4. DWalker said,

    June 24, 2016 @ 12:30 pm

    I can't read or speak Korean, but to my untrained eyes, the first character in the comment that says

    …the Korean reads simply 'dentist' (치과).

    does not look like the leftmost character in the picture. I am sure it is the same character, but it doesn't look quite the same. I thought those characters were complex enough that differences such as, whether the lower half of a character looks like an upside-down Y, or not, would be significant. One of the strokes in the picture connects to the horizontal line at the rightmost end of the horizontal line.

  5. Eidolon said,

    June 24, 2016 @ 1:09 pm

    At first I was thinking this would be the way of the future, but then I remembered that augmented reality technology is progressing rapidly. Now I tend to believe that the way of the future is on-the-fly script recognition and translation into whatever language you prefer.

  6. Will M said,

    June 24, 2016 @ 1:57 pm

    DWalker: you're thinking of Chinese characters. Korean is written with a ~40-character, largely phonetic alphabet ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hangul ). The resemblance to Chinese characters is superficial—though not coincidental, as Chinese characters were also widely used in Korea for most of the alphabet's history.

    The character shapes on the sign are common in handwriting–note also the bottom shape of the second character, which has the "tick" attached to the crossbar at the left corner rather than in the middle.

  7. cameron said,

    June 24, 2016 @ 2:43 pm

    There may be enough Tibetans around for an enterprising dentist to go out of his way to seek their custom, but apparently there aren't enough Tibetans around to support professional sign-makers who can handle Tibetan. Or maybe the professional sign-makers who are happy to handle Chinese would be willing to tackle the Tibetan, but the dentist is not willing to pay for their services.

  8. KWillets said,

    June 24, 2016 @ 4:37 pm

    @DWalker it's common to write ㅊ and ㅈ as something like 7 with a leg added (and the tick on top). It saves a stroke and is unambiguous.

    However there is a typo in the second character; the bottom should be ㅘ (wa) but it's 나 (na). My best guess is that the sign is a non-speaker's copy of a handwritten note.

  9. David Morris said,

    June 24, 2016 @ 5:58 pm

    @DWalker: several other people have addressed your comment while I was sleeping. Because Korean is written in the hangeul alphabet, many people get creative with their writing on advertising signage.

    @KWilletts: I have seen ㅗ rendered as ㄴ enough times to know it's a thing. I think people do it because ㄴ can be written with one stroke of a pen, whereas ㅗ requires two. Even with the ㅗ looking like a ㄴ, 과 and 간 look very different.

  10. David Morris said,

    June 24, 2016 @ 6:00 pm

    I just searched for 'image hangul handwriting' and 'image hangul sign', which returned some interesting examples.

  11. Joseph said,

    June 25, 2016 @ 3:24 am

    瑯岐 Lángqí is a small island of the coast of Fujian province in China which is under the jurisdiction of the city 福州 Fúzhōu, so I would think that the fúzhōu yáshì 福州牙室 (Fuzhou Dental Clinic) and the 瑯岐何祥枝醫師 Lángqí Hé Xiángzhī yīshī ((Clinic of) Physician He Xiangzhi from Liangqi) are connected in that they are run by the same community from the Fuzhou are of Fujian. Inspecting the photo posted by Ben Zimmer I could also see a Fúzhōu dà yàofáng 福州大藥房 (Fuzhou Comprehensive Pharmacy) and beyond that a Zhang Family Fuzhou Restaurant. Assuming the dental clinic which uses this Tibetan sign is the same fúzhōu yáshì 福州牙室, and at least another Chinese doctor's name is written on the post boxes on the right bottom of the second photograph, I think its safe to assume that the dentist is not herself Tibetan but is a Chinese dentist who believes having a Tibetan sign would attract more patients. That itself is interesting politically and it is also interesting that traditional characters were chosen instead of simplified, even with the waving PRC and US flags in the background.

  12. Victor Mair said,

    June 25, 2016 @ 8:33 am

    Excellent, Joseph! I was hoping that someone would do that kind of comprehensive analysis of all the signs visible in the photograph.

  13. K. Chang said,

    June 26, 2016 @ 10:59 pm

    Confirm Joseph's findings. If you zoom in on the plaques to the right of the door, there's a sign that says 福州瑯岐何祥枝醫師 and phone number, 2nd written sign from the bottom. So it's the same guy.

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