Language Log

An assortment of Chinglish signs and menu items from my files (I forget who sent them to me).  There are eight all together.  Before diving into an examination of them one after the other, I should note that the last two partially result from the perennial problem of not knowing how to deal with warnings involving the heart (xīn 心).  Since I've already devoted an entire post to this topic, it might be worthwhile to take a peek at that before proceeding further:

"Mind your head" (8/28/15)

xiǎoxīn 小心 (lit., "little heart" –> "[be] careful; look out")

dāngxīn 当心 (lit., "heed / regard heart" –> "be careful; watch out")

Mark Swofford called my attention to this Taipei restaurant, noting the risqué pun in its name:  gālí niáng 咖哩娘 (lit., "curry mom").  The restaurant also has the Frenchified Western name "cari de madame".

It could conceivably be a pun for jiālǐ niàng 家裡釀 ("home brew"), but I suspect that Mark had something else in mind.  Well, the proprietors tell part of the story themselves here, "A naughty name for insane curry".

On a recent episode of Bravo's competitive cooking show "Top Chef" ("Spines and Vines," 12/10/15), the contestants had to make a dish with uni (sea urchin) and pair it with a wine. One contestant, Angelina Bastidas, received the following less-than-glowing appraisal of her dish from the show's host, Padma Lakshmi, and guest judge Dana Cowin, editor-in-chief of Food & Wine.

AB: Over here it's a play on an Italian cacio e pepe. I made uni butter. And the wine that I chose today is chardonnay.
DC: The uni obviously has a lot of salt.
PL: Yeah.
DC: It's one of the characteristics, and the dish…
PL: It eats salty.
AB: Sorry about that. I apologize.
PL: Thank you.

Maidhc Mac Roibin spotted this oddly named item on the menu (bottom right) of the Nutrition Restaurant in Cupertino, CA:

One of Kohei Jose Shimamoto's photos on Facebook:

An old photograph in my files (from about five years ago):

Tom Mazanec's uncle recently came across this sign in a restaurant in Chiang Rai, Thailand:

Dmitriy Genzel sent in this photograph of an item on a Chinese menu:

(From here.)

Don't think that a Walmart in China is like a Walmart in America.  Far from it.  Chinese Walmarts carry many products tailored for the local market that you would never find in an American Walmart.

Here are "20 Things You'll Only See in Chinese Walmarts".

I won't go through all 20 of these curious items in detail, but will focus mainly on a few that are linguistically or otherwise of particular interest.

From a Japanese colleague:

"Now the Japanese too can appreciate the linguistic ingenuity of the Chinese!"

As he suggested, on the model of "Chinglish", we'll tentatively refer to this hybrid language as "Chapanese" until someone comes up with a better name for it.

This odd article collects twenty photographs illustrating different products and dishes designated and described with Chapanese wording:

Chūgoku no dasakakkoii hen'na Nihongo 中国のダサカッコイイ変な日本語
"Chinese Dasa cool weird Japanese"

To tell the truth, I don't really know exactly what the katakana word "dasakakkoii ダサカッコイイ" means, other than that it seems to signify some sort of funky fashion or style (for males?).  It appears to be a variant of just the kakkoii part alone which means "attractive; good-looking; stylish; cool; smooth; neat; with-it; groovy".

The following photograph shows a chalkboard sign inside of a Kobe cafe that is entirely written in rōmaji (Roman letters), with superscript 2s representing reduplication:

Jim Millward sent in this photograph of a sign at "one of those Korean-run lunch buffet deli places (this in Bethesda MD)":

From Wei comes this photograph of a sign on a deli that they took the other day in Guangzhou: