Language Log

When I entered the Airbnb where I'm now staying, one of the first things that caught my attention was the following utensil:

More savory Chinglish from Dunhuang:

That's the name of a viral YouTube channel that I had never heard of, and now a popular book that Barbara Phillips Long called to my attention:

From John Rohsenow:

From AntC:

Seen in a very typical (but delicious) corner eatery in downtown Hualien, Taiwan.

Main dish served as part of a college cafeteria lunch in Nanchang, China:

Shop sign in Budapest:

Shouldn’t that be Zhonghua Pan-Asian Kitchen Ramen Wok Premium Sushi? pic.twitter.com/tTUaWidjL3

— James Millward 米華健 (@JimMillward) June 4, 2023

Since about the 90s, pho has been popping up all over the place.  It has been especially conspicuous after the turn of the millennium, and I think it adapted well to the pandemic as a quick and ready kind of street food.  I've often wondered whether it had anything to do with French "fire" or Cantonese fan2 粉 ("noodles; vermicelli").  Rather than continuing to fruitlessly speculate in my waking hours, as I did again this morning, I figured it's about time I looked up what the authorities say.  So here goes:

Borrowed from Vietnamese phở.

(source)

That much we all agree on. 

The hotel where I'm staying in Morgantown, West Virginia kindly gave me a complimentary rectangular packet of freshmint toothpaste.  At the top right corner of the packet, there was a dotted, diagonal line with the words "TEAR HERE" printed above it.  Alas, no matter how hard I tried, I could not tear it open.

Then I thought that maybe I could RIP it open by pulling on the serrations along the upper edge of the packet.  No luck.

Then I tried to BITE and GNASH the packet with my teeth.  Abject failure.

Of course, I've been through all of this countless times before, and not just with toothpaste, but with packets of ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, and all sorts of other things.  It is especially dismaying when — after making a supreme effort — the packet bursts open and the contents spurt all over the place, including your clothing.  The worst case is when soy sauce flies out and drips everywhere.

[This is a guest post by S. Robert Ramsey]

Your Language Log coverage of the North Korean news item was chilling, but pretty much what we've come to expect of that outrageous regime. If ever there was a clearer contrast between the two worlds in conflict, I've never heard of it. South Korea is now such a star on the world stage and rising so fast, it must be a bitter pill for the regime in Pyongyang to swallow! 

Just a couple of things that occurred to me, though: (1) What authorities in Pyongyang do not recognize, or concede, is that though they point to the Pyongyang dialect as the basis of their standard, that very standard itself is based upon the earlier, traditional dialect of Seoul that represented the cultural and linguistic capital of the Joseon Period (–or "Choson" period, as DPRK spelling of the word would have it). 

And (2): While on the subject of spellings, it might be worthwhile to point out that the romanization the DPRK uses is based upon the McCune-Reischauer system still used by many Western academics. But the North Korean version is actually more pragmatic than Western academic usage in that the North Koreans eliminate the annoying diacritics of McR that have long exasperated so many Western romanizers–and which Seoul academics used as one of the justifications for the new Revised system they introduced in 2000–and which they so dogmatically insist on now.  

Amazon screenshot from an anonymous contributor:

Liuzhou Snail Rice Noodles from China. (Facebook, Li Chong-lim photo)

The photograph is from this article:

China’s ‘propaganda noodle soup’ ordered off the market in Taiwan

Noodle packaging has ‘You are Chinese, and I am too’ emblazoned across it

By Huang Tzu-ti, Taiwan News (1/17/23)