Language Log

A week ago, I was in Gothenberg, Nebraska and went to the local historical museum.  I asked the volunteers there what was the most unusual, interesting, and important exhibit they had.  One of them, Barbara Fisher, thought for a moment, then said, "We have a unique collection of barbed wire fence downstairs, each strand of which is specific to the ranch or tract where it was used."  She must have read my mind and heart, for that is just the sort of thing that would captivate me.

So I dashed down the stairs and beheld:

Chinese not necessary to use this marvelous dual purpose device.

That's the sign on the door of a gas station that I saw in Media, Delaware County, Pennsylvania.  It had pictures of four different packages of pills, but the lettering on them was so blurred that I couldn't see what types or brands of pills they were.

ALL PILLS

$11.95

That was the only sign on the door, and it was very prominent:  right in the center of the door as you entered.  As I stepped inside the store, I was wondering mightily:  why are they selling you pills when they don't tell you what kind of pills they are?

After going inside and paying for my gas, I asked the two female attendants, who were all dressed up in holiday attire, what kind of pills they were, both of them said in unison, "male enhancement", as though they had rehearsed the answer hundreds of times.  I was embarrassed and so were they, so I got out as fast as I could.

source:  Taobao 淘寶

Driving to work this morning, I heard an advertisement on the radio that left me mightily perplexed till the last 5-10 seconds when I finally figured out what the speaker was talking about.

He had a thick southern accent and kept talking about how bad it was to have a "taem sher".  The first word sounded like it was between "tam" and "tem", so I give the makeshift transcription "taem".

I had no idea what he was decrying, but it was something very bad for "you and your family", so bad that apparently it could bankrupt you.  Moreover, it was something that was very hard to get rid of.

Sign on a truck in Hong Kong:

Ben Zimmer spotted this interesting street sign in the New York Times photo essay, "DMs from New York City" (June 26, 2023).

From John Rohsenow:

Sign on the elevator doors of a Taipei department store:

Around 60% of the people living in the San Gabriel area are Asians, and the largest proportion among them are Chinese.  To attract the business of the local population, attorney Scott Warmuth decided to put up Chinese billboards in Monterey Park about a decade ago.  How it happened is described in this article:

"Column: Racial politics, attorney advertising and cultural communication in San Gabriel Valley",

Frank Shyong, Los Angeles Times (4/1//23)

Although the author, who grew up south of Nashville, Tennessee and who writes about diversity and diaspora, is Chinese, he doesn't say much about the linguistics of Warmuth's name choice, and some of what he says is misleading

Photo of a Taiwan Naval Academy recruitment ad in the Taipei MRT which references the One Piece ワンピース manga series from Japan:

[This is a guest post by Bernhard "번하드" Riedel from Munich]

[Preface:  scores of versions of the Wawa logo here.  Take a look before plunging in to the post.]

Brother Joe told me the good news that Wawa stores are coming to my home state of Ohio!

Wawa's are great!  Anyone who went to Penn would know this because their stores are near the campus and their hoagies / subs, salads, mac and cheese, coffee, snacks of all sorts, etc. are tasty and wholesome.  I could practically live out of Wawa's.

Chinese chuckle when they encounter the word "Wawa".  The first thing they think of is "wáwá 娃娃" ("baby; child; doll") — note the female radicals on the left, but secondarily they might think of "wāwā 哇哇" ("wow wow") — note the mouth radicals, or tertiarily they might think of "wāwā 蛙蛙" ("frog") — note the insect / bug radicals.  The name just somehow sounds funny.  Cf. what we were saying about sound symbolism in "The sound of swearing" (12/7/22).