Language Log

From Guy Freeman:

These advertisements on a Hong Kong bus (plastered on the back of every seat on the upper deck) use Cantonese so unashamedly, at least in their main type, that I just had to pass them on.  Clearly advertisers still appreciate that written Cantonese is the best way to connect to the Cantonese-speaking masses.

Photograph of a sign in downtown Taitung, Taiwan:

(Courtesy of Anthony Clayden)

Tong Wang spotted this poster in a Beijing elevator:

Brand-name transliteration (in Embarcadero Center, San Francisco), courtesy of Nancy Friedman:

Recently, Tong Wang's husband told her that he would not be home for dinner because he was going out with friends to this place:

From Nikita Kuzmin:

From a correspondent in Taiwan:

Charles Belov sent in this photograph of a sign posted on the Pho 2000 restaurant on Larkin Street in San Francisco:

Jenny Chu spotted this ad from a campaign for Nescafe currently being shown in the Hong Kong MTR:

This is from an ad for a new apartment building in University City next to Penn:

Wèi nín xià gè rénshēng jiēduàn ér zuò de gōngyù

为您下个人生阶段而作的公寓

"Apartments made for the next stage of your (honorific) life"

Here's the English version from the same website:

Apartments for the next phase in life

Paul Midler submits this one from South China:

When I was teaching in Taiwan in 1970-72, there was a well-known brand of toothpaste called Hēirén yágāo 黑人牙膏 ("Darkie Tooth Paste").  Not only was the name strange, the packaging featured an image of what looked for all the world like Al Jolson in one of his blackface performances.  Naturally, I was scandalized by this, but when I asked my Taiwanese friends about it, they didn't see anything wrong with the name and said that it made sense from an advertising standpoint because the man had gleaming white teeth and the blackness of his skin made them seem all the brighter.

This just in from Mark Metcalf in Beijing: