Language Log

Klaus Nuber writes: "Sometime ago I saw the sign of this 'Asia Palast' with the logo consisting of the two chairs and the round dingus between. Is this logo just cute or has it a hanzi background?"

Jenny Chu sent in this photograph of an ad on a Hong Kong subway car:

The company Oatly claims to have created a new Chinese word for plant-based milk by placing the grass radical above the character for milk:

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