Language Log

From the menu of the Istanbul Kebab House near Times Square in New York City:

Putting aside the possibility that the author is a frustrated poet forced by parental pressure into the restaurant business, we can conclude that "vertical split" for "vertical spit" is an L2 malapropism, and that the reference to "ground" in place of "sliced" meat is a similar simple confusion about what "ground" means. But what about that "ingenious herd"?

I have in my hand a plastic bag that originally contained a CD and instruction manual for a Dell flat-panel display. As usual for such bags, it's printed with icons meant to discourage people from putting it over their head or using it as a baby pillow; and text that reads in English "WARNING: To avoid danger of suffocation, keep away from babies and children. Do not use in cribs, beds, carriages or playpens. This bag is not a toy."

The warning is repeated in French, German, Spanish, and Italian. The Italian one reads:

An Italian friend was taken aback by several aspects of this warning; and especially by the word "soffocazione". The trouble is, he told me, that this word doesn't exist. He doesn't mean that Italians have no way to express the concept of suffocation, just that they use a differently-derived word, namely "soffocamento".

The South China Morning Post (Feb. 13, 2011) carried this peculiar headline for an article by John Carney: "No sex please, our ancestors are resting, sign says." And here is a photograph of the sign in question:

The sign is situated in a remote location in Clear Water Bay, Hong Kong. But what in the world does it mean?

In the New York Times Week in Review this weekend, I have a piece looking at the clever linguistic strategies that Egyptian protesters used to tell President Hosni Mubarak that it was time to go. (There's also a nice slideshow accompanying the article.) Language Log readers will already know about the appearance of "Game Over" in the Cairo protests, as well as the use of Chinese to get the message across, but there were many other creative variations on that theme.

Victor Steinbok has called my attention to "halogen taste-flavor dried tofu" made in China.

This sounds really strange,  since the halogens (fluorine [F], chlorine [Cl], bromine [Br], iodine [I], and astatine [At]) are toxic when used improperly. In any event, they do not seem to be the sort of thing that one would want to flavor one's bean curd with.

Dean Barrett sent in this thought for the day from Yunnan Province:

The English rendering of the Chinese sign sounds somewhat profound and even poetic, but what does it really mean?

John Hill kindly sent me this photograph of a sign that he took at Tsokar in Ladakh:

Intrigued by the name of the establishment, I wondered just what sort of services Wild Ass Homestay offers.

Carley De Rosa sent me this illustrated description of an intriguing dish from a menu at a restaurant in Beijing:

Seldom does one encounter so many delectable Chinglishisms in such small space.  Furthermore, several of the items, especially the last, are both rare and challenging, so I take particular delight in explaining how they came about.

On a flight from Australia to Scotland, Bob Ladd bought "a packet of very tasty dried strawberries, packed in Thailand for the airline market". He writes:

On the back of the packet we were informed of the benefits of the contents, which were:

– Contains high Vitamin C which acts as antioxidants.
– Contains dietary fibres which facilitate defecation.

We have seen, over and over again, that the rapid spread of English in China causes consternation among language authorities there, most recently leading to the ban of English in the media. Here's one way to deal with this problem, at least in terms of superficial appearance:

[Click to see the rest of the sign.]

Via Leiterjakab and EngrishFunny, this evidence that it's not only the Chinese who sometimes have menu-translation difficulty:

Several online Hungarian-English dictionaries validate this translation of bukta (e.g. here), but are less clear about the core meaning of lekváros (e.g. here, , here). However, an online recipe explains that "Bukta are baked desserts which can be filled with a variety of ingredients, such as túró and ground walnuts, but the most popular filling is jam".

The Pope has changed his mind about condoms: they can be used after all!

That's what the world's media has decided to splash over the front pages this weekend. ("Pope Benedict's condom U-turn" said the headline over Andrew Brown's blog piece at The Guardian.) They are being scandalously irresponsible as usual: the Pope has said nothing of the kind. Rather, he grudgingly acknowledged, in one answer during a book-length interview, that perhaps in some cases perhaps the use of a condom by a prostitute (una prostituta) might be "a first step toward a moralization, a first act of responsibility, on the way toward recovering awareness of the fact that not everything is allowed and that one cannot do whatever one wants." Absolutely no sign of a Catholic Church volte face on contraception there. But I have a linguistic question: what did he mean when he used the word prostituta?

This is a sign from Hong Kong: