Language Log

From theChive:

The latest collection of "lost in translation" signs from the Mail Online offers some doozies:

This photograph was taken at the northern train station in Changchun, China:

The following sign was posted on Weibo (China's Twitter clone):

Yunong Zhou sent me the following signs from China:

Sign in the window of a snack shop in Houhai district of Beijing called Beijing Snacks (Bǎinián lǔ zhě 百年卤者 [Century Braiser]):

Today's "Get Fuzzy":

The following feature from the Nandu website includes many strange and droll language games:

James Errington sends this along via Twitter:

On BoingBoing, Jason Weisberger posted this photograph under the title "Found Poem", but without any explanation:

The rumors are flying that Apple will introduce a new device called the "iPhone Math" in June of this year.  Since that is a highly improbable name for an iPhone (is this going to be some kind of fancy calculator?), skeptical minds have been trying to find the source of the rumors.  The earliest known occurrences of the expression "iPhone Math" are to be found in Taiwanese media, so one suspects that there was some sort of distortion of a hypothetical "iPhone Plus / iPhone +" (semantic garbling) or a hypothetical iPhone Max (phonetic garbling).  After jumbled translation or transcription from English to Chinese, then back again into English, either of those names might conceivably have come out as "iPhone Math", which would indeed be a weird name for an iPhone.

This beautiful establishment in Amoy (Xiamen) 厦门 (facing Taiwan across the strait that separates the PRC from the ROC) is perhaps the only pro-democracy (private) bookstore in the People's Republic of China — I applaud its moral courage. In this article about Once Bookstore, we find the following photograph of a sign in front of the store and the cover of a book that is most likely sold in it:

Carley De Rosa sent in the following photograph taken at the Niujie (Ox Street) Mosque (Niújiē lǐbàisì; simplified 牛街礼拜寺, traditional 牛街禮拜寺) in Beijing: