Language Log

A friend showed me a photograph of a Dutch chinoiserie tile panel from the late 17th-early 18th century, and asked me to help her identify some of the curious scenes represented on it. My eye, however, was immediately drawn to the cartouche in the upper left corner.

On first glance, the characters seem to be completely fake (made up). Even after straining my eyes and enlarging the panel, I couldn't recognize a single character.

Since I had gotten hooked on this inscription, I obtained a high resolution photograph showing only that part of the tile panel. Now the "characters" were clearer, and I thought to myself, "My, they look a bit like Jurchen script":

It's been a while since I've posted on Chinglish. In truth, I have an enormous backlog of precious items, some stretching back for years, but I just haven't been able to get to them because I've been trying to concentrate on more substantial topics lately. Today's example, however, is so amazing that I feel inspired to address it immediately.

Consider the photograph on the right, showing a notice on the door of a hotel room's shower stall.

What in the world is going on here? One big Chinese character and all those Roman letters beneath it:

拉

Latin
America

Tom Scocca, in Slate magazine, is full of scorn for the language of the New York Times. It is not always easy to discern his meaning (he uses a metaphor of lard in pie crusts, which I didn't quite follow), but he seems to think the Times is desperately concerned to "preserve its sacred function (or the appearance of its sacred function) of neutrally and modestly recording events, not judging them" — it struggles so hard to be neutral that it becomes vapid. He is incensed that the phrase "showed just how broadly" in the print edition was replaced in a later online edition by "raised new questions about how broadly", in this passage about the reported deaths of Gaddafi's son and grandsons in Tripoli:

And while the deaths could not be independently verified, the campaign against Libya’s most densely populated areas raised new questions about how broadly NATO is interpreting its United Nations mandate to protect civilians.

Scocca's bitterly scornful remark about the language involved is this:

There: in the disembodied implied passive, questions were raised. About the interpretation of the mandate. And just like that, we have bounced gently away from the bomb crater to a discussion about the understanding of a policy.

The disembodied implied passive? What is this, exactly?

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.]