Eco Coke and No Smorking

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While we're at it, here are two more contributions from Nathan Hopson in Japan:


The Coca-Cola vending machine is interesting for the ad-speak neologism "ecoる," adding the verb ending to "eco" as in "ecology" to mean "to be environmentally friendly".

This reminds me of how the English verb ending -ing has been taken up in Mandarin: "Once more on the present continuative ending -ing in Chinese" (3/21/14; with links to other posts on this subject).

Parenthetically, I should note that Japanese vending machine culture is unlike that in any other country I know of. First of all, vending machines seem to be everywhere, and they are often lined up in large numbers, plus they sell all sorts of things that you'd never expect to find in a vending machine in North America.

Furthermore, despite their ubiquity, I've never seen any vandalism of vending machines in Japan. I'm sure that Language Log readers have lots of anecdotes about their close encounters with vending machines in Japan.

The "smorking" probably doesn't require explanation, except that… it's a real word! And there are plenty of images to go along with it.

I had thought that "smork" was a purely fortuitous error, and was even going to compare it to David Moser's "splorg", which I thought was invented for the first time by him. But it turns out that "splorg" (quite apart from the Seattle Public Library!) is also very much in circulation, and "splorg" too has images to go along with it.

Finally, since I just mentioned the -ing ending in Mandarin, it's curious how the -ing of "smorking" on this sign is separated off to the right by itself a bit.

Since Nathan is now living in Japan and always has his trusty smartphone at hand, I'm sure that he'll be sending in more delights from the Land of the Rising Sun during the months to come.



23 Comments

  1. Akito said,

    August 5, 2014 @ 12:24 pm

    > it's curious how the -ing of "smorking" on this sign is separated off to the right by itself a bit.

    A monospace font, I think.

  2. marisa said,

    August 5, 2014 @ 1:32 pm

    Taken some time ago in Tokyo; it still makes me laugh:

    https://www.flickr.com/photos/fivealive/8275793/in/set-334416/

  3. Victor Mair said,

    August 5, 2014 @ 1:41 pm

    @marisa

    Many thanks!

    NO SMORKING IN THE BED PLEASE!

    Definitely not a one-off.

  4. Frank L Chance said,

    August 5, 2014 @ 1:58 pm

    Note also that ecoる is a homonym of エコール equal(s), making this Coke equally attractive to all.

  5. Tim Martin said,

    August 5, 2014 @ 3:38 pm

    Eh… not so much, Frank. Equals is イコール in Japanese. Even given your pronunciation, エコール and エコル are not homonyms.

    "I'm sure that Language Log readers have lots of anecdotes about their close encounters with vending machines in Japan."

    I was in an out-of-the-way town of 60,000, just outside some random electronics store or something similar. There was a vending machine with 9 slots, arranged in a 3×3 grid. The slots all around the outside of the grid contained women's underwear. The middle slot… contained Pringles.

  6. Rubrick said,

    August 5, 2014 @ 4:10 pm

    @Tim Martin:

    I dearly hope you got a picture of that.

  7. David Morris said,

    August 5, 2014 @ 5:52 pm

    It is very hard to match up the definitions in the Urban Dictionary (the first link under 'it's a real word!') and the images under 'plenty of images'.

  8. MaryKaye said,

    August 5, 2014 @ 7:10 pm

    I was nonplussed to buy a can of tea from a vending machine in Kyoto and get a can of HOT tea. After the fact I finally understood what the red and blue borders on different items meant. But I still don't understand what one is supposed to do with an aluminum can of hot tea! Difficult to handle, never mind open or drink….

    We were also puzzled that there were vending machines everywhere but people did not eat or drink in public much. Do you buy a can of hot tea and carry it back to your office?

  9. Matt said,

    August 5, 2014 @ 7:28 pm

    I bet the extra R in "smorking" comes down to a misunderstanding of why there's a long vowel in the katakana pronunciation of "smoke", /sumooku/.

    /fooku/ = "fork"
    /kooku/ = "cork"
    /sumooku/ = ?
    (English words tend to be katakanafied in non-rhotic form, for Americans who were wondering.)

    But I still don't understand what one is supposed to do with an aluminum can of hot tea! Difficult to handle, never mind open or drink…

    In all seriousness, a lot of people use those to warm their hands. (Cold cans are usually applied to the face.)

    Incidentally, the ecoる on the Coke machine may not just be empty puffery. Since the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami vending machine operators have been paying more attention to energy efficiency, since they came in for a lot of criticism during the rolling blackouts. ("I can't even run an electric fan, but in the next town over a vending machine is lit up bright as day serving drinks as cold as cryogenic fluids?") Nowadays the "hot" and "cold" drinks in most machines are both closer to the "lukewarm" point than they used to be, and many new machines boast of being powered by renewable energy etc.

  10. Louis Patterson said,

    August 5, 2014 @ 8:17 pm

    Always loved the swung dashes in the HO~T and CO~LD labels, though.

    https://www.google.com.au/search?q=つめた〜い&tbm=isch

  11. Zizoz said,

    August 5, 2014 @ 9:07 pm

    Tim Martin: Interesting. Here in America, I don't think I've ever seen Pringles in a vending machine. :P

  12. Russell said,

    August 5, 2014 @ 10:19 pm

    @MaryKaye, you can, or you can drink it right there. Often you'll find small recycling receptacles near vending machines. Well, at least near where I have been.

  13. Tim Martin said,

    August 6, 2014 @ 6:15 am

    Rubrick: Well, the funny thing is that I was on a photo scavenger hunt at the time, so my team and I *did* take a picture of it. Using film. I don't think I have my copy anymore, although I should ask some of my friends (the other competitors) if they have theirs. Just for posterity's sake.

  14. Brian said,

    August 6, 2014 @ 7:11 am

    I recall eco friendly soft drink dispensing machines from a half-century ago. (Tempus fugit!) For a dime one could get a cold fizzy cola or other flavor in a paper cup – in the NYC subway of all places.

  15. Victor Mair said,

    August 6, 2014 @ 9:12 am

    From Cecilia Segawa Seigle:

    This is a very good example of the Japanese habit of making a verb out of anything. One example that had existed for ages is "さぼる” (sabo-ru) which, I think, came from "sabotage," and usually refers to playing hooky from school or work.

  16. Victor Mair said,

    August 6, 2014 @ 9:27 am

    @Akito

    "A monospace font, I think."

    I thought so too, until I actually measured the spaces for each letter, and found that "I", which is obviously the thinnest letter, is actually allotted a lot more space than any other letter, nearly twice as much.

  17. J. W. Brewer said,

    August 6, 2014 @ 10:29 am

    40-odd years ago soda vending machines in Tokyo were indigenized such that "kokakora" and "fanta" (maybe also "suparaitu"?) were among the first words I learned to read in katakana. I can't be sure if the machines also had Latin-scripted/romaji/English stuff on them, but I remember being sufficiently focused on decoding the katakana that it seems likely that at least sometimes the katakana was all you had to go by (although e.g. the white lettering on red background on the kokakora can was a helpful cue . . .).

  18. Akito said,

    August 6, 2014 @ 11:30 am

    "I", which is obviously the thinnest letter, is actually allotted a lot more space than any other letter, nearly twice as much.

    I enlarged the picture and measured the lengths of two sets of three consecutive letters, one containing "I" in the middle and the other not containing it. They come to be about the same.

    Spacing is a tricky thing. Recently, the Kobe City Transport Bureau renovated the subway stations' electric signage system with announcements in four languages–Japanese, Chinese (simplified), Korean, and English–to cater to passenger needs. But they put a full-width space between words in the English announcements running across. Not only does it look odd, you get impatient for the next word to appear. Must be very difficult to get this kind of thing straight if you don't speak that language.

  19. Akito said,

    August 6, 2014 @ 11:43 am

    This is a very good example of the Japanese habit of making a verb out of anything.

    Few people now find it strange to hear guguru and gugutte miru for "googling".

  20. Akito said,

    August 6, 2014 @ 12:13 pm

    Japanese vending machine culture is unlike that in any other country I know of.

    Didn't this all begin with the Automats in the U.S.? We import prototypes and improve on them, of course!

  21. EricF said,

    August 7, 2014 @ 4:55 pm

    I just eyeballed the center of each letter and it looks pretty "mono" to me (center of K is off slightly to the left, on further examination). Will the embedded image show up here, I used an html img tag?

  22. EricF said,

    August 7, 2014 @ 4:56 pm

    Nope, didn't work: http://not2fast.com/images/smorking.png

  23. Victor Mair said,

    August 7, 2014 @ 5:16 pm

    Good work, EricF. You've convinced me.

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