Charaelerislie
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Francois Lang sent in this menu from YU Noodles Cafe in Rockville, MD:
Francois said that he was particularly interested in "the puzzling pseudo-English word in the top right corner, 'Charaelerislie'…" He wants to know what it means.
Although I was able to figure out what the owners of the cafe meant by "Charaelerislie" without looking at the corresponding Chinese text, checking the latter confirmed my suspicion: they meant "Characteristic".
tèsè
特色
"characteristic; (distinguishing) feature" — as in "socialism / math / physics / etc. with Chinese characteristics"
Well, we still have to ask precisely what they mean by designating a section of their menu as "Characteristic", especially since they only have one item under this category, namely, "Potato Tower" (not this, but this), which comes with your choice of four different kinds of sauces: Cheese, Spicy, Ketchup, Plum.
To be short and sweet about it, "Characteristic" here is something like "House Specialty". We have it, nobody else does, and it's good.
The idea of "tèsè 特色" ("characteristic") is akin to "tèchǎn 特產" ("specialty; special local product").
As for the misspelling on the menu, they thought they could get away with their fancy font and cover up any errors with it. Didn't work, did it?
As for "Cool Noodles", we usually translate "liáng miàn 凉面" as "cold noodles".
And, if you're wondering what "Foon" is in N9., it's most likely the same thing as "mǐfěn 米粉" ("rice-flour noodles") in N8.
Selected readings
- "The mind-numbing official-speak of the CCP" (8/29/17)
- "'Major political error'" (11/24/18)
Sven Sahle said,
May 13, 2021 @ 4:33 am
For the record: I saw the image on a rather small screen and spontaneously read "characteristic", guessing it means something like speciality.
What I cannot understand is how the error occured. The letter mismatches work with this particular font and they do not apear in the other text on the menu. The mismatches make sense optically, but this does not explain how someone would make this particular mistake based on a specific font when typing the text into a computer.
Victor Mair said,
May 13, 2021 @ 5:18 am
"What I cannot understand is how the error occur[r]ed."
From my first encounter with the menu, I thought that the miswriting occurred because it passed through a stage of handwriting, where it would be easy for a typist who didn't really know English visually to make the requisite, erroneous letter substitutions to arrive at the humdinger we have in the title of this post.
Sven Sahle said,
May 13, 2021 @ 5:40 am
I also thought about handwriting (both the writer and the reader may not be very familiar with roman letters and english language). But for me it did not explain why it only occured for that one word. The t and c seem intact in the dish names.
It might be possible if the typing consists in hitting keys on the keyboard and then comparing them visually with the original handwritten text, while using the final font for the headings. I originally dismissed this hypothesis as implausible, but may be this was premature on my side.
Victor Mair said,
May 13, 2021 @ 6:05 am
Your reasoning is worth consideration, but my supposition all along has been that the other parts of the menu are fairly routine and may have come more or less ready made, whereas the Potato Tower, conspicuously exposed up there at the top right, is truly their pièce de résistance, so they had to come up with a special word to categorize it. That may have involved enthusiastic discussions among those in the shop who knew some English and those who knew next to none, plus serious scribbling on a piece or pieces of paper. Having been deeply involved in Chinese restaurant lingo and handwriting for decades, it is easy for me to picture the excited wrangling that went on to arrive at the mot juste: "Characteristic"! — which then morphed into "Charaelerislie" at the fingers of the earnest, yet clueless, typist.
Ed M said,
May 13, 2021 @ 6:45 am
"Intestine Over Rice…" sound irresistible. The proctologist's special, perhaps.
François Lang said,
May 13, 2021 @ 7:42 am
@ Ed M
I've not had the Intestine Over Rice, but I *have* had the Intestine Noodles Soup, and it's wonderful, but then I enjoy eating most offal.
ycx said,
May 13, 2021 @ 7:59 am
"What I cannot understand is how the error occur[r]ed."
They dotted their I's, but didn't cross their T's
Gregory Kusnick said,
May 13, 2021 @ 9:39 am
Some sort of OCR error is my guess. Maybe when they started taking online orders they did a scan of an old paper menu to put up on their website. That could explain why the substitutions occur only in that fancy font.
cameron said,
May 13, 2021 @ 9:44 am
"Intestine over rice" shows that you can't win. Either your translation is totally off, or it's altogether too accurate.
I rather like "Cool Noodles". That could be seen not as an error but as a clever variant translation.
Philip Taylor said,
May 13, 2021 @ 10:57 am
"Intestine over rice" shows that you can't win. Either your translation is totally off, or it's altogether too accurate — that set me thinking about how carefully we try to hide the identity of certain things when they are to be eaten rather than dissected. In British English, for example, we have "tripe" (the first or second stomach of a ruminant, esp. of the ox, prepared as food; formerly including also the entrails of swine and fish), "sweetbreads" (the pancreas, or the thymus gland, of an animal, esp. as used for food …), "haggis" (a dish consisting of the heart, lungs, and liver of a sheep, calf, etc. (or sometimes of the tripe and chitterlings) …), and so on. But we don't seem squeamish about talking about (and eating) heart, liver, kidneys, brain, etc. I wonder why the first category are thought to require "polite" alternatives while the latter can be eaten and discussed as-is.
Daniel Barkalow said,
May 13, 2021 @ 4:13 pm
That's not quite how you spell "charcuterie" or what it means, but I could completely believe they'd seen a French restaurant menu and extrapolated if there wasn't a better explanation.
John Rohsenow said,
May 13, 2021 @ 9:18 pm
Back in 1979 when things were first (re-)opening up in China, I had the
honor of being a "visiting foreign expert" at (what was then called) Hangzhou University. English teachers were in VERY short supply (e.g. they had ordered all their Russian teachers to "retool" themselves overnight as English teachers, and many had English textbooks written in Russian).We had to have our 'teaching materials' sent to a typing pool where they were typed on stencils for an old fashioned mimeograph machine, and usually came back full of such creative spellings. When I discovered that none of the typists knew English (none were college grads or had even studied English at all (remember this was just after the Cultural Revolution), it was pointed out to me that "if they knew English, they wouldn't be typists", [you dummy]!
Claw said,
May 14, 2021 @ 11:51 am
I can imagine how this misspelling may have come about from a misreading of someone's handwriting. It could be that someone didn't cross their 't's, resulting them to be misread as 'l's, and may have added loops to their 'c's, resulting them to be misread as 'e's, leading to "Characteristic" looking like "Charaelerislie".
Batchman said,
May 14, 2021 @ 12:21 pm
"Intestine" could very well be "sausage", which would seem perfectly appetizing to most (but not all) English speakers. Of course, there's a reason lawmaking has been compared to sausage making and it's not a pleasant one.
Batchman said,
May 14, 2021 @ 12:26 pm
Also, I initially read the choice(s?) under "Choose One" as a single condiment/flavoring of "Cheese Spicy Ketchup Plum." (Such are the risks of omitting commas, as anyone familiar with "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" might attest.) Well, there's not a lot of choice in Eastern Bloc countries, so they say.
Jerry Friedman said,
May 14, 2021 @ 1:52 pm
cameron: "Intestine over rice" shows that you can't win. Either your translation is totally off, or it's altogether too accurate.
"Chitlins over rice." Or "chit'lin's", for pedants.
Philip Taylor:
In British English, for example, we have "tripe" (the first or second stomach of a ruminant, esp. of the ox, prepared as food; formerly including also the entrails of swine and fish), "sweetbreads" (the pancreas, or the thymus gland, of an animal, esp. as used for food …), "haggis" (a dish consisting of the heart, lungs, and liver of a sheep, calf, etc. (or sometimes of the tripe and chitterlings) …), and so on. But we don't seem squeamish about talking about (and eating) heart, liver, kidneys, brain, etc. I wonder why the first category are thought to require "polite" alternatives while the latter can be eaten and discussed as-is.
Based on my limited experience, I think the majority of Americans would refuse to eat liver, and the very large majority would refuse to eat heart, kidneys, or brain, unless they were very hungry. (Or unless those meats were ingredients in sausage.)
The "sweetbreads" euphemism may not have worked well. Some Americans believe it's the part that most obviously needs a euphemism, namely the testicles.
I'm not sure "tripe" originated as a euphemism. Lots of food words are from French, including the well-known examples of "beef", "pork", "mutton", and "veal". "Tripe" probably does qualify as a euphemism now.
maidhc said,
May 15, 2021 @ 2:31 am
Quite a few Mexican restaurants around here sell brain, aka sesos. The Americans that I go to Mexican restaurants with seem to be OK with ordering it. And menudo is a popular Mexican dish based on tripe.
Surely liver and onions is a classic American diner dish.
Many Chinese restaurants around here have pork intestine on the menu. I don't think they care too much whether Americans would order it or not. I've never seen any attempt to call it anything else.
Kate Bunting said,
May 15, 2021 @ 8:18 am
I was puzzled by "Minced pork over rice with poached egg – plus minced pork".
amy said,
May 16, 2021 @ 7:14 pm
The confusion via handwriting reminded me of this old article: https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=4648
I mentally autocorrected "Foon" to "Freon" at first reading, and then to a slightly more suitable "Food".