Language Log

« previous post |

Charles Belov saw this sign on Clement Street (aka New Chinatown) in San Francisco:

Charles noticed that there were some irregularities and inconsistencies in the character usage.  There are so many errors that I won't point out each of them one at a time. They waver between traditional and simplified to forms that are partially traditional and partially simplified (mostly traditional — you can compare the ones on the sign with the ones I've typed below; every line has at least one error).

Here's a sort of normalized version:

jīntiān gè kuǎn dà tèjià
今天各款大特價
"today's very special prices for each item"

————————————–
————————————–

yánjú huángmáo guìfēi jī
鹽焗*黃毛貴妃雞
"salt-baked free range imperial consort chicken"

cōngyóu huángmáo guìfēi jī
蔥油黃毛貴妃雞
"scallion oil free range imperial consort chicken"

chǐyóu huángmáo guìfēi jī
豉油黃毛貴妃雞
"soy sauce free range imperial consort chicken"

yùtou zhēng yā
芋頭蒸鴨
"steamed duck with taro"

lǔshuǐ yā
鹵水鸭
"braised duck"

lǔshuǐ zhūshǒu
鹵水豬手
"braised pork knuckle"

mìzhī chāshāo
蜜汁叉燒
honey-glazed barbecued pork

měi zhī
每隻
"each"

bàn zhī
半隻
"half"

yī hé
一盒
"container / box"

The person who wrote this sign was bold and audacious.  Even though he didn't know how to write many of the characters correctly, he just forged ahead and wrote some of them imperfectly.  His intention was to get his ideas across, even his writing wasn't perfect.  I admire his spirit.

*A special note on 焗

When I first saw this character, I did not recognize it, but somehow instinctively made some sort of sense out of it: "fire" > "cook" + "cramped; confined".

Most of the cognates and references for this glyph are in Cantonese, and it first appears (as 局) in an Old Cantonese dictionary.

(Wiktionary)

Not in the Kangxi dictionary, hence after 1716.

Selected readings

• "Chinese restaurant shorthand, part 6" (6/17/19) — plus many previous and subsequent posts dealing with this subject
• "General Tso's chikin" (6/11/13), especially in the comments
• "Writing: from complex symbols to abstract squiggles" (6/11/19)
• "蛋糕 written as 旦糕 and other similar 'misspellings'" (reddit, 4 yrs ago)
• "Steamed native" (5/30/14) — see the comments for "yellow hair chicken"
• "Burlesque Matinée at the Max Planck Gesellschaft" (12/4/08) — the sign illustrated above reminds me of the infamous "poem" (originally a sign in front of a place for the performance of a matinée burlesque) inappropriately reproduced on the cover of the German science magazine discussed in this post

[Thanks to Jing Hu]

October 15, 2025 @ 4:47 pm · Filed by Victor Mair under Language and food, Literacy, Signs, Writing

Permalink