LINGUIST List 4.684

Thu 09 Sep 1993

Disc: Still more cross-cultural fun

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. "Roy H. Ogawa", fun
2. Paul Black, Fun- interesting word choic
3. "don l. f. nilsen", Re: 4.666 More fun: inappropriate English
4. , Re: 4.666 More fun: inappropriate English

You have to have been involved in American juvenile culture sometime
in the last 30 years, and to have a "dirty" mind to appreciate this.

Late one night as we were driving to LA from Las Vegas along a narrow
highway in the Mojave Desert, whisking our way through little towns,
we came upon an establishment with the sign:

 C-BAR-B
 LIQUOR

Hmmm! Well, enough said.

Roy H. Ogawa
Computer Science
Debra Occhi
Anthropology

 Fun: interesting word choices
A recent "fun" item on Linguist reminded me that here in Australia there is a
company
called Nobby's which markets a variety of nuts. Their widely used advertising
slogan
is 'Nibble Nobby's Nuts'.

Japan is famous for wierd English slogans on T-shirts and packaging. Much of it
may defy
explanation, but the slogan 'I Like City Wind' seen on shirts and bags seems to
involve a
mistranslation of the Japanese character for 'wind', which in the pronunciation
'fuu', at
least, is widely used to mean 'style' (e.g. wafuu 'Japanese style (food or
whatever)',
probably amerikafuu 'American style').

Paul Black <> Faculty of Education <> Northern Territory University <> Darwin,
Australia

Message 3: Re: 4.666 More fun: inappropriate English

 My wife and I used to teach at Kabul University in Afghanistan, and
the English signs were great. They would confuse comma and apostrophe
to get CHILDREN,S WORLD. They would write TAXI from right to left to
get IXAT. Above a florist shop there was a sign that read FLOWER
AND BUCKET MAKER. We can only assume that they had meant to write
BOUQUET instead of BUCKET. But our favorite was found on a barber
shop. It said simply, "BARBARISM."

{^_^}
Don L. F. Nilsen |\/\/\/||
<ATDFNASUACAD.BITNET>, (602) 965-7592 | |
Executive Secretary | |
International Society for Humor Studies | (o)(o)
English Department | _)
Arizona State University | ,____|
Tempe, AZ 85287-0302 | /
 |_____\
 | Anon \

Message 4: Re: 4.666 More fun: inappropriate English

There is indeed a German wine (of no distinction whatsoever) called
"Liebfraumilch", which, as the picture on most such labels indicates,
means 'Blessed Virgin's milk'. Sounds weird, until one remembers that
a certain wine made from grapes grown on the lower slopes of Vesuvius
is called "Lacrima Christi" -- 'Christ's tear'.

--Leo Connolly