“English” on signs

I included some funny English signs in the post about the journey to Longquan; I saw a lot all in on the same day, mostly in the same place. But I saw and took photos of others in various other places. Rather than put them in posts about those places, I’ve collected the rest of the strange English signs here. Enjoy!

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To Longquan

For quite a while, I’ve been wanting to go to Longquan, a city of 252,000 people located about 4.5 hours southeast of Hangzhou in Zhejiang Province. Why Longquan? They’re famous for kilns that make Longquan celadon porcelain:

Longquan celadons were an important part of China’s export economy for over five hundred years, and were widely imitated in other countries, especially Korea and Japan. Their demise came after they were overtaken in their markets by blue and white porcelain from Jingdezhen. (Wikipedia)

I’ve seen celadon all over Asia (in shops and museums in Singapore, Japan, and Korea), and it’s pretty stuff. I wanted to see where it came from. So that was the first destination on our family road trip.

See below for 21 photos taken on the road to Longquan.

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Weird English

Signs, product packaging, clothing… sometimes I notice weird English here in Hangzhou. Sometimes the cause is a typo, sometimes it’s negligent copy/paste, and sometimes it appears to have been a complete shot in the dark. Sometimes the result is close-but-no-cigar, sometimes it’s hilarious, and sometimes it’s mystifying.

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Please push your bicycle across the underpass

This is a grammar post. I think the sign should say:

Please push your bicycle through the underpass.

I would use “through” because an underpass is basically a tunnel.

The light is in the tunnel, not at the end of the tunnel.

Not that prepositions necessarily make any sense, but in my experience, we say you go across things that you are on and we say you go through things you are in.

Thus, if the sign were talking about a bridge, then it could say:

Please push your bicycle across the bridge.

Bras Basah Complex: Art, Dance, Explore, Sports, Book

If you are looking to buy books in Singapore, this is a good place to go. It has several book shops selling new or used books. It also has print shops, art supply shops, stationery shops, and shops selling musical instruments and antiques.

Within the last couple of years, these colorful square signs were added to convey the complex’s status as a cultural hub of sorts.

Bras Basah Complex
* Art * Dance * Explore * Sport * Book

One of my pet peeves is lists of things that aren’t all the same part of speech. “Art, Dance, Explore, Sports, Book” is a fantastic example. See below for why.

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Soup Spoon Novena: Cutleries Station is now Cutlery Corner

Last June, I posted a photo of a sign that said “Cutleries Station”. They have improved the sign tremendously since then.

  • In particular, the non-word “cutleries” has been replaced with “cutlery”.
  • The sign has an icon showing cutlery, for additional clarity.
  • The sign is in better shape.
  • It uses cheesy alliteration (of which I am a fan).

I didn’t mention it before, but if you say “cutleries station” aloud, it runs together because of the “s” in the middle and sounds like “cutlery station”. Maybe the similarity in the pronunciation of the two phrases helps explain why the previous sign was written the way it was. The inaudibility of that double s also helps explain “Today Special“.