I've posted before about the funny, butchered English one finds on Chinese signs and advertisements. It seems to me that real-estate signs are the worst. It's as though some one, very bad advertising copywriter had a monopoly on signs for new developments. These first two are from a new high-rise going up on Zhongshan Lu, in a very fashionable area.
This one is just of Zhongshan Lu, right across from Xinghai Park. Another very expensive area.
I suspect you can tell a lot about the Chinese language by the characteristic mistakes Chinese people make when they attempt English. I've seen many very nice-looking buildings referred to as "treasure apartments," so I'm guessing that must be the standard phrase in Chinese for a luxury apartment.
Yeah, it's called "Engrish", and there are whole blogs devoted to it:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.engrish.com/
http://engrishfunny.com/
Engrish.com is one of my favorites. By the way, "Engrish" more specifically refers to Japanese botched English. Chinese people mostly don't have trouble with the "l" sound, so "Engrish" isn't really the right term.
ReplyDeleteEastern San Jose? Is this a reference to California? According to Wikipedia, "East San Jose's residents are predominantly Mexican American, Vietnamese, Filipino, Cambodians, and Samoans, respectively in order of size. A neighborhood around Alum Rock and King has a small pocket of immigrants from Portugal (but primarily the Azore Islands) This section of East San Jose includes a plaza known as Little Portugal. Included in the area are Portuguese sausage shops, markets of all kind and the area stalwart, Five Wounds Church."
ReplyDeleteDoesn't sound like a place you'd expect luxury apartments.