If you click on the picture below, you will be able to view a more detailed image of the chopsticks I used to eat my dinner this evening.

Doing so, you will immediately notice the odd misspellings and strange grammar used on the chopstick wrapper (see below for a complete transcription- errors in red).

I point this out not because I want to poke fun at the Chinese- but, instead, because the mistakes are so strange and so unlike anything I've ever encountered before that they almost seem intentional.

I am, I must point out, no student of Asian languages, but I would argue that the writing on this chopstick wrapper has been intentionally altered to give the appearance of authenticity.

Has that been done before? Attempting to imply authenticity through intentional misspellings and grammatical mistakes?

Well- toy companies do it all the time. For example, the backwards 'R' in the Toys-R-Us logo is intended to imply the writing of a child.



Still - this seems like strange place for such sophisticated marketing techniques.



Side 1:
Welcome to Chinese Restaurant.
Please try your Nice Chinese Food With Chopsticks
the traditional and typical of Chinese glonous history
and cultual.

Side 2:
Learn how to use your chopsticks

Tuk under tnurb
and help firmly

Add second chcostick
hold if as you hold
a pencil

Hold tirst chopstick
in original position
move the second
on up and down
Now you can pick
up anything:

Last week I came across a National Geographic Channel show called "ALASKA'S BERMUDA TRIANGLE".

Not only does the name not make any sense (Bermuda is almost 4,000 miles from Alaska) but the damn thing isn't even a triangle...