There are two photographs of restaurants attached, both taken on Alder St.,  just off the University of Oregon campus. The first picture is of “Izakaya Jinsei” a new Japanese restaurant, the other is a more permanent Eugene staple, a Cantonese-Chinese restaurant named, “Spring House.” These restaurants and many other East Asian restaurants in Eugene have stylized scripts in their respective languages. The broad purpose of this strategy is to create allure and a sense of wonder around the cuisine of a foreign place, potentially attracting more customers to their doors. In addition, the writing is a calling card to the native speakers of the language and convey to them the familiar sights and tastes of home. In the context of our class, Spring House is a good example of dialects. Cantonese and Mandarin, while both parts of the Chinese language, are often referred to as dialects, however they aren’t really dialects at all. They are not mutually intelligible and therefore are classifiable as distinct languages. Izakaya Jinsei is a good example of a metaphor with a name roughly translating to “life restaurant” or “restaurant of life.” And while there are likely multiple interpretations, one is that food and dining are life. 

The last photo is from a poster in the Lillis Business complex. It is advertising the Chinese Flagship program to students. To the best of my knowledge, the Chinese script on the upper part of the poster translates to the English below. This is meant to have the poster be inclusive and introduce onlookers to what learning Chinese is like. This poster is a great illustration between the strictly logographic Chinese characters and the phonetic and alphabetic English characters.

I have always valued opportunities to see the greater connections of what I learn in class. The lecture that involved tea and the plant’s roots in South East Asia was a great way to visualize, how like tea, language has moved throughout the region. Conversely, there are concepts that haven’t been as concretely visualized. Agglutinative language in particular has been very hard to grasp and to supplement my lack of understanding I tend to watch videos on my own. However, in the future, especially on exams, I intend to go to office hours for more clarification. 

Best,

Callum Kuo