2025

In my fieldwork, I noticed variations in food names for certain dishes. For example, 叉烧包 (Mandarin pronunciation: chāshāobāo; Cantonese pronunciation: char siu bao; meaning: BBQ pork bun) is a common dish in many Cantonese dim sum restaurants in Hawaii. However, its name varies in the English versions of menus. Some restaurants refer to it as "bun", while others call it "manapua", a Hawaiian word meaning "pork bun". For BBQ pork, some English menus retain the Cantonese pronunciation "char siu" (Figure 2), while others use "BBQ pork" based on its meaning (Figure 1).  Lexical borrowings and language contact are also observed in other food names. For one type of Chinese sausage, 腊肠 (Mandarin pronunciation: làcháng; Cantonese pronunciation: lap6 cheong1), the English menu of a bakery uses the transliteration of the Cantonese pronunciation, rendering it as "Lup Chong" (Figure 2). Figure 1. Menu of One Dim Restaurant  Figure 2. Menu...