OLD-WORDS-L Archives

From: Sue <>
Subject: Another Linguistic Amusement
Date: Mon, 08 Mar 1999 08:42:26 -0600

The name Coca-Cola in China was first rendered as Ke-kou-ke-la.
Unfortunately, the Coke company did not discover until after
thousands of signs had been printed that the phrase means "bite
the wax tadpole" or "female horse stuffed with wax" depending on
the dialect. Coke then researched 40,000 Chinese characters and
found a close phonetic equivalent, ko-kou-ko-le, which can be
loosely translated as "happiness in the mouth"
______

Well they say, Things go better with Coca-cola...I guess in
China, it makes you happy...

Sue

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• Another Linguistic Amusement by Sue <>