{"id":1122,"date":"2013-07-24T14:36:38","date_gmt":"2013-07-24T13:36:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eurotalk.com\/blog\/?p=1122"},"modified":"2026-08-25T13:18:37","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T12:18:37","slug":"how-the-scripts-hit-the-streets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/en\/news\/how-the-scripts-hit-the-streets","title":{"rendered":"How the scripts hit the streets"},"content":{"rendered":"

I quite like the way that the iconography of \u00a0foreign languages and exotic scripts happily manages to pervade \u00a0our popular culture. It’s all over the place – it’s on the streets, we wear it , we eat it, we watch it and much of the time we have a laugh. And we have a bunch of rather clever advertisers and retail brands to thank for it.<\/p>\n

\"O2<\/a><\/p>\n

Shall we begin with a little Latin? If you’ve been watching\u00a0<\/b>O2’s hilarious ‘be more dog<\/a>‘ ads or sat at one of the 10,000,000 bus stops in London\u00a0you will now know that the timeless rallying cry\u00a0Carpe Diem<\/em>\u00a0has hit the streets. And, once you’ve had a hoot at the cat-that-turns-into-a-dog footage, you’ll have learnt that\u00a0Carpe Diem<\/em>\u00a0means\u2026 \u00a0‘Grab the Frisbee’. \u00a0I somehow think that Horace, who wrote the words c. 50 BC, would have agreed it was not too bad a translation for 2013 AD. I love the idea that some Latin is out there and available to all, a call to make the most of it, to\u00a0seize the day!<\/p>\n

So make a noise for\u00a0VCCP<\/a>, the agency who dreamt the whole campaign up; \u00a0as an ex\u00a0JWT<\/a>\u00a0exec myself , I am impressed.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Superdry\"<\/a><\/p>\n

And now to Japanese. How many of you think that the\u00a0Superdry<\/a>\u00a0clothing brand, with its cool hoodies, tops and t-shirts plastered with Kanji and Hiragana, comes from Japan? Sorry to disappoint, but Superdry has its origins not in an office in downtown Tokyo, but in a market stall in Cheltenham, where a guy called Julian Dunkerton began selling branded clothing and later had the idea to use Japanese script on his clothing. And the rest, as they say, is history – Julian is now the Chief Exec of one of the UK’s top clothing companies.<\/p>\n

It may be reassuring to know that although the company itself is no more Japanese than a benko box from Pret, I am told that the writing is not gobbledygook but does actually mean something: which I am sure is neither unprintable, nor deeply philosophical, but I rather like the idea of millions of people in London walking around with Japanese on their backs – and their fronts.<\/p>\n

Of course I am not attempting to connect any of this to a serious attempt to learn a language – though the thought of people queuing up to take degrees in Classics and Japanese is a most appealing one.<\/p>\n

However, \u00a0I’m sure that most of us have at least some interest in the world around us, and iconic branding and imagery can often excite our curiosity, make us think a bit and have us see the world in a slightly new and refreshing way.<\/p>\n

Steve<\/p>\n

(Photo courtesy of Superdry.com<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I quite like the way that the iconography of \u00a0foreign languages and exotic scripts happily manages to pervade \u00a0our popular…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[103,3],"tags":[279,280,281,124,52,227,101],"class_list":["post-1122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-learn-japanese","category-languagelearning","tag-advertising","tag-clothing","tag-fashion","tag-japanese","tag-languages","tag-latin","tag-tv"],"acf":[],"lang":"en","translations":{"en":1122},"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":103,"label":"Japanese"},{"value":3,"label":"Language Learning"}],"post_tag":[{"value":279,"label":"advertising"},{"value":280,"label":"clothing"},{"value":281,"label":"fashion"},{"value":124,"label":"Japanese"},{"value":52,"label":"languages"},{"value":227,"label":"Latin"},{"value":101,"label":"TV"}]},"featured_image_src_large":false,"author_info":{"display_name":"Richard Howeson","author_link":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/en\/news\/author\/richard"},"comment_info":0,"category_info":[{"term_id":103,"name":"Japanese","slug":"learn-japanese","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":103,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":18,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":103,"category_count":18,"category_description":"","cat_name":"Japanese","category_nicename":"learn-japanese","category_parent":0},{"term_id":3,"name":"Language Learning","slug":"languagelearning","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":3,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":254,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":3,"category_count":254,"category_description":"","cat_name":"Language Learning","category_nicename":"languagelearning","category_parent":0}],"tag_info":[{"term_id":279,"name":"advertising","slug":"advertising","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":279,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":2,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":280,"name":"clothing","slug":"clothing","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":280,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":1,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":281,"name":"fashion","slug":"fashion","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":281,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":1,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":124,"name":"Japanese","slug":"japanese","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":124,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":25,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":52,"name":"languages","slug":"languages","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":52,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":58,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":227,"name":"Latin","slug":"latin","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":227,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":4,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":101,"name":"TV","slug":"tv","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":101,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":3,"filter":"raw"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1122"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10629,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1122\/revisions\/10629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}