Language policy in packaging

Harold F. Schiffman haroldfs at ccat.sas.upenn.edu
Mon Jul 3 15:11:47 UTC 2006


I have a question:  recently while exiting a Home Depot store in my
neighborhood, I encountered a bunch of large boxes containing some kind of
appliance, with a description of the product in both English and another
language that I can't identify.  Since packaging in the US usually comes
with English and Spanish, or sometimes English and French, I am wondering
what language this is:

The English text said "easy to assemble" and the other language was "facil
reune" except that there was a grave accent on the [`a] in facil, and a
grave accent on the final [`e], i.e. "f`acil reun`e" (or in html coding
"fàcil reunè').

This doesn't look to me like Spanish, since in googling for fàcil
reunè I found facil with an *acute* accent [a']in many documents;
some of the documents that come up are in Spanish and some in Portuguese,
but none of them have the accents I describe here.  (In other words when I
google for fàcil reunè I get documents with "Facil and reune"
but not with the accentuation I am describing.)

Since language policy in packaging and product labeling in the US is
(unofficially, of course) mostly in English and Spanish (and sometimes
French), I can't understand which Romance language this is supposed to be,
or why someone would put this on the product if it's not "correct".

Can anyone enlighten me?

Thanks,

Hal Schiffman



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