Marketing Coca-Cola through the Olympics will lead to linguistic un-happiness

Here's a picture and commentary from my friend Patrick Tam.  Whenever I have traveled abroad, I have marveled at the linquistic mistakes in English by non-native English speakers, as phrases and words become “lost in translation.”  Patrick has found an example of a mislabeled language.

– photo Patrick Tam

For
a multinational company like Coca-Cola to commit such an elementary
mistake shows the unwillingness to research a simple thing like the
difference between “mandarin” and “Chinese.” The difference is like
“hear” and “listen”, “see” and “watch.” “Lighten up” is not to set
something on fire.

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The correct usage is, of course, “Chinese.”

All Chinese people who can read the same written language, irrespective of what dialect s/he speaks, understands what those four characters say.  OTOH, Mandarin is a spoken dialect.

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Until Coca-Cola make speaking cans, they would be correct. But till then, whomever Coca-Cola consulted on this should be fired.