English Brand Names in Indonesian Culinary Businesses: Orthographic Errors and Creative Adaptations
Keywords:
Orthographic errors, Error Analysis, Brand Names, Culinary Businesses, Pekanbaru, Substance-level Errors.Abstract
This study investigates orthographic errors found in English brand names used by culinary businesses in Pekanbaru, Indonesia, based on Carl James’s (1998) Error Analysis framework. Using a descriptive qualitative approach, thirty brand names were collected through observation and documentation in major commercial areas of Pekanbaru. The findings reveal that all deviations occur at the substance level, involving surface mechanical aspects of writing. Misspelling is the most dominant type (16 cases), followed by dyslexic errors (5 cases), punctuation errors (4 cases), confusable errors (3 cases), typographic errors (2 cases), and hybrid errors (2 cases). These deviations are primarily caused by interlingual interference from Indonesian orthography and intralingual misencoding within English spelling rules. The results also indicate that some deviations, while linguistically inaccurate, may function as branding strategies to enhance visual appeal or memorability. This study contributes to applied linguistics by extending Error Analysis to entrepreneurial contexts and provides practical recommendations for improving linguistic accuracy in brand naming among MSME culinary sectors in Pekanbaru.
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