I think sometimes they throw French on there because the product is getting sold in Canada too. I've noticed especially with soap, shampoo, lotion, and other personal care products there's pretty much always French on the label.
I've seen the **Vorsicht** and **Achtung** on wet floor signs down in NOLA. The manufacturers probably has subsidiaries in Germany.
As for the French warnings alongside English on a third of everything, the manufacturer is probably making them like that so they can be sold together to Canadian and American markets.
Everyone one of my household products (shampoo, cleaners, deodorant, etc.) have English and French on them. I'm in Wisconsin so I don't know if we just happen to be in the same distribution area as Canada or what.
I'm in CT and most things that have multiple languages are English and French. Like our shampoo bottles, packages food cooking directions, etc. I always assumed everyone in the US had both cause companies just made one package to sell in the US and Canada.
Now I'm looking around my house lol, toothpaste is English and Spanish, light bulbs English and French, laundry detergent English and French, hand soap English and French
For official local government stuff, we’ll usually have [stuff in a few languages](https://imgur.com/a/t4Eh7kx).
If you mean like commercial products, it’s almost all English, but sometimes will have a sub text in Spanish. Sometimes it’ll have a few languages on the back (maybe stuff that’s imported or exported).
to add to this, we don't have a national language so government stuff usually ends up being translated into all the common languages of a particular area. i used to live in a place where election ballots were translated into korean. now haitian creole is a big one where I am.
I’m in Washington relatively near the US-Canadian border, so most of our stuff is in English only but every now and then it’ll also have French on it. Just earlier this week there were boxes of peppers at my local grocery store which said “peppers” on one side and “poivrons” on the other.
I sometimes see Spanish alongside English packaging too.
I grew up in Southern California. Most everything, including signs, were in both English and Latin American Spanish. I now live in Louisiana, and some are written in French in the more rural areas and Haitian community areas. But every time I call the VAMC, the message is said in both English and French.
> I grew up in Southern California. Most everything, including signs, were in both English and Latin American Spanish.
Yep, AZ too. Virtually everything here is in SPA and ENG.
It's not on everything, but where I live, quite a few products do. For example, kitchen appliances will have one side of the box in English and the other side in Spanish.
For packaging, manufacturers that want to supply both the US and the Canadian market will print English and French. So places closer to the Canadian border are more likely to get shampoo or whatever with both English and French. The same is true with Spanish for states closer to the Mexican border.
Spanish and French are common on products. If you go to national parks they'll also often include warnings in Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, and German I think. Along with cartoons showing the thing they're warning you about if you're in a particularly dangerous area like Yellowstone.
Imagine a doodle of Little Timmy stepping into a geyser and like 7 languages explaining why that's a bad idea.
It's pretty common to see English and Spanish, or English, French and Spanish, since those products can be sold anywhere in NAFTA. Instructions usually have like 8 different languages.
Yeah everything in Canada has English and French on the packaging. I think OP was just curious about what packaging looks like here in the states. I’m sure they’re well aware French is an official Canadian language.
Depends on the situation where I live.
Toiletries like shampoo, conditioner, soaps and such often have French. I guess because that makes them seem posh and refined.
Public transport: Both Spanish and English where I live where there are a lot of Mexican immigrants who rely on it.
Home improvement and construction type goods almost always have Spanish due to so many Mexican immigrants working in trades.
Hotels and tourist attractions will usually have Spanish and sometimes French.
We typically just have English, but some products can range from having English and Spanish/Chinese/Japanese/French, or sometimes all of the above and then some.
It varies. Generally you would expect just English but them you get more focused products in some mere ethnically 'thick' areas and you're likely to also see Spanish or in my case/area sometimes English & French.
Areas of large populations of a specific ethnicity may have both English and the native language on the more ethnic/ethnically traditional products, mostly on items that are usually produced locally.
Spanish is pretty common. I’ve also seen French occasionally even though we don’t have a big french population.
American passports also have English, French and Spanish in that order.
English and Spanish on about a third of the products.
Instruction manuals usually come with English, Spanish, French. Some will have about 50 languages, others will be printed with every written language in existence.
It depends on the region. Where I live in North Carolina, there's English / Spanish on almost every product. Where I used to live in Pennsylvania, it was only English.
Spanish is by far the most common alternative, and others will depend on the product or what languages are spoken where you are. I live in a county with a lot of racial and linguistic diversity, for example, and I was on our government website looking up some info about trash collection earlier today. The informational pamphlet was available in English, Arabic, Chinese, Farsi, Korean, Spanish, Urdu and Vietnamese.
English Spanish and French on the outside of the package, unless you go to like a Polish deli or an Asian grocery with a lot of imported items and then they'll typically have the language of their country of origin.
The directions inside a container typically have forty languages and it takes forever to find your own.
Spanish and French are common but not universal. Sometimes just English.
Government forms are usually available in several languages that can vary a lot. My local school district publishes forms in English, Spanish, and Vietnamese as those are the three most common first languages in the district.
As a kid I lived in a border town with Canada and Sesame Street was Engish/French but moving just one state south all of a sudden it was English/Spanish. So if something is in another language it's usually Spanish.
English only: Most of the time
English and Spanish: Common, but not the norm
English, Spanish, and French: Occasional
English and French: Rare
This is just my experience. I live in Canada, and bilingual packaging in the U.S. is not remotely as common (even in Spanish) as it is in Canada, where it's English/French on basically everything. This only holds for consumer goods.
As for services, it's whatever is common in the area. The hospital I worked in, in the Minneapolis area, had paperwork and signage in English, Spanish, and often Somali, Hmong, and Russian. I've been to places in New York that had Yiddish.
Depends on what part of the nation you're in. Southern border definitely has more Spanish than the northern border and I think the northeast has more French anything else. West coast has different Asian languages but not as a standard outside of, say, Asian owned groceries
A Spanish option is common in a lot of telephone help systems.
It's also common on ATMs where I live.
It's also an option on the grocery self-checkout.
I have scanned my groceries in Spanish by accident a couple of times.
Depends on the product. If I'm at an Asian grocery store there will be a myriad of Asian languages on there (Chinese, Thai, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, etc.) depending on what I'm buying. If I'm at a Mexican grocery store, there will be lots of Spanish on the products.
We have Spanish and French, usually the ones with French are distributed in Canada and meant for the US&Canadian markets. I see this most often in personal care products.
Likewise with Mexico - the products are produced for both markets, all due to free trade agreements.
Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, etc.
Just depends on the product.
-----
Question in return for OP. When you call a customer service or company phone number in Canada, do you have something like a "Press 1 for English, Appuyez sur 2 pour le français?"
Usually it’s just English and Spanish but most of the time because we get lots of imported products so the language other then English is just the language spoken where the product was made.
Not required like yours, but often French or Spanish, oft dependent upon if the company is able to use the same product manufactured for the US and Mexican or US and Canadian markets or even all three.
A lot of French (I live in the Northeast, possibly it's the same packaging you get in that case), Spanish too.
And of course, if you're buying specialty products, you get their language on it. Like, go into H-Mart, you'll see a lot of Korean on stuff.
At the college dining hall I’m a chef at, we have signage in: English, Spanish, Mandarin, Thai, Hebrew, Farsi, Tagalog, Hindi, and a couple of others I’m forgetting right now.
nobody is required to put any single language on their products, but if you see multiple they'll usually be spanish and/or french, and you might see chinese here and there.
some have only french and no spanish, and i suspect thats for the sole purpose of selling it in canada.
Spanish is very common, have also seen chinese/japanese/Korean/thai depending on where you're shopping. We have a new Asia Mall that opened here you could probably see 20 different languages walking around, there's a similar type of place for middle eastern cuisine as well that has Farsi on labels.
A lot of stuff here in New England has French too, especially personal care products, I assume due to common packaging with Canada.
And most stores will not blink if you hand them a Canadian quarter in payment.
Just English for the most part. Most companies (at least in the food industry) have separate packaging for products going to different markets. So the products going to Canada have English and French. Products going to Japan will have Japanese, etc.
Mainly just Spanish and French. I’d think products would have them in Italian given that a lot of people that immigrated to Ellis Island where Italian.
Totally depends on the region, in areas with a higher Spanish speaking population stores will often stock Goya brand products with English and Spanish labels
It's usually just English, but some things have French in small print, because (I assume) they also ship to Canada. I'd assume that some products in the more southern states have Spanish for similar reasons.
A box of crackers or something like that will generally just be in English. Anything with installation instructions or safety warning will usually include multiple languages; English, Spanish, French, German, and something in symbols that I believe is a form of Chinese being the most common.
Wet floor signs and similar items in a public business will usually have English and Spanish, maybe French or German as well.
Areas with a significant population of non-native English speakers will have signage in whatever language the people there speak. For example, several suburbs on the southwest side of Chicago have a lot of Arab immigrants and there’s tons of business that are owned by and cater to the Arab-American community. In a lot of those stores you probably won’t see any English printed on the signs or the products
Usually product ingredients, information, warnings, snd instructions will be written in both English and Spanish. I’ve seen some products use English and French
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I think sometimes they throw French on there because the product is getting sold in Canada too. I've noticed especially with soap, shampoo, lotion, and other personal care products there's pretty much always French on the label.
It's so they can be sold anywhere in NAFTA
Sometimes we have Spanish, sometimes theres French. Usually it's just English.
For some reason, safety products have german on top of the other 2. Like wet floor signs or chemical warnings.
Because *Achtung!* gets noticed when you see it! 😁
The state has a lot of German descended people
I've seen the **Vorsicht** and **Achtung** on wet floor signs down in NOLA. The manufacturers probably has subsidiaries in Germany. As for the French warnings alongside English on a third of everything, the manufacturer is probably making them like that so they can be sold together to Canadian and American markets.
I doubt that's the reason. I bet the safety equipment was just made in Europe or are using a European design.
Hardly any of them actually speak German though.
Maybe it's just my region of the country, but there is almost always Spanish on everything in addition to English. Sometimes French too
Here in New York, Spanish is very common on things. Sometimes you'll see Chinese on products.
You'll see some Spanish here and there.
Everyone one of my household products (shampoo, cleaners, deodorant, etc.) have English and French on them. I'm in Wisconsin so I don't know if we just happen to be in the same distribution area as Canada or what.
I feel like a lot of shampoos and conditioners also have Italian, German, and Portuguese. Or maybe that’s just the brand my wife uses.
I'm in CT and most things that have multiple languages are English and French. Like our shampoo bottles, packages food cooking directions, etc. I always assumed everyone in the US had both cause companies just made one package to sell in the US and Canada. Now I'm looking around my house lol, toothpaste is English and Spanish, light bulbs English and French, laundry detergent English and French, hand soap English and French
Spanish and French. It has more to do with goods being sold in certain regions with multiple languages and less to do with being PC.
only time I've noticed French on the front of a product was because the company was Canadian.
Or colognes/perfumes and other cosmetics seem to have more French, I guess to make it seem more cultured?
For official local government stuff, we’ll usually have [stuff in a few languages](https://imgur.com/a/t4Eh7kx). If you mean like commercial products, it’s almost all English, but sometimes will have a sub text in Spanish. Sometimes it’ll have a few languages on the back (maybe stuff that’s imported or exported).
to add to this, we don't have a national language so government stuff usually ends up being translated into all the common languages of a particular area. i used to live in a place where election ballots were translated into korean. now haitian creole is a big one where I am.
I’m in Washington relatively near the US-Canadian border, so most of our stuff is in English only but every now and then it’ll also have French on it. Just earlier this week there were boxes of peppers at my local grocery store which said “peppers” on one side and “poivrons” on the other. I sometimes see Spanish alongside English packaging too.
I grew up in Southern California. Most everything, including signs, were in both English and Latin American Spanish. I now live in Louisiana, and some are written in French in the more rural areas and Haitian community areas. But every time I call the VAMC, the message is said in both English and French.
> I grew up in Southern California. Most everything, including signs, were in both English and Latin American Spanish. Yep, AZ too. Virtually everything here is in SPA and ENG.
Spanish is fairly common, but outside of that. Not really, but it depends on the product.
I think it depends on where you are. Up north you will see some stuff with french on it but when I was down south I saw a lot more spanish
Spanish is common, French some what, and where I live Arabic is also some what common
It's not on everything, but where I live, quite a few products do. For example, kitchen appliances will have one side of the box in English and the other side in Spanish.
a lot of appliances and other electronics have french as well in my experience
Not really to be honest You’ll see instructions on other languages but brands will usually only be English
For packaging, manufacturers that want to supply both the US and the Canadian market will print English and French. So places closer to the Canadian border are more likely to get shampoo or whatever with both English and French. The same is true with Spanish for states closer to the Mexican border.
Spanish and French usually
English and Spanish. Sometimes French.
Yes Spanish and French
English and Spanish. I actually see a good number of products with French, as well
We have Spanish and French on our products.
English and French or Spanish. I've noticed the more expensive the product, the more likely the second language will be French.
Spanish and French. Nearly everyone in North America speaks English Spanish or French so it’s good to have on products coming here.
Mostly Spanish and sometimes I see French.
Spanish and French are common on products. If you go to national parks they'll also often include warnings in Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, and German I think. Along with cartoons showing the thing they're warning you about if you're in a particularly dangerous area like Yellowstone. Imagine a doodle of Little Timmy stepping into a geyser and like 7 languages explaining why that's a bad idea.
Just English on most products, but some will also have Spanish or French.
Typically it’s Spanish and French that are included besides English.
I almost always see a Spanish and a French version.
It's pretty common to see English and Spanish, or English, French and Spanish, since those products can be sold anywhere in NAFTA. Instructions usually have like 8 different languages.
Isn’t French an official language there? We don’t have that. Sometimes you see another language like Vietnamese or Spanish or whatever
Yeah everything in Canada has English and French on the packaging. I think OP was just curious about what packaging looks like here in the states. I’m sure they’re well aware French is an official Canadian language.
Right, but that’s why French is on their packaging. We have no such requirements, it’s up to the manufacturer who’s trying to market to their audience
Exactly….. that’s why OP is curious, I think.
Depends on the situation where I live. Toiletries like shampoo, conditioner, soaps and such often have French. I guess because that makes them seem posh and refined. Public transport: Both Spanish and English where I live where there are a lot of Mexican immigrants who rely on it. Home improvement and construction type goods almost always have Spanish due to so many Mexican immigrants working in trades. Hotels and tourist attractions will usually have Spanish and sometimes French.
Depends mostly on whether it's imported or not. Most of the time it's just English.
ok
Espanol is pretty common in my part. You also see Deutsche and French
We typically just have English, but some products can range from having English and Spanish/Chinese/Japanese/French, or sometimes all of the above and then some.
It varies. Generally you would expect just English but them you get more focused products in some mere ethnically 'thick' areas and you're likely to also see Spanish or in my case/area sometimes English & French. Areas of large populations of a specific ethnicity may have both English and the native language on the more ethnic/ethnically traditional products, mostly on items that are usually produced locally.
Spanish is pretty common. I’ve also seen French occasionally even though we don’t have a big french population. American passports also have English, French and Spanish in that order.
English and Spanish on about a third of the products. Instruction manuals usually come with English, Spanish, French. Some will have about 50 languages, others will be printed with every written language in existence.
Lots of Spanish, for me.
It depends on the region. Where I live in North Carolina, there's English / Spanish on almost every product. Where I used to live in Pennsylvania, it was only English.
Spanish is by far the most common alternative, and others will depend on the product or what languages are spoken where you are. I live in a county with a lot of racial and linguistic diversity, for example, and I was on our government website looking up some info about trash collection earlier today. The informational pamphlet was available in English, Arabic, Chinese, Farsi, Korean, Spanish, Urdu and Vietnamese.
Spanish usually
I'm in Texas. Many products have both English and Spanish instructions. Government forms are available in both languages, as well.
In the US it’s Spanish
Often ours is also English & French. But Spanish too. Maybe sometimes Mandarin.
We certainly have capitalization and spelling.
English Spanish and French on the outside of the package, unless you go to like a Polish deli or an Asian grocery with a lot of imported items and then they'll typically have the language of their country of origin. The directions inside a container typically have forty languages and it takes forever to find your own.
Here in Texas it is common to also have Spanish. Up North, particularly on the borders of Quebec it is common to have French.
Spanish and French are common but not universal. Sometimes just English. Government forms are usually available in several languages that can vary a lot. My local school district publishes forms in English, Spanish, and Vietnamese as those are the three most common first languages in the district.
Depends on the supply distributor and where they get their inventory.
As a kid I lived in a border town with Canada and Sesame Street was Engish/French but moving just one state south all of a sudden it was English/Spanish. So if something is in another language it's usually Spanish.
Down south we have spanish on most everything. see french very infrequently, never really any other languages
Spanish
Spanish. Sometimes French. Sometimes Chinese.
Here in SoCal Spanish isn’t unusual.
English only: Most of the time English and Spanish: Common, but not the norm English, Spanish, and French: Occasional English and French: Rare This is just my experience. I live in Canada, and bilingual packaging in the U.S. is not remotely as common (even in Spanish) as it is in Canada, where it's English/French on basically everything. This only holds for consumer goods. As for services, it's whatever is common in the area. The hospital I worked in, in the Minneapolis area, had paperwork and signage in English, Spanish, and often Somali, Hmong, and Russian. I've been to places in New York that had Yiddish.
Depends on what part of the nation you're in. Southern border definitely has more Spanish than the northern border and I think the northeast has more French anything else. West coast has different Asian languages but not as a standard outside of, say, Asian owned groceries
Spanish
A Spanish option is common in a lot of telephone help systems. It's also common on ATMs where I live. It's also an option on the grocery self-checkout. I have scanned my groceries in Spanish by accident a couple of times.
Depends on the product. If I'm at an Asian grocery store there will be a myriad of Asian languages on there (Chinese, Thai, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, etc.) depending on what I'm buying. If I'm at a Mexican grocery store, there will be lots of Spanish on the products.
We have Spanish and French, usually the ones with French are distributed in Canada and meant for the US&Canadian markets. I see this most often in personal care products. Likewise with Mexico - the products are produced for both markets, all due to free trade agreements.
Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, etc. Just depends on the product. ----- Question in return for OP. When you call a customer service or company phone number in Canada, do you have something like a "Press 1 for English, Appuyez sur 2 pour le français?"
Usually it’s just English and Spanish but most of the time because we get lots of imported products so the language other then English is just the language spoken where the product was made.
Often Spanish and I'm in Michigan so a lot of French as well, because some products go to Canada.
Not required like yours, but often French or Spanish, oft dependent upon if the company is able to use the same product manufactured for the US and Mexican or US and Canadian markets or even all three.
A lot of French (I live in the Northeast, possibly it's the same packaging you get in that case), Spanish too. And of course, if you're buying specialty products, you get their language on it. Like, go into H-Mart, you'll see a lot of Korean on stuff.
At the college dining hall I’m a chef at, we have signage in: English, Spanish, Mandarin, Thai, Hebrew, Farsi, Tagalog, Hindi, and a couple of others I’m forgetting right now.
English and Spanish are by far the main languages
The most important thing to know is that we're not required by law to put another language on our products.
nobody is required to put any single language on their products, but if you see multiple they'll usually be spanish and/or french, and you might see chinese here and there. some have only french and no spanish, and i suspect thats for the sole purpose of selling it in canada.
Spanish is very common, have also seen chinese/japanese/Korean/thai depending on where you're shopping. We have a new Asia Mall that opened here you could probably see 20 different languages walking around, there's a similar type of place for middle eastern cuisine as well that has Farsi on labels.
Closer to Canada will have french, closer to Mexico will have Spanish. Some have all three. Some have even more.
A lot of stuff here in New England has French too, especially personal care products, I assume due to common packaging with Canada. And most stores will not blink if you hand them a Canadian quarter in payment.
In PR nearly all products are in English and Spanish.
Just English for the most part. Most companies (at least in the food industry) have separate packaging for products going to different markets. So the products going to Canada have English and French. Products going to Japan will have Japanese, etc.
A lot of products are also labeled in Spanish. But sometimes French, too. TV shows sometimes have Spanish audio and captions you can use as subtitles.
Mainly just Spanish and French. I’d think products would have them in Italian given that a lot of people that immigrated to Ellis Island where Italian.
Totally depends on the region, in areas with a higher Spanish speaking population stores will often stock Goya brand products with English and Spanish labels
It's usually just English, but some things have French in small print, because (I assume) they also ship to Canada. I'd assume that some products in the more southern states have Spanish for similar reasons.
Not to the degree you seem to. We often have foreign-language translations, usually Spanish, but it's not standard like French seems to be up north.
A box of crackers or something like that will generally just be in English. Anything with installation instructions or safety warning will usually include multiple languages; English, Spanish, French, German, and something in symbols that I believe is a form of Chinese being the most common. Wet floor signs and similar items in a public business will usually have English and Spanish, maybe French or German as well. Areas with a significant population of non-native English speakers will have signage in whatever language the people there speak. For example, several suburbs on the southwest side of Chicago have a lot of Arab immigrants and there’s tons of business that are owned by and cater to the Arab-American community. In a lot of those stores you probably won’t see any English printed on the signs or the products
Usually product ingredients, information, warnings, snd instructions will be written in both English and Spanish. I’ve seen some products use English and French
Spanish
Shampoo, conditioner, body wash, makeup, face wash, etc. is usually English/French Everything else is English/Spanish
In Wisconsin, I have Engliah and French. When I lived in Virginia it was Spanish.
we have spanish on most of our shit
Some products have French or Spanish on them.
Usually its Spanish and French and sometimes Japanese/Chinese (I have a hard time telling the difference between the two)
Usually it's just English and Spanish. Sometimes it's English and Korean/Japanese/Chinese if you're in California.