When Greg Shewmaker was living in Hong Kong, working as a purchaser for retail giant Tesco, he had a problem: He didn’t know Cantonese. Whenever he bought groceries, or ate out at restaurants, he had no way of knowing beforehand what he was about to consume. Every meal was a mystery.

But when he came back to the United States, he found himself standing in a grocery store, reading a list of ingredients in English — and realizing he had no more clue what they were than he would have if they’d been written in Chinese characters.