Saturday, December 01, 2007

English as she is writ

Celia had an interesting idea while we were still in Korea. It was to offer to rewrite the ‘English’ that’s presented on many tourist pamphlets and signs and put it into real English. So much tourist info looks like English until you actually read it. And then you find phrases that aren’t quite what English people would write or say.
For instance, on the bathroom wall of our Korean hotel there was a sign that went as follows:
Please keep your mind
All room non-smoking
Please do not move furniture
Please do not put any toilet paper and garbage in the piss pot.

All perfectly good English words, but only one line is actually good English.

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