Spot the error

Here, I'll give you a hint.



Sigh.

More strange, incorrect uses of English

So, is the "Coffee Travel Point" where your coffee goes on vacation?

Today's random, weird, inappropriate and/or incorrect use of English

It wasn't until I got home from the drug store that I noticed the product name on my bottle of bubble bath:



What do you think they think "careness" means?

A fun new game

We have a Fulbright-Berlin listserve, and I received an email the other day that I wanted to share with you:


Hey Name,

whats up? is ben harper coming to berlin? if so, where is this at? id be interested.

thanks,
firstname surname
fulbright english teaching assistant, berlin 0´6-07


Now let's play "Count the Grammatical Errors."

Including capitalization and punctuation, I count a whopping 18 errors. (In my generosity, I didn't count his failure to capitalize his own name as a mistake; I also assumed the misplaced apostrophe in "0'6-07" was a typo and counted only one error, since it should be '06-'07, as I'm sure you all knew.) Eighteen errors in 28 words! That's a "Fehler-Quotient" of 64! That's really bad!

Let's step back and think about this for a minute. If you look at the competition statistics you will see that there were more than 200 applications for the 80 TAships to Germany. If the author of the atrocious awful embarrassing email above was selected as an English teacher, I shudder to think what the other 133 applicants were like.

Today's Random Photo

I'm not up to posting much, but here's a photo I took at my local department store last week:


If the professor thing doesn't work out, this is a job I could like--coming up with wacky English product names to be used exclusively in the non-English-speaking world. No respectable German would buy a razor called the "Damenschützer" (or Damenbeschützer, or possibly Damenschutzherr, my dictionary wasn't being very helpful today), just as no American would buy a razor called a "Lady Protector."

While I find this funny on one hand, on the other hand it's sad. Everywhere you go in this city (and in this country) you come across English words and phrases. Cell phones are called "Handys," there's a bar in my neighborhood called "Singles' and Friends," and English words like "wellness" and "clever" are part of everyday speech. I'm sad that Germans don't appreciate their language and seem willing to let it be taken over. The French might be snooty, but at least they're not about to lose their linguistic heritage without a fight.