Destructing Language

[fable]

Do you know anybody who does evil things to the spoken language--whatever language you happen to speak?

Let us consider, for example, my wife. She is a logical mathhead. She has told me that she hated long division back in junior high school, many years ago, and used algorithms to arrive at her results. In short, she is an alien.

Her treatment of English underscores this conclusion. A while back she remembered the title of a Rolling Stone album as "Get Your Cha-Chas Out." Last night, she told me about a moment at work and stated, "It made my hair cringe." These are only two instances of what amount to an unintentional but wholesale assault upon the very foundations of what was once a noble language with many fine accomplishments.

And for those who are wondering, I refer to English, you saps.

So, anyway, do you know anybody who perform similar feats of linguistic pillage, rape and torture? If so, please post.

[ 05-10-2001: Message edited by: fable ]

[Darkpoet]

You ain't got no right, to be making fun of us peoples.

[Gruntboy]

My Dad calls Chicago "Chick-a-goo" and my mam calls baguettes "barge-ettes" - does that count? But then again we're working class so if you take the p*ss I'll pound your brains out

[Craig]

Another post 'bout me!!!!

[Weasel]

You dang darn tootin i be ripping the coon tails out of git.

[fable]

@Gruntboy, nah. All nations "naturalize" foreign words that become part of the culture. Look at Cairo (KAY-row), Ohio.

[Gruntboy]

I went out with a girl once who's mother was a Russian translater for the UN. Upon heraing the way I talked and upon my utterance of the word "us" (as in "Help us out" - referring to *me* and me alone" - its like the Royal *We* for poor people), she said:

"I heard a grammatical incongruity..."

Indeed.

I ask you, which is more destructive of language?

[ 05-10-2001: Message edited by: Gruntboy ]

[fable]

@Craig, it is not about you. We don't know what your speech patterns are like. This is only about the way people creatively mangle their native language while speaking it.

Mangling it while writing is another, higher art, some of it, pretty damn funny. I think the master of that was Robert Benchley. I oughta post of his work.

[Brink]

I converse in broken English daily

[C Elegans]

Some typically Swedish mistakes when speaking English, I'll try to explain them.

One of friends at his first visit to Britain, trying to compliment his hostess:

"This food is delicious, you're a great ****."

(Swedish for cook is pronouced like ****)

Same guy realising his mistake, trying to make up for it:

"What a lovely dress, with all those pricks on!"

(Swedish for dot is "prick".)

"No thank you, I'm full, I'll jump over the cheese"

(Swedish has the same word for jump and skip.)

Another male friend, working as au pair in London as a teenager, just having fed the baby:

"Should I rape the child?"

(Swedish for "burp" is "rap")

[Manveru]

To be honest my English sucks - sometimes I really have the problems with replies, especially problems with my grammar.

However I'm going to add some Polish common mistakes :

many Poles say : "Thank you straight ahead from the bridge" (originally something like that is in Polish) not "thanks in advance"

or they say "pilot" not "remote control" (In Polish "pilot" means "exactly "remote control")

or they use "actually" in meaning "current" (I think the most common Polish mistake "aktualnie" means "current" in Polish) as well as "eventually" in meaning "possibly" (Polish "ewentualnie" means "possibly")

[Xandax]

There is nothing queer about a couple of gay fellows smoking a ***

[fable]

Heh. The word "***" derives from the older German word for wood, "******," and I understand that homosexuals used to be given the bonfire treatment in earlier times--hence, the slang.

Funny thing is, when I was program director of a public radio station a number of years ago, many of my announcers were foreign students. (This was at a university.) One of them was from the Indian subcontinent, and he had good diction but a pronounced accent. I'll never forget his announcing a work by Hummel, saying it was a quintet for a variety of instruments, including a "******." The album listed the instruments in German, and the modern use for the German wood, a stick of wood, is a bassoon.

[Xandax]

Well in my sentence it dosen't mean anything else than a cigaret

[fable]

Joe di Maggio, of baseball fame, on a repetition of a particular play:

"It's deja vu all over again!"