The French way: pain with everything (France / UK)

The French, or at least those on the French farm I’ve been going to, seem to need to have some pain with everything (except the dessert): soup, salad, main course, cheese — pain in one hand, spoon or fork in the other.  They even have it with the Chinese fried rice I serve them: one forkful of fried rice, one bite of the pain; or use the pain to shove the fried rice onto the fork, eat the forkful of rice, then a bite of the pain.

Mind you, the Brits also amaze me with their chip butty: a slice of bread piled with chips.

(France, September/October 2010)

An eggsperiment (France)

The details are being hatched.


(France, September/October 2011)

WWOOFing (UK / France)

The first time I heard about WWOOF (Weekend Working On Organic Farm) was in 1983 from someone who worked in the same building, Mary, who was a member.  (Update 280112:  It's now Worldwide Working On Organic Farm.)

When you registered, they would send you a form to fill in, where you stated your preferences (region, time windows, size and type of farm).  They would then match you with the right people.  A wwoofer could bring a guest.  You paid for your own transport and worked for the farm free; they fed you (and of course, housed you) for the duration.  What you get out of it, I guess, apart from the outdoor work, is you get to travel to different places and meet different people.  I heard in 2007 that they’d gone international, i.e., you could go wwoofing outside the UK—the person who told me about this cited the case of a friend going wwoofing in Portugal.  

On this trip to the French farm in early September, I ran into Toria at Toulouse airport, so I got a lift to the farm as Toria’s boyfriend has bought a chateau (which they’re doing up) not far away.  I mentioned wwoofing as I think of myself as a lone wwoofer solely covering the French farm.  I also cited one of Mary’s stories about one wwoofing hostess being an old lady with an allotment some distance from the house, so they had to get a bus there and back, carrying with them all the gardening gear—rake, spade, garden fork, which must’ve been quite a sight.  Toria was very amused by this, and said, “It’s barking*, this wwoofing business!”  I pounced on her, “You are a natural punner!  You’ve just used the word barking to describe wwoofing!”

(France, September 2011)

*  For those unfamiliar with this abbreviation, the full version is “barking mad”.

Linguistic dexterity (London)

Three decades ago, one would see on the London Tube (underground) a sign just over the door that said: Obstructing the doors can cause delay and can be dangerous.  Someone came along and scratched out the appropriate letters so that the sign then read: Obstruct the doors cause delay and be dangerous.

Note:  I do not approve of vandalism, nor incitement of trouble-making behaviour.  This is purely an observation of what clever things one can do with language just by moving/deleting a few letters, like the matchsticks puzzles where moving one stick (or two) can change the whole display altogether.

(London, 1977)

English as found in London (China / London)

In the last couple of years at least, people have been forwarding photographs of signs, notices and menus in China (among other countries), written in incomprehensible English with hilarious results.

The typos, while professionally unforgivable, are at least understandable in the sense that they might be due to a copy-typist who didn’t know any English at all.

The translation, however, is definitely unforgivable in most, if not all, of the cases: a lot of them read like the translator had looked up each word in the dictionary and cobbled the Chinese sentence together in English.  In this day and age, there must be a Westerner somewhere in China one can approach to help out on this front.  (Some friends suggested that they might have indeed consulted a Westerner but the Westerner had a wicked sense of humour, i.e., it’s more fun to keep the English all ungrammatical and a bit nonsensical.)

The published author of a compilation of some of these Chinglish signs put forward a few theories in his foreword to try and explain this persistent lack of professionalism:  one was the issue of face (someone in the firm might know a little English, so it’d be insulting to him/her to consult an outsider); the other was arrogance, with the translator thinking s/he knows enough not to have to consult an outsider.

However stupid that kind of attitude might be (that author’s theories feel right to me, someone who has seen a lot of Chinese behaviour in my 58 years as a Chinese), at least the poor English is produced in a non-English-speaking country.  How does one, however, account for things like the following (just to name a few) found in London, the capital of the birthplace of the language: 

* Served with 2 Slice Bread (spotted in a café in Dalston)

* 2Egg & Chips (ditto)

* Today Special (ditto)

* Breakfast, lunch & dinners (ditto)

* Fish and chip

* Advanced notice (about delays due to roadworks)

* Male toilet (notably at Piccadilly Circus, which is full of visitors from abroad)

* Female toilet (ditto)

* (Holiday advert) Laying in the sun (spotted at Gatwick Airport, 05 Aug 2011) (in British English, it should be "lying in the sun";  "lay" is for laying the table or an egg) 

* All kind of mobile unlock (spotted in Hackney)

* All kind ham (spotted in Hackney, 01 Nov 2011)

There’s no excuse really, for, if one is not a native-speaker of English and needs to check one’s English for the signs cited above, there are even more native-speakers of English in London than in China.  Or are there...??

(London, October/November 2011)


More: 

* Do not speak to or obscure the driver's vision while the bus is moving (sign on Bus 253, spotted 13 Nov 2011)

* About a set of conjoined twins: "When one has their eyes closed, the other has their eyes open."  (Heard on BBC Radio 4's programme of 15 Nov 2011)  (I have since read somewhere that the non-agreement in "the other has their ..." is now accepted and acceptable, although I was taught during my school days that it is not grammatical.)

(From googling:  "Their" is a plural possessive pronoun that can also be used as a singular possessive pronoun for a person of unspecified or unknown gender, or when referring to a person in a gender-neutral way. In this case, "the other" refers to a single person, and "their" is the appropriate singular possessive pronoun.)

(From googling:  lay vs lie)

Quote 

If you are placing an object in a horizontal position, you use the verb "lay," followed by "laid" in the past tense. If you are putting yourself in a reclining position, you use the verb "lie," followed by "lay" in the past tense.

Unquote

The literacy (and numeracy) campaign (UK)

To beat the increasing literacy (and numeracy) problem, the authorities came up with a campaign called The 3 Rs: Reading, Writing and Arithmetic.  Yet, of the 3 Rs, only one is spelt with an R.  No wonder they have a literacy problem...


(UK, 1990s/early noughties)

It's more fun this way (London / France)

It was a Sunday in 1985 and a group of us were invited round to Adam’s for lunch.

After sitting at the table for a few hours, someone suggested we go and play croquet in the garden.  As it was winter, the days were short and it was very dark outside, so I said, “But it’ll be impossible to see in the dark.”  Someone else said, “It’s more fun this way!”

This is the approach I adopt with my visits to the French farm.  Not knowing the language (and to tell the truth, even if I did, their strong local accent would render all that knowledge practically useless anyway) means that I have to guess what they might be saying, waiting for key words to confirm my conjecture.  

This makes eavesdropping a very interesting exercise, because they think I have zero French so they are quite free with their comments (about me or otherwise) and also because I have to learn not to give the game away when I do understand certain bits (cf. my other blog entry: The Two Italians in Prague) by remaining poker-faced.  

When the phone rings at lunch time, I immediately surmise it’s someone who knows them well, someone who will know they’ll be sitting down indoors to lunch, not out and about the farm tilling the fields or tending to the animals.  

When the phone rings late’ish at night, I know it’ll be one of the two daughters, and the bisou* uttered by farm mistress Jeanette at the end of the call will provide confirmation (and double-confirmed when she then informs me it’s Colette or Isabelle).

(London, 1985; France, 1996-2011)

* bisou:  (from googling) a French word that is an informal, masculine noun meaning a “kiss” or a “little kiss”.  It is often used in spoken language to express an informal, friendly kiss, particularly with children. The plural form, “bisous” (pronounced the same way), is commonly used at the end of a letter, email, or text message as an equivalent of “Love,” “Lots of Love,” or ‘Kisses” when addressing close friends or family.

The Two Italians in Prague: https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2011/07/two-italians-in-prague.html