Friday, May 11, 2012

I VERY GOOD SPEAK THE ENGLISH: Fishducky Friday

I love Fridays--here's the famous Fishducky!


Granted, English is a very difficult language for foreign speakers, especially Asians, to learn.  I give them credit for trying.  Not only must they learn an entirely new vocabulary, but the sentence structure is entirely different & the spelling is often weird.  (George Bernard Shaw once contended that you could spell “fish” GHOTI.  The “f” sound could come from the “gh” in “enough”, the “i” from the “o” in “women” & the “sh” from the “ti” in “nation”.)  I understand that the Japanese need jobs as much as Americans do.  That being said, I STILL think that a native born English speaker should be hired for writing their service manuals.  Let me give you two examples of why I feel that way.
I bought two kitchen chairs from Overstock.com.  They were the “retro” diner style, with bent aluminum legs & red vinyl seats.  They came unassembled.  The following is a review that I sent to Overstock: “The chairs arrived quickly and are very comfortable.  Assembly was relatively easy IF you followed the pictures.  The written instructions were as follows (& this is a direct quote): Assembly way to request attention: all screws don’t first lock to tighten, until back cushion to lock tight after that, this chair all screws lock to tighten, then success.”  For some strange reason, my husband had difficulty following the instructions, although I read them to him very slowly & enunciated carefully.





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The other example of fine (?) Asian manual writing: A newscaster on TV was trying to report a story, but he was laughing so hard that it was difficult for him to do so.  He finally was able to say, “This is from an instruction manual for a certain unnamed Japanese product.  There is a word in it that needs to be corrected.  We can’t tell you what the word that they actually used is, but we’re pretty sure they meant ‘SCREW’ part A into part B!”
I studied Japanese for a while in night school.  I didn’t expect to become fluent & I didn’t.  I just like to learn.  I used to do my homework at my son’s trumpet teacher’s house while he had his lesson.  I guess he picked up some of it.  In his Jr. High School band class, the teacher said he wanted all the kids to count to “four” aloud before starting to play.  Matt asked him if the language mattered.  The teacher said it didn’t.  He WAS a little surprised when my white Jewish kid counted, “Ichi, ni, san, shi!” (Side note: One of the men in my class was a US customs inspector who worked in the Asian section at the Los Angeles airport.  He figured it would give him an advantage if he could understand the passenger’s language, especially if they didn’t expect him to.  He told us about one incoming passenger who kept scratching his legs.  It made the inspectors curious enough to examine him.  It turned out that he had 20 or so watches that he was trying to smuggle into the US.  The metal expansion bands were pulling on the hair on his leg & driving him crazy.)


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How about Spanish?  We were in a small town in Mexico where no one, it seemed, spoke English.  I was trying to buy a small statue of the Virgin Mary for a friend.  By about the 10th shop, I had stopped even trying to be understood in English.  I haltingly asked, “Senor, le hace tiene una pequena figura de la Virgen Maria?”  He showed me some & we were speaking slowly in Spanish.  My husband was in the back of the shop looking at marble chess sets.  He called to me, “Ask him if he has any larger chess sets.”  The man immediately answered, “No, senor.  Those are the largest we have!”  I asked him why he didn’t tell me he spoke English earlier.  He told me I looked like I was having too much fun trying my Spanish—& I think he was right.
Italian, then?  My son-in-law had recently arrived in the US from Italy.  He was taking an ESL (English as a Second Language) course & had gotten a job as a stock boy.  He came over one day & said, “Mom, this guy at work keeps asking me questions around lunchtime & I don’t know what he’s saying.  I looked up the words & couldn’t find them in the dictionary.”  I asked him what the words were.  He told me, “jeet” & “wajeet”.  If he hadn’t mentioned that it was around lunchtime, I’m not sure I could’ve helped him.  I told him the guy was asking, “Did you eat?” & “What did you eat?”.

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Piu Italiano (More Italian): My daughter was teaching English to air traffic controllers in Italy.  I told her to be VERY sure they at least understood “UP” & “DOWN”!  When her youngest daughter was about 2, we all went to a dance recital (in California) to watch her 4 year old sister perform.  The theater went pitch black between the dance numbers.  When the lights came back on, it delighted my little granddaughter.  Every single time, a big smile came on her face & she loudly cried, “ECCO!”  (There!, or Look!, in Italian.)
OK, French, but this is the last one:  My husband is a VERY intelligent man, but somehow he can’t seem to learn foreign languages.  (Maybe he should have written instruction manuals instead of going to law school.)  I had to do all his translating for him in France, which I really didn’t mind doing.  I have to admit I DID get some strange looks when asking where the men’s room was.  We were in a restaurant BEFORE the days of women’s lib.  I got us a table, ordered dinner for the two of us, asked for some bread, got Bud some extra water (with ice) & requested the check.  I’m sure our waiter told his coworkers he was going to give it to the pushy broad with the fat guy!
Adieu, adios, ciao & sayonara----fishducky
 

31 comments:

  1. I love the "jeet" & "wajeet." LOL! That was also super funny about the guy who could really speak English. So fun.

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    1. Someone--I think it was Odie--said that's also the way those 2 questions are pronounced it the deep south of the US.

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  2. I am guessing the manuels are translated into English using Google translate by someone with very basic knowledge of English :)

    I am a native Dutch and I love learning new languages, perhaps because I love grammar so much. I really need to pick up French and Spanish again, I miss it.

    For my job, we often have to work with colleagues and clients that do not speak Dutch. It's incredibly funny to hear the attempts at English, especially from older Dutch colleagues (education in English improved a lot over the past 15-20 years). My favourite 'mistakes' are when someone uses a Dutch proverb and uses it in English, which happens rather often :D. We name them "Dutchisms". Also, the result of a person mixing up Dutch and English is called "Dunglish" which I think is just hilarious :)

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    1. I love learning new languages, too. I don't think I've ever heard Dutch spoken. In my mind, it's similiar to German. Is that true? I LOVE "Dunglish"!

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    2. It's a Germanic language too, just like Swedish and Danish. Dutch is still a rough language in that sense, but much less aggressive than German. It also depends on whether you are listening to Dutch spoken by the Dutch or by the Flemish, Flemish has much more French influences and is thus a much 'softer' in sound.

      The Dutch generally think their language isn't a pretty language like Latin languages, however, they do believe that it sounds much better than German :P. There has always been rivalry between the Dutch and the Germans on all levels, particularly since WWII and some lost soccer finals. If you ever happen to meet someone from the Netherlands, don't mention that we're similar to Germans, it's kind of a sensitive point for a lot of people ;)
      Whenever they use something that is supposed to be Dutch on TV, especially in American shows (I can remember one episode of Friends), it's usually just jabbering, that doesn't even remotely resemble Dutch words.

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    3. Thank you for the "heads up"!

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  3. hahaha I guess I take for granted all the english words, it has to be hard to learn. Too funny the situations one finds themselves in though.

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    1. I think the idioms would be the most difficult. I wonder if "idiom" & "idiot" are from the same root word?

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  4. And recently fishducky learned some Swedish too, amazing woman that she is. Tack sa mycket for den roliga posten. Just for the record: Of all the foreign languages we had to learn back in the day, English was definitely the easiest one for me. German the most difficult. Fortunately, we didn't have to learn Japanese!

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  5. Bravo my cher! Bien ecrit!

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  6. Kara INGER--Du ar mycket valkommen!!

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  7. This was so much fun and I do remember using the deep south expression of "jeet". In time I have heard people speaking Spanish that were students. When I hear people from Mexico speak it just sounds like a lot of very fast mumbling. I spent 19 months in Vietnam and all I came out of it with is counting and saying a phrase "toi de die" phonetically meaning I have to pee. My middle daughter went to German as an exchange student in 1991 and attended a German high school. She had to finish her senior year as a German student.It took her about 3 to 4 months but she mastered the language only to loose it when she got home. It was a great experience though.

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    1. I thought it was you that mentioned it. If you only have one phrase in any language, I guess that would be a very important one to know!!

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  8. Dear Fishducky, . . . this entertaining posting surely brought forth some interesting comments. I love to study languages and have studied Latin, classical Greek, and Old English, and French. My problem is that I was born with an auditory learning disability and so I do not hear some sounds and therefore can't replicate them. When people speak to me in a language different from mind, it's like a breeze blowing past my cheek. I can't associate the sound with any letters. So I can speak only English.

    Peace.

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    1. You don't need any other languages--you do so BEAUTIFULLY in English!

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  9. English language is so difficult. Idioms are particularly hard to translate in some languages.

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    1. Since idioms are what they are, I imagine those in any language would be hard to translate to another.

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  10. I had a manual for a kitchen gadget that was obviously translated (badly) from Japanese. It was hilarious. I love languages, too. I took Spanish in high school more than 30 years ago and can still carry on a simple conversation. I took one quarter of French in college and have attempted to use my bit of French over the years only to be told, Don't speak French. Your accent is terrible. Even The Hurricane told me I'm not allowed to speak French. I can read Chaucer in Middle English, but this accomplishment has never gotten me a job.

    Love,
    Janie

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    1. I imagine the job opportunities for Middle English speakers WOULD be limited!

      No one ever asked me not to speak any foreign language, but several family members have asked me not to sing!

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    2. My children used to scream when I sang, but a number of other people have told me I have a sweet soprano voice. Sometimes children don't appreciate their parents.

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  11. Every part of this was hilarious!Why can't you live closer so I can come over and pick your brain for stories??? Why, woman? That, and I'd like to leave the twins with you, but that's not important right now.

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  12. I'd be happy to raise the twins for you! Of course, I'm 77 & sometimes my brain wanders but I'd keep an eagle eye on them & oh. look--a butterfly! What was I talking about? Oh, your kids! They've survived this long with you--what's the worst that could happen if I had them? I don't have them yet, do I-- because I can't find them anywhere!

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  13. Great post Fishducky. When I was in college I took Portuguese and got fluent enough to be offered a job in Sao Paulo. Forty years later, I can barely manage Spanglish well enough to order enchiladas. Such is life

    Happy Mother's Day young one.

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    1. Muito obrigado! O espanhol e Portugese são duas linguagens diferentes -- porque você fala um não quer dizer você pode falar o outro.

      (My online translator says that's Portugese for: Thank you very much! Spanish and Portugese are two different languages--just because you speak one doesn't mean you can speak the other.)

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  14. HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY TO EVERYONE!!!

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  15. Hahahaha! I love language flubs and complications! I probably would have pummeled the Mexican guy for letting me struggle through my Spanish though! Also, I love the image of you doing everything for Bud in French before the women's lib...must have created quite a scandal! ;)

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  16. My Uncle actually knows a guy who writes the instruction manuals. He waits years before he tells anyone what he does for a living for fear they'll kill him on the spot. :)

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    1. But does he write them in his native language?

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