Via Boing Boing....
This is something that routinely blows our minds when we travel. You sit and listen to English-speaking Germans talk to English-speaking Swedes, or English-speaking Mongolians chat with English-speaking Chinese, realizing that no one in the room but your is actually talking in their native language, but everyone seems to more or less grok them some English. And even we, who barely got along with high school French and travel to Mexico knowing only the words for "Please," "Thankyou," and "Moor beer!" love to refer to our collection as "stuffs" and our fave Disney icons as "chara." English: is it a floor wax, or a dessert topping? No, it's both, and everything else.
How English Is Evolving Into a Language We May Not Even Understand
....English will become more like Chinese in other ways, too. Some grammatical appendages unique to English (such as adding do or did to questions) will drop away, and our practice of not turning certain nouns into plurals will be ignored. Expect to be asked: "How many informations can your flash drive hold?" In Mandarin, Cantonese, and other tongues, sentences don't require subjects, which leads to phrases like this: "Our goalie not here yet, so give chance, can or not?"
This is something that routinely blows our minds when we travel. You sit and listen to English-speaking Germans talk to English-speaking Swedes, or English-speaking Mongolians chat with English-speaking Chinese, realizing that no one in the room but your is actually talking in their native language, but everyone seems to more or less grok them some English. And even we, who barely got along with high school French and travel to Mexico knowing only the words for "Please," "Thankyou," and "Moor beer!" love to refer to our collection as "stuffs" and our fave Disney icons as "chara." English: is it a floor wax, or a dessert topping? No, it's both, and everything else.
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Date: 2008-07-09 11:45 am (UTC)http://www.engrish.com