Outsider’s Perspective

“Photos are always welcome.”

Devolution toward Simpler, Outsider's Perspective, Passive Voice, Verbs

An American wrote this sentence the other day in an email message to my wife.

Having lived several years in England, she told me that it looked odd to her.

She would have written “Photos are always welcomed.” — with a “d” at the end.

In other words, she sees this as a passive-voice sentence (in which the actor is not specified).

The active-voice form of the sentence could be “We always welcome photos.”

Given that speaking or writing in the passive voice requires the use of the past participle of a verb, the passive-voice form of “We always welcome photos.” requires the past participle “welcomed” — with a “d” at the end.

I believe that the American tendency to drop the “d” from the past participle “welcomed” in “Photos are always welcomed.” is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis.

It is simpler to say “welcome” (without the “d”) than to say “welcomed” (with the “d”). And, even if someone says “welcomed” (with the “d”), many American listeners will not hear the “d” and will write “welcome” (without the “d”) instead.

Devolution of “prescription drug”

Devolution toward Simpler, Nouns, Outsider's Perspective

I was waiting in a pharmacy line the other day when I started thinking about the devolution of the phrase “prescription drug”.

Americans used to go to pharmacies to pick up “prescription drugs”.

But it is rare to hear any of them say that phrase today.

Now we call these drugs simply “prescriptions”.

But a “prescription” is what a doctor writes or makes.

So it must sound odd to many non-Americans to hear an American telling a pharmacist that he or she wants “to pick up my prescription”, when what the person actually wants to do is to pick up the drug, not what the doctor wrote.

The truncation, if you will, of the phrase “prescription drug” into the noun “prescription” is only the first step in the phrase’s devolution.

The second step comes in many American hospitals.

I was telling my brother, who has been an operating-room technician, about this devolution, and he said that many American hospital employees do not even call the drug a “prescription”.

No, they refer to such a drug by the noun “script” — the six letters in the middle of the noun “prescription”.

So there you have it: “prescription drug” devolved to “prescription”, which devolved to “script”.

I wonder what is next — a “scri”?

Engrish.com

Foreign Languages, General, Outsider's Perspective

Do you need a laugh today? Go to Engrish.com.

My wife’s cousin’s husband (almost sounds like we are hillbillies, eh?) retired at an early age and now seems to spend all of his free time on the Internet.

This means that my wife gets tons of email from him — covering everything from conspiracy theories (No, I do not believe that the World Trade Center was bombed by the U.S. government.) to humorous videos (including my favorite: Evil Baby Eye).

Yesterday he sent to her several photos from the website Engrish.com, and every photo made us laugh!

The site accepts photos taken by readers who have spotted bad English on signs, labels, T-shirts, and other products from non-native-English-speaking countries.

Besides the humor — and there is a LOT of humor at Engrish.com — what I enjoy about the website is trying to understand how the translations into English became so mangled and twisted.

Some bad-but-humorous translations seem to be based on a non-native-English speaker hearing an English word enunciated poorly and converting it into writing such that the written form is an English word but not the same one.

For example, the photographed sign shown here refers to “groups” as “grubs”. If you squint your eyes and muffle your ears while reading and saying it aloud, you can see and hear how “groups” became “grubs”.

Other mangled translations seem to fall into categories such as these:

Beyond the photos, what makes Engrish.com especially funny is the comments from the site’s readers.

Many people say that dissection of a joke takes all the fun out of the joke, but those who become good at dissecting jokes become good at creating new ones.

I believe that this principle applies to mistranslations, too, and I could imagine that someone could write a master’s thesis or doctoral dissertation on how translations go askew from one language to another.

Anyway, even if you are not interested in the mechanics of how words get mistranslated but you enjoy mistranslations for their humor alone, then you will enjoy Engrish.com.