Poster complaining about noisy laundry machine

[Joe Carillo]

We are presenting this week the third photo we selected from the bad-English collection sent by Joselito B. sometime ago to Rocky Avila, a reader of my Manila Times English-usage column. We will simply reiterate that Joselito sent his bunch of photos with the following note:

“They say that the Philippines is the third largest English-speaking country in the world and there are two different kinds of English speaking Pinoys: The Good Englishizer and the Bad Englishizer. Oooooppppsss!  Is that a wrong mistake? Sorry. Enjoy reading just the same. Have a good day.”

What do you think we can do with this state of affairs?

[The Old Sarge]

Is there ever a "wrong mistake"?  For that matter, is there ever a "right mistake"?

Adding an qualifier like "wrong" to the word "mistake" is like adding a qualifer to Unique.  By definition, unique simply means one of a kind. there are no others since, if there were, then they would not be "unique".

A mistake is an unintended action, something committed in error.  That is fact.  However, the end result of a mistake can be beneficial due to the sarendipity factor.  For example, you might say "I turned left on Rojas when I should have turned right.  Lying on the sidewalk in front of me I found a 500 Piso bill that I had lost a year ago."

(No, I really don't think that a 500 Piso bill would remain on the sidewalk for a year.)

Turning left instead of right was a mistake but finding the bill was good - the serandipity factor.  Regardless of the outcome, you still made a mistake.

Another prime error is the use or misuse of "can" in place of "may"  The difference was drummed into me by an English teacher when I was a freshman at Pocatello High School in the early 1950's.  She used a 12 inch ruler smacked across your palm as a teaching tool.  It worked.

Paul Garner
aka The Old Sarge

PS:  Jose, have you written recently about the proper use of Can vs. May and the continuing abuse of the word "Unique"?  This is something that is common in the US.

[Furball]

The sign should simply say:

-------------------------------------
Laundry Hours:
6am-6pm

For your strict compliance.
-Management/Owner
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As for improving our current state of affair, I'm thinking English should be promoted to the public not as an elitist language, but one that the masses should and could use.  It all starts with learning how to think in English, rather than thinking in your local dialect then translating. So how does one do that? At a young age perhaps? Then it all boils down to that sorry-excuse-for-a-textbook the DepEd has been spreading around.

Ciao!

[Joe Carillo]

The sign should simply say:

-------------------------------------
Laundry Hours:
6am-6pm

For your strict compliance.
-Management/Owner
-------------------------------------

As for improving our current state of affair, I'm thinking English should be promoted to the public not as an elitist language, but one that the masses should and could use.  It all starts with learning how to think in English, rather than thinking in your local dialect then translating. So how does one do that? At a young age perhaps? Then it all boils down to that sorry-excuse-for-a-textbook the DepEd has been spreading around.

Ciao!

I agree with your suggestion that Filipinos should learn to think in English, but that's admittedly a very tall order indeed--a quantum leap from the natural order of things in the country. I would rather that they--we Filipinos as a whole--first learn to think, in whatever first tongue they acquire as children. This requires, of course, that we learn how to think logically and systematically rather than in the slapdash, uncritical ways of divining things that society ruthlessly foists on us. Then we can later think properly in whatever language we choose to learn afterwards, English included.