Chris Pascoe’s Fun Tales
Chris’s mum plays a linguistic blinder – while others are blinded by linguistics…
My mum recently told me that she’d learned a really offensive sentence in Belgian.
Given that I’ve never heard my mum swear in her entire life, this came as something of a surprise.
“That’s terrible!” I said, aghast at how insulting the sentence was. “Why on earth did you learn that?”
“So I could say it to a Belgian man,” she replied, as if this made it better.
No further explanation was forthcoming, so I tried again.
“Why would you want to say it at all, though? It’s a terrible thing to say to anyone!”
I should explain that, although officially long-retired, Mum still works part-time for her old company, booking engineers to fix machines in various parts of the world.
One particular Europeanbased engineer has a tendency to be bad-tempered – sometimes getting really quite nasty with office staff such as Mum.
After many of these outbursts, he was confronted about his behaviour, whereon he’d taken a condescending tone and said, “My dear, I’m from Belgium, and English is not my first language. I had no idea I was offensive!”
So Mum, quite a vengeful octogenarian, did a little linguistic research and upon
Finally, away from the toilets but probably not very far…
the engineer’s next tantrum, responded with her newly learned Belgian sentence.
Apparently the phone line fell silent for at least 20 seconds before the shocked engineer finally found his voice.
“I can not believe what you have said to me!”
“I’m sorry but I’m from England,” replied Mum serenely. “Belgian isn’t my first language – I have no idea what I said to you!”
For a moment, I was quite taken aback with admiration.
As regular readers may know, language, and particularly accidents of translation (which of course, Mum’s most certainly was not) have always been a favourite thing of mine, and I’ve come across a few great ones recently!
So, here we go; first up, some truly wonderful signs spotted at public conveniences around the world: •Please wash hands in bog I think I’ll give it a miss if you don’t mind. •If intention is to sit in the toilet please lick the door first
OK, I don’t know where to start with that one!
I’d really like to know the name of the establishment where that last sign was found, so I can avoid the place for the rest of my life.
It’s not only that the proprietor sounds a bit on the aggressive side, but the fact he even felt the need to post a notice like that makes you worry about his clientèle!
And finally, away from the toilets but probably not very far, this explanatory note, in block capitals, was found taped to a car park attendant’s locked service window: •GONEFORAPOO
Too much information! So, in what far-flung corner of the world was this descriptive sign spotted?
Manchester. Oh dear!