English What Now? is an ongoing series based around the humorous, head-scratching, or just plain amusing English found around Thailand observed and written by Teresa Derr.
Teresa Derr, 134 YinD
I can’t be the only one who will be scrolling along through some sort of social media feed and pause to watch a calligraphy video… again… and again… and again. There is just something so mesmerizing about the swoops, jagged lines, or curves of writing, even if I can’t understand the language. And, of course, many languages have more than one way of writing, so you can choose if today feels like a swoopy day or a jagged day. English has its shouting capital letters and sophisticated cursive, Thai has its modern straight-lines-only font, Arabic has the so-elegant-I-can’t-even-tell-if-it’s-up-or-down font in several gorgeous religious texts, Japanese has the cutesy heart font – there’s a font for every feeling!
Unfortunately, as much as we might appreciate different fonts, alphabets, and letters – being able to string those together does not a language make. It was absolutely no surprise to me when I got to Thailand and saw plenty of mistakes in the written English present in the community. It’s easy enough for native speakers to misspell things; I can’t fault anyone who is learning it as a second (or third, or fourth) language! Still, sometimes the English that I see makes me smile, makes me wonder, or makes me laugh, and those are feelings worth sharing!
Here are some things that made me wonder:
I feel like this is supposed to say Never Stops Dreaming – but it looks closer to Never Starts Dreaming. Maybe it’s part of a quote from some Australian person? “If he never storts dreaming, he’ll never stort doing!” I’m sure someone has said that at some time.
I. I just. ??? I don’t know what’s going on here. But yeah! On the! But casually. The wold’s all yours, my dude.
This is one of my sister’s shirts. When I first saw it, I thought, oh, cute! Kittens! Then I noticed some English lettering. I thought it was the perfect example of random letters being strung together. Then I noticed that some of them actually did spell out a word. Then I was confused. Are we the perverts for looking at cute kittens? Or are the kittens the perverts?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
So that’s some of the interesting English that I’ve seen around my site lately. It isn’t everything; more is coming, so stay tuned! And if you have some random English you’ve seen and would like me to include, do send it along to me directly (Teresa) or to pctm.stickyrice@gmail.com!
Sticky Rice 