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
A lot of the time, the English I see here in Thailand will actually be written perfectly. A lot of international exposure, international products, and international tourists means that getting the English right is kind of a must. Honestly, I appreciate the good English I see more than the broken English – sometimes. It teaches me a lot more about the culture, the way Thai people use English, and the way products travel. Of course, it also is a lot easier to see and read quickly, too, which saves me the headache of trying to stumble my way through reading the Thai alphabet. And, it often makes me smile, just to see a bit of home present on shirts or bags here.
Without further ado, here are some pictures of sentences I did not expect to see here in Thailand, but I’m glad that I did!
This is part of my host sister’s wardrobe. If you saw my previous article on being asexual, it might make sense to you that I have never really understood the phrase, “I like big butts.” But this take on that phrase – a reference to Jaws? – makes me smile every time I see it. I am very sure my sister has no idea what her shirt says, but I can’t deny that it brings me joy and I’m glad she has this shirt.
I saw this sign on my travels to Chiang Mai. It is written in perfect English – but that is not a sentence you would find most places in America. And yet, for a culture that doesn’t eat bread regularly – of course they might need to be told how toasting bread works! It isn’t intuitive!
The Donate for Oldsters sign genuinely made me laugh. I actually had to go look up if ‘oldsters’ is actually considered a word. I know youngsters is accepted, but I’ve never heard anyone refer to their grandparents as oldsters. Google, of course, pulled up a definition, so I am considering this sign in perfect English. And now that I know oldsters is a word, my grandparents shall be referred to as such from now on, as a collective noun for the group of them. And possibly my parents, aunts, and uncles, on days when they seem to be getting up there in age but aren’t behaving weird enough to justify the term old farts.
The Donate for Blindness Students I’m including here, even though it isn’t exactly good English, because it came from the same place as the Oldsters sign. I was a little surprised, honestly, that they got it wrong – I saw a lot of pretty good English in Chiang Mai. But, with such a complicated language as English, I can’t fault them for not getting it right every time. Also, I’m glad they didn’t get it completely grammatically correct! “Donate for Blindness in Students” could definitely be mistakenly read as wanting money to make more students blind. “Blindness Students” is at least easier to understand as meaning “blind students.”
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
English in general makes me smile, and when I see it so rarely at site, I value the smiles it brings me even more. If you’ve seen any fun English, either grammatically correct but strange or grammatically incorrect and funny, please do send it along so I can feature it here! These smiles deserve to be shared:)
Sticky Rice 
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