Bad English

While walking in Budapest the other day I saw a pretty nice-looking restaurant. There was a menu on the outside, very professionally made as it was embedded in glass. Next to the same menu was a short story with the history of the restaurant claiming the owner was a “Hungarian-American”.

Problem was; the English on the menu was horrid. The word “caramelized” was used on more than one occasion and spelled differently (never right) each time. There were many structural and spelling errors and the translations of some of the food items were not always right.

Having seen this sort of thing many times I normally would have just rolled my eyes and moved on. However, the claim of an owner with American roots worked on me too much and I went in to complain. I give them credit for admitting they were aware of it and that they were trying to get it corrected, but I have to ask how a classy place like that could have allowed such a thing in the first place.

English is the most abused language in the world. The French take a lot of pride in the “proper use” of their language and they cringe at the versions rendered by people from Canada, Belgium and assorted African countries, but the differences can be attributed to different evolutions rendered by native speakers. This is common with many languages where emigration has created pockets of people whose language-use has evolved in different ways.

English, on the other hand, has a completely different problem. Take a Swede and an Italian doing business together and the chances are high they are communicating in English. Partners from Japan and Russia will likely speak English together. Facebook friends from Argentina and China will be chatting in English. InBev administrators from Brazil and Belgium…well…you get the picture.

With so many people using English despite not being native speakers and then communicating with other non-native speakers it only stands to reason that the language takes a major beating every minute of every day. However, this is no excuse for obvious misuse.

The Belgian Soccer League has installed a new system this year where the top six teams qualify for the “Play-offs”. These play-offs are a round-robin post season where all teams play each other in home and away matches and the total points determine the final winner. This, by definition, is not a play-off and emphasizes a new problem where words start to take new meaning after being applied in the wrong way.

By the time all is said and done we are going to have a completely new language. Belgian schools already differentiate American and English as two separate languages and I have heard of students losing points for having an American intonation or using American spelling (favourite –vs– favorite). Somewhere along the way the U.S. version has been deemed inferior.

What about this makes me angry? I suppose it is the feeling that there isn’t a dang thing I can do about it. We cannot force people to improve their English and it would be presumptuous for us to even try. In fact, we need to be grateful that all these other cultures have accepted English as the international business and travel language as this has made world communication much easier for all of us.

Nevertheless, we need to be prepared for the ultimate consequence and that is the further regression of the English language as we know it today and the advancement of Bad English.