Sharp Words

I really shouldn’t let bad grammar in song lyrics get to me, but I can’t help it!

I do listen to an awful lot of music; I have my own personal selection on my MP3 player during the day, and listen to the radio during car journeys and to wake myself up in the mornings.

Sometimes I can manage to ignore the grammatical errors, particularly if the lyric is indistinct, or not repeated in the song. Others make me grind my teeth though – one of those that’s been annoying me for a very long time is ‘between you and I’, in Hungry Eyes from the Dirty Dancing soundtrack (and probably other songs too).

Current irritants are (and believe me, they’re not songs I listen to voluntarily, nor would I even without the bad grammar):

• ‘I’m sorry I misleaded you’ – Take Me Back by Tinchy Stryder
• ‘It may not mean nothing to y’all’ – Forever by Drake and a whole other bunch of rappers

Grrrr. Argh. Anyone got any personal annoyances when it comes to ungrammatical lyrics?

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One of my local pound shops (which no longer sells everything at a pound, but has things priced at £1.50 and £2 as well) has lately renamed itself.

I can’t actually remember the old name, but I think it might have had ‘pound’ in it. I could be wrong.

The new name, however, is SOME CHOICE.

And I smile every time I see it. I also get the urge to ask to talk to management and explain that they have quite a lot of choice, actually, and there really isn’t any need to be so self-deprecating.

I’m not sure if it makes it worse that the slogan on some of the stuff inside is ‘Some Choice, Some Value’….

And just because I don’t want to miss another one, here’s my Friday Flash 55, inspired loosely by a recent visit to a local fried chicken takeaway chain, as well as by the above.

“Chicken fillet burger please.”

“What do you want on it?”

“Coleslaw.”

“Sorry, no coleslaw.”

“Tomato and mayonnaise then?”

“We’re out of tomatoes.”

“OK, just mayo.”

“No problem! Oh. The tub’s empty. Let me check the fridge… No, none there.”

“What can I have then?”

“Ketchup.”

“Or?”

“Just ketchup.”

“Some choice! I’ll just have it plain.”

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This story has been doing the rounds in Ireland for quite some time, but An Garda Síochána (the Irish police force) have excelled themselves in winning an Ig Nobel prize, for literature too.

Back in February, it was revealed that they’d written more than 50 tickets for driving offences to one person (see the BBC News report at the time) – one Prawo Jazdy, presumably a Polish national (of which there are many in Ireland, driving legally on their Polish licences).

However, Prawo Jazdy is actually the Polish for driving licence…. Can we say ‘oops’? (And either well done or tut tut to all the drivers who got away with those offences.)

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Oops, there’s been yet another error in translating Welsh, as detailed in this report on the BBC website.

If you speak English, you’re instructed to look left. If you speak Welsh, you’re told to look right. If you speak both, then you might end up with terminal whiplash…

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I’m a quite a fan of Engrish.com and its associated blogs, even if I’m personally too lazy to post anything to them.

But I was amused by the instructions on a packet of disposable chopsticks that I was given at a Chinese restaurant the other day, and decided that I might as well share them… From the actual nature of the spelling mistakes, I suspect that they were copied from something else by someone who didn’t know Latin characters – putting c instead of e, for example. Makes for entertaining reading though, especially when you’re waiting on your spring rolls and chicken fried rice…

Welcome to Chinese Restaurant.
Please try your Nice Chinese Food With Chopsticks the traditional and typical of Chinese glonous history and cultual.

Tuk under tnurmb and hcld firmly

Add second chcostick

Hold tirst chopstick in originai position

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After featuring that lovely cushion with that interesting I’TS, how could I not smile when I saw a report about soft toy alphabet blocks with worrying misspellings? [See this article in the Guardian.] I especially like the YATCH – even more worryingly, when I tried searching the BBC News website for an article about this, using that spelling, the search brought up a few ‘real’ instances of it…

At least Morrisons are withdrawing all the blocks now (after some pushing) and offering refunds. I wonder if I can get someone to buy that cushion for me, and then take it back with a complaint about the error?

(Hey, I wonder if I can get the price of dishes in restaurants refunded by complaining about the typos on their menus? My latest favourites being pavalova and banoffe.)

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