I just re-read "When You Are Engulfed In Flames" by David Sedaris. We're going to see him in October and I just felt the need to read something ridiculous after a series of less-than-satisfying novels. My favorite part by far is "The Smoking Section." Similar to his experiences in Parisian language school, he recounts mistranslations while in Japan and for anyone who has ever taught English or tried to learn another language, it's freakin' hilarious.
I was literally crying last night as Mr. Sedaris detailed bizarre English phrases he'd found in Japan. An aside: this is far more common than you'd think. Walk around Chinatown in NYC and look to see the cheap clothes that Chinese people - not tourists - actually buy. It's littered with incomprehensible English phrases. Which is cause to pause: is that cool kanji tattoo really saying anything? Or in my case, does it say "Dumb round eye thinks this says something cool"?
Anyway, my favorite sentence in the book is from the description of the craftsperson who'd made a clay tea set. It read "With being enchanted by the warmth of Cray and the traditional of pottery over the period so far she is playing active parts widely as coordinator who not only produce and design hers own pottery firstly but suggest filling Human's whole life with fun and joyful mind."
Now I know I am really in no position to criticize this since I can't even imagine learning to speak Japanese, but I also know that there are no less than 5,683 English schools in Tokyo alone. Sure the eloquence above could've been proofed by one of them.
This did get me thinking about some of the things my students have said. Recently, one kid wrote that we worked on "math shits" instead of "math sheets" and I didn't bother to correct him. In conversation, my favorite description came from an adult telling me how to cook a certain dish. She told me to "add mushroom first because he takes longest to cook."
Poor mushroom.
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