English Language in the Bangkok Post and Other Publications

[Profiler]

...Again,again again the 'WE'. Do not presume to speak for my country...

hi maneerut, again & again & again: we speak here at OUR will, not yours. if you can't stand it, piss off. khaow djai mai?

I think it's time to do Fawlty towers Basil's famous march

[stilljustbrowsing]

Phom spraken zie chinglish, does the count?

[Ian]

EuroEnglish

The European Union commissioners have announced that agreement has been reached to adopt English as the preferred language for European communications, rather than German, which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, \\\ /////’s Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a five-year phased plan for what will be known as EuroEnglish (Euro for short).
• Year 1.
In the first year, ‘s’ will be used instead of the soft ‘c’. Sertainly, sivil servants will resieve this news with joy. Also, the hard ‘c’ will be replaced with ‘k.’ Not only will this klear up konfusion, but typewriters kan have one less letter.
• Year 2.
There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome ‘ph’ will be replaced by ‘f’. This will make words like ‘fotograf’ 20 per sent shorter.
• Year 3.
In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of silent ‘e’s in the languag is disgrasful, and they would go.
• Year 4
By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing ‘th’ by ‘z’ and ‘w’ by ‘v’.

• Year 5.

During ze fifz year, ze unesesary ‘o’ kan be dropd from vords kontaining ‘ou’, and similar changes vud of kors; be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters. After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil b no mor trubls or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech ozer. Ze drem vil finali kum tru.

[stilljustbrowsing]

Red it B4! But stil veri gut nonthles.

[Sean Moran]

An earlier poster mentioned other Englishes, such as Indian English. One could argue that Indian English or Singaporean English - or even modern Australian English as Sean keeps reminding us - isn't 'proper' English, but what is 'proper' English these days? Times they are a-changing. Perhaps one day soon, a form of current non-standard English will become the future standard English. The BP could then say - "You read it here first!"

Australians speak English, traditionally, but you're right about the poor standards we've allowed to creep in over these last few decades. Many think it might be too hard for some people to get the hang of all this modern technology like Internet and SMS but I believe it might be more due to too much television as children and not enough good Dickens.

.

[Hansa]

Hi danreiter2,

....

I wouldn't let the mistakes you find in these papers get to you. The BP is a business. If its customers/readers stopped buying the paper because of errors in the English, they might change. As it is, I guess they don't feel it's too much of a problem. I don't think you are being picky by spotting the mistakes but I think you are perhaps giving them too much importance. The editors may or may not know that there are mistakes in their copies. Why don't you write to them instead of the webmaster?

If you allow me to intrude:
To be honest, I think the quality of the English language written in Bangkok Post (paper or WEB) is the least of their problems. I would be more concerned about the content quality. Personally I buy it for the advertisements and the classifieds section.
English is my second language though, so some errors in grammar do not rip my soul apart, even if I manage to notice them.

[Sean Moran]

Do you reckon the Student Weekly should get more of a lookin here?