What to do about place names

I've seen this sign around Madrid for several years now, and it never fails to bother me. Why? "Gran Vía Street" is redundant. A "Vía" is a kind of street, so it doesn't make any sense to say it twice.

Generally speaking, you do not need to translate place names. The Plaza Mayor is the Plaza Mayor. Cibeles is Cibeles, not Cibelle Place. If an English speaker asks for directions, say the name in Spanish. That's what's printed on the maps the Tourism Office gives out.

"BAD" marketing!

You know how I'm always complaining that people shouldn't use words like "good" or "bad" to describe things? Here's another example: this isn't bad marketing - it's sloppy and careless.

This ad was taken from this morning's edition of EL PAÍS. It's an ad for women's intimate care products. My Webster's Dictionary defines "chilly" as: "unpleasantly affected by cold" and "lacking warmth and feeling."

Not to be rude, but I really wouldn't want something lacking warmth and feeling in my, er, girly bits.

You have to see them to believe them....

I have no idea how many native English speakers actually live in Madrid. There should be enough native English speakers that SOMEBODY could have prevented these mistakes from happening.

Why you should never trust online translation programs...

Via Twitter... Thanks to the Grammar Monkeys... This would never get you a passing grade on the First Certificate!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/18/best-description-of-house_n_467219.html

Funny peculiar

A couple of weeks ago, Arancha asked a good question: "In my essay, you put down to have more fun. Why not funny?"

Good question. The technical answer is that "fun" is the noun form: We had a lot of fun at Alberto's party.

"Funny" is an adjective, but be careful. It's not automatically the adjective version of "fun": As the British say, there's funny ha-ha and funny peculiar.

"Funny ha-ha" is the definition that most people know - something that's amusing and makes you laugh: I have a really funny joke to tell you!

BUT - and this is a big but - in spoken English, it means "strange, not quite right" or "suspicious:"

- Something funny happened to me the other day....a pumpkin fell on my head.
- It's funny how things never work out how you expect them to.
- He gave me a funny look when I asked him about his mother.
- The accountant wondered if his client was doing something funny with his money.

In these cases, "funny" has nothing to do with humour. It's closer to the idea of deception or tricks.

Don't let Paper 3 of the First Certificate freak you out.

Most of my students don't really like the Use of English paper (Paper 3) of the First Certificate exam. But I'm surprised at how many people really, really loathe it. They find it frustrating because they don't know how to manage the new words they learn, and they can't always remember why one words is more appropriate than another word in a specific context.

Remember this: 50% of the words in the Multiple Choice Cloze are not possible for technical reasons. It could be for several reasons: maybe they've given you an adverb form when you need an adjective; maybe that adjective needs a dependent preposition that isn't in the body of the text; maybe it's a word that we use in relation to people, not ideas. Or maybe it's a false friend. Whatever.

If you're doing practice exercises to help you with this part of the exam, try this:

a) Print out the "Right Word, Wrong Word" worksheet and write the name of the exercise at the top of the first page, along with a brief description of the topic of the text. You can find the worksheet here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/37990867/RightWordWrongWord-1

b) Your first job is to look at the options and if you know that there are one or two words that aren't possible, get rid of them.

c ) Now you're down to the remaining 50% - two - options, but you don't know which one is the right one.
- Get out your English-only dictionary. (A translating dictionary will not always provide the information that you need to do this properly.) Look up the word, then look at the structure of the sentence, and look at the ways in which you can use the word (or phrase).
- What does the dictionary say? Look at the possibilities and use the one that fits with the information the dictionary tells you.
- Once you're done, don't second-guess and don't change your answer if you're not sure. Nine times out of ten, your first reaction will be the correct one.
- If, after all this, you're still not sure....guess. Really. You have a 50% chance of being right and the examiners won't take points away for any wrong answers you have.

d) When you're done, check your answers and DO NOT ERASE ANY WRONG ANSWERS. Instead, write down the explanation next to the wrong answer and make a mental note to practice the word/phrase most often.

Good luck!

But what does it MEAN?

If you think you've got it rough, speaking English at work, spare a thought for the United Nations interpreters who have to translate politicians...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11377609

It's another great article from the BBC World Service!

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If you answered "YES!!!" to any of the questions above...THE STOP SPANGLISH SEMINAR is for you.

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Another Stop Spanglish classic...

This one was taken in the Puerta del Sol, in Madrid.

Poor tourists...

FREE!! ESL Writing Checklist

In the time that I've been teaching English, both in Spain and in other countries, I've found that almost all of my students hate writing. It's easy to understand why. Effective writing (not just spelling, but constructing arguments and convincing people) isn't easy to do. Students also don't like to spend lots of time trying to write something that sounds intelligent...and then get a paper back that's full of mistakes.

One of the best ways you can avoid the disappointment of getting a (heavily) corrected essay back is to check for mistakes before you submit your text to your teacher. Many (if not almost all) mistakes are easily avoidable, and if you go back and look at the kind of corrections your teacher made on your essays, you'll probably find that you're not making a lot of different kinds of mistakes...you're making the same mistakes over and over and over again.

If this is the case, here's a downloadable writing checklist that can help you revise your writing before you submit it.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/35772510/Writing-Checklist

This isn't a list of every possible thing that students do wrong, but it does cover the most common (and the most easily prevented) mistakes that teachers tend to see. If you're writing the First Certificate exam, these are the kinds of silly mistakes that make students lose points and risk failing.

We have a winner!

Congratulations to Juan Francisco Martinez Corbi, of Arganda del Rey (Madrid), who was the first to write in with the correct answer to our Stop Spanglish photo competition:

Hi Patri!I have just read your blog, the last two posts to be precise, and I have decided to take part in your first STOP SPANGLISH contest against Spanglish.
QUESTION A: I think the mistake is 'Cards of credit'.
QUESTION B: It's wrong because there are noun + noun compounds (in this case, cards + credit) to describe many common ideas, things or people in English and, in fact, to describe that specific object in the correct way. For this reason…
QUESTION C: The correct English should be, in my opinion, 'We do not accept credit cards'. There are two nouns. The first one (in singular) describes what kind of cards are them.

Don't forget to keep visiting the STOP SPANGLISH blog, so you can take part in future competitions.... I have a LOT of photos like this one.

COMPETITION #1: What's wrong with this picture?

Take a look at the English in this photo. Technically, it's not super-wrong, because people can still (basically) understand the message.

It is, however, a perfect example of Spanglish. Whoever translated it did not think (or didn't know) about how English structures are different from Spanish structures, and it makes the message look sloppy and unprofessional.

So here's our first STOP SPANGLISH contest! If you are the first person to answer the three questions below correctly, you will win an Oxford dictionary designed for English learners, plus a copy of Enleno's excellent English Learner Notebook.

a) What's the mistake in the photo?
b) Why is it wrong?
c) What should the correct English be?

THE FINE PRINT: Send your answers to stop (dot) spanglish (at) yahoo (dot) com before noon Friday, August 13th. This competition is open to all students who reside in Spain (peninsular Spain, the Canary Islands and the Balearic Islands) and Portugal. We hate spam, too, so we will NOT use your e-mail for anything at all (you have my personal promise!!) unless you clearly tell us that you want to receive updates and more information.