Kirk Mahoney . com

I saw this in the subject line of a spam email message a week ago.

But this statement means nothing except for the positive implication that the spammer wants to give it.

Someone usually says (quote) “It is a prestige product.” (unquote) to tell the listener that “it” is a high-prestige product.

But the noun “prestige” by itself has no positive or negative value.

Can you imagine someone, such as a non-native-English speaker, first reading or hearing (quote) “A prestige watch is part of your image.” (unquote)?

This statement would be meaningless to such a person.

The noun “prestige” must be hyphenated with an adjective to form a compound adjective that can indicate the value of the noun — in this case, “watch” — that the compound adjective modifies.

In contrast to the inherently meaningless statement (quote) “A prestige watch is part of your image.” (unquote), here are some meaningful statements:

• “A high-prestige watch should be part of your image.”
• “A low-prestige watch should not be part of your image.”
• “A prestigious watch should be part of your image.”

I believe that the use of the noun “prestige” in place of the adjective “prestigious” is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis.

It is simpler to speak or write the two-syllable, eight-letter noun than it is to speak or write the three-syllable, eleven-letter adjective.

So respond with a “Huh?” the next time that someone says to you (quote) “It is a prestige product.” (unquote), and see what happens.

This is a popular statement in American English now.

For fun, I searched Google separately for (quote) “has a temperature” (unquote) and (quote) “have a temperature” (unquote) (each with the quotation marks, to avoid variations) and got about 589,000 matches and about 427,000 matches, respectively.

But to say that someone (quote) “has a temperature” (unquote) means nothing except for the negative connotation beneath its euphemistic form.

Someone usually says or writes (quote) “He has a temperature.” (unquote) to tell the listener or reader, respectively, that the subject of the sentence has a higher-than-normal temperature.

But the noun “temperature” by itself has no positive or negative value.

Can you imagine someone, such as a non-native-English speaker, first reading or hearing (quote) “He has a temperature.”(unquote) or (quote) “You have a temperature.” (unquote)?

The statement would be meaningless to such a person.

The noun “temperature” must be modified by an adjective to give it value.

Otherwise, you are speaking in euphemisms.

This is a popular statement in American English now.

For fun, I searched Google for (quote) “It is a quality product.” (unquote) (with the quotation marks, to avoid variations) and got about 30,100 exact matches.

But this statement means nothing except for the positive implication that speakers and writers want to give it.

Someone usually says (quote) “It is a quality product.” (unquote) to tell the listener that “it” is a high-quality product.

But the noun “quality” by itself has no positive or negative value.

Can you imagine someone, such as a non-native-English speaker, first reading or hearing (quote) “It is a quality product.”(unquote)?

This statement would be meaningless to such a person.

The noun “quality” must be hyphenated with an adjective to form a compound adjective that can indicate the value of the noun — in this case, “product” — that the compound adjective modifies.

In contrast to the inherently meaningless statement (quote) “It is a quality product.” (unquote), here are some meaningful statements:

• “It is a high-quality product.”
• “It is a low-quality product.”
• “It is a good-quality product.”
• “It is a bad-quality product.”

So respond with a “Huh?” the next time that someone says to you (quote) “It is a quality product.” (unquote), and see what happens.

This is a popular statement in American English now.

For fun, I searched Google for (quote) “You have an attitude.” (unquote) (with the quotation marks, to avoid variations) and got about 46,200 matches.

But this statement means nothing except for the negative connotation beneath its euphemistic form.

Someone usually says (quote) “You have an attitude.” (unquote) to tell the listener that he or she has a bad or negative attitude.

But the noun “attitude” by itself has no positive or negative value.

Can you imagine someone, such as a non-native-English speaker, first reading or hearing (quote) “You have an attitude.”(unquote)?

The statement would be meaningless to such a person.

The noun “attitude” must be modified by an adjective to give it value.

Otherwise, you are speaking in euphemisms.

An American wrote this sentence the other day in an email message to my wife.

Having lived several years in England, she told me that it looked odd to her.

She would have written (quote) “Photos are always welcomed.” (unquote) — with a “d” at the end.

In other words, she sees this as a passive-voice sentence (in which the actor is not specified).

The active-voice form of the sentence could be (quote) “We always welcome photos.” (unquote).

Given that speaking or writing in the passive voice requires the use of the past participle of a verb, the passive-voice form of (quote) “We always welcome photos.” (unquote) requires the past participle “welcomed” — with a “d” at the end.

I believe that the American tendency to drop the “d” from the past participle “welcomed” in (quote) “Photos are always welcomed.” (unquote) is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis.

It is simpler to say “welcome” (without the “d”) than to say “welcomed” (with the “d”). And, even if someone says “welcomed” (with the “d”), many American listeners will not hear the “d” and will write “welcome” (without the “d”) instead.

I was waiting in a pharmacy line the other day when I started thinking about the devolution of the phrase “prescription drug”.

Americans used to go to pharmacies to pick up “prescription drugs”.

But it is rare to hear any of them say that phrase today.

Now we call these drugs simply “prescriptions”.

But a “prescription” is what a doctor writes or makes.

So it must sound odd to many non-Americans to hear an American telling a pharmacist that he or she wants (quote) “to pick up my prescription” (unquote), when what the person actually wants to do is to pick up the drug, not what the doctor wrote.

The truncation, if you will, of the phrase “prescription drug” into the noun “prescription” is only the first step in the phrase’s devolution.

The second step comes in many American hospitals.

I was telling my brother, who has been an operating-room technician, about this devolution, and he said that many American hospital employees do not even call the drug a “prescription”.

No, they refer to such a drug by the noun “script” — the six letters in the middle of the noun “prescription”.

So there you have it: “prescription drug” devolved to “prescription”, which devolved to “script”.

I wonder what is next — a “scri”?

Do you need a laugh today? Go to Engrish.com.

My wife’s cousin’s husband (almost sounds like we are hillbillies, eh?) retired at an early age and now seems to spend all of his free time on the Internet.

This means that my wife gets tons of email from him — covering everything from conspiracy theories (No, I do not believe that the World Trade Center was bombed by the U.S. government.) to humorous videos (including my favorite: Evil Baby Eye).

Yesterday he sent to her several photos from the website Engrish.com, and every photo made us laugh!

The site accepts photos taken by readers who have spotted bad English on signs, labels, T-shirts, and other products from non-native-English-speaking countries.

Besides the humor — and there is a LOT of humor at Engrish.com — what I enjoy about the website is trying to understand how the translations into English became so mangled and twisted.

Some bad-but-humorous translations seem to be based on a non-native-English speaker hearing an English word enunciated poorly and converting it into writing such that the written form is an English word but not the same one.

For example, the photographed sign shown here refers to “groups” as “grubs”. If you squint your eyes and muffle your ears while reading and saying it aloud, you can see and hear how “groups” became “grubs”.

Other mangled translations seem to fall into categories such as these:

• omitting words (“Perfect Eye Remover”);
• choosing the wrong word (“The Yokohama Climax Hill”); and,
• translations that simply make you say, “Huh?!” (“Chocolate Puke”).

Beyond the photos, what makes Engrish.com especially funny is the comments from the site’s readers.

Many people say that dissection of a joke takes all the fun out of the joke, but those who become good at dissecting jokes become good at creating new ones.

I believe that this principle applies to mistranslations, too, and I could imagine that someone could write a master’s thesis or doctoral dissertation on how translations go askew from one language to another.

Anyway, even if you are not interested in the mechanics of how words get mistranslated but you enjoy mistranslations for their humor alone, then you will enjoy Engrish.com.

I heard this the other day while watching an instructional video.

Problem:
The speaker used the wrong adjective.

Explanation:
The instructional video was about Keyword Elite*, an absolutely awesome tool for generating keywords and optimizing the placement of advertisements on search engines.

I believe that the narrator of the video is Brad Callen, a genius when it comes to Internet marketing.

Brad was discussing how a non-native-English speaker very easily can misspell a keyword when searching for something.

He then picked on himself and said that he likely would misspell a keyword, too, if he were (quote) “not affluent in that language” (unquote).

I strongly suspect that Brad’s use of the adjective “affluent” where the adjective “fluent” was required was simply a slip of the tongue.

So I am not picking on Brad, who seems to be a native speaker of American English or perhaps Canadian English. I could not quite pinpoint the accent.

Instead, I believe that his gaffe teaches us two lessons:

1. It teaches us to lighten up when it comes to language mistakes. Anyone can make them — even geniuses. And you have to admit that being (quote) “affluent in that language” (unquote) is a humorous phrase!
2. It teaches us to have patience with non-native speakers of our language. After all, if someone as smart as Brad can slip up with his own language, then imagine how easy it is for a non-native speaker to use the wrong word.

Solution:
“… not fluent in that language …”

*P.S.
I have obtained a couple of bonuses related to Keyword Elite that I want you to have free right now! Even if you do not have a website now, and even if you do not advertise on Google now, I recommend that you get and save them for future reference.

BONUS #1: AdSense Arbitrage

   

In case you have never heard of AdSense, this is Google’s program for displaying ads on websites like yours.

I am sure that you have seen AdSense ads. They are typically text-based ads that appear in a square or rectangular banner on someone’s website.

A person with a website will put an AdSense banner on a page of the website as a way to display — or “serve up” — ads related to what appears on the page.

This helps the website readers, but it also helps the person who owns the site because Google pays the website owner every time that someone clicks one of those ads in the AdSense banner.

AdSense Arbitrage teaches readers how to maximize income from hosting AdSense ads on their websites.

Brad says that this book sells for upwards of $97 because it is THAT good!

I want you to have this book free, just for checking out Keyword Elite.

BONUS #2: Google AdWords Made Easy

Google AdWords is the complement of Google AdSense.

In case you have never heard of AdWords, this is Google’s program for letting people buy ads that appear in AdSense banners and that appear at Google.

I am sure that you have seen AdWords ads. Almost every time that you search for something at Google, you will see one or more AdWords advertisements in the right-hand column of the Google search-results page.

Anyone who has something to advertise can get an AdWords account, define an AdWords “campaign” (as Google calls it), and launch the campaign to display the ads at Google or in AdSense banners.

A Google AdWords ad appears at Google according to what the advertiser is willing to pay — known as the “bid” — and according to keywords that the advertiser chooses as the “triggers” for the appearance of the ad.

Similarly, an AdWords ad appears in an AdSense banner based on the bid and the keywords but specifically as those keywords relate to the context of the AdSense banner.

Google AdWords Made Easy, written by Brad Callen, teaches readers how to maximize income from their AdWords campaigns.

Brad says about this book, (quote) “I’m 100% confident in saying that this course is more comprehensive than ‘almost’ all of the paid Adwords courses on the market.” (unquote).

I want you to have this book free, too, just for checking out Keyword Elite.

If you would like to have these two books, then just tell me where to send them:

To prevent spammers from using the above form to generate unwanted email to people, I have to ask you to take two more steps:

1. Be sure to look in your email inbox for a message from me with “Response Required: Please confirm your request for information.” in the subject line.
2. Then follow the link in the message to learn more about Keyword Elite and to download the two free books.

Thanks, and happy reading!

This term has generated at least two plausible speculations about its origin.

Contrary to the first impression at hearing or reading the term, a ten-gallon hat does not hold ten gallons. Such a hat would best befit a clown, not a cowboy.

No, “ten-gallon” does not refer to the internal volume of the hat.

Instead, there are at least two possible origins to the term.

Both origins are from Spanish, both origins relate to distinguishing this type of hat from a sombrero, and both origins represent the effect of an outsider’s perspective in hearing a foreign-language term and corrupting it into something in the listener’s native tongue (in this case, English).

The first possible origin is based on the idea that a “ten-gallon hat” is for the upper classes, in contrast to the lowly sombrero for the lower classes. Upper-class cowboys were considered to be more gallant than commoners. The phrase “so gallant” in English is expressed as “tan galán” in Spanish.

If you “squint your ears” at the sound of “tan galán”, you easily could get “ten gallon” in English.

The second possible origin is based on the fact that a vaquero — Spanish for “cowboy” — would be awarded for cowboy expertise a narrow band, often braided, around the crown of the hat. Ten of these narrow bands on one hat represented the ultimate in cowboy skills. The Spanish word “galón” refers to such a band; “galones” is the plural of this word.

A non-Spanish-speaking, native-English-speaking listener could easily misinterpret “galones” into “gallons”.

The other meaning of “galón” is, in fact, “gallon”, so a native-English speaker with a knowledge of this primary definition of “galón” could easily interpret “diez galones” as “ten gallons” instead of “ten bands”.

I saw this on a website this morning.

Problem:
The past participle is a nonsense word.

Explanation:
I was researching which way a ceiling fan should turn in the winter versus the summer when I discovered this.

The full sentence was (quote) “In the winter, you will not feel any air being blowned to you since it will be pulled up to the ceiling. ” (unquote).

Admittedly, seeing the past participle of the verb “blow” as B-L-O-W-N-E-D is essentially humorous, but there is instructional value in discussing this blunder.

The verb “blow” has these basic forms:

• Blow — present simple, as in (quote) “The fan at top speed can blow the dust away.” (unquote)
• Blew — preterite, as in (quote) “He blew up the balloon.” (unquote)
• Blown — past participle, as in (quote) “She has blown it out of proportion.” (unquote)
• Blowing — present continuous, as in (quote) “The wind is not blowing.” (unquote)

A common English blunder for young children and for those who are learning English as a second language is to write or say “blowed” — spelled B-L-O-W-E-D — as the preterite or past participle of the verb “blow”.

In other words, the blunder is to add E-D to the present simple form because many preterites and past participles are formed in this way. For example, the verb “form” has “formed” — spelled F-O-R-M-E-D — as its preterite and as its past participle.

Here are examples of use of the nonsense word “blowed”:

• As a preterite:
  • (quote) “He blowed up at her.” (unquote)
  • (quote) “The wind blowed last night!” (unquote)
• As a past participle:
  • (quote) “She has blowed her chances.” (unquote)
  • (quote) “If you guys had not blowed the money in Atlantic City, you would not be begging me for a loan today.” (unquote)

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following (without the quotation marks) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

• “blew” — 19,800,000 matches
• “blown” — 33,100,000 matches
• “blowed” — 541,000 matches

This tells me that Web authors have used the correct “blew” or the correct “blown” versus the incorrect “blowed” by a ratio of 36.6-to-1 or 61.1-to-1, respectively, each of which is very good, but over a half million instances of “blowed” is nothing about which to brag.

Another blunder is to say or write “blown” as the preterite of the verb “blow”, as in (quote) “He blown it.” (unquote).

I had never heard or seen the word “blowned” until today. I suppose that it would be reasonable to add E-D to the end of B-L-O-W-N, if someone believed that “blown” were the preterite — because some past participles are formed in this way.

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following (without the quotation marks) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

• “blown” — 33,100,000 matches
• “blowned” — 86,400 matches

This tells me that Web authors have used the correct “blown” versus the incorrect “blowned” by a ratio of 383-to-1, which is superb.

Solution:
“… you will not feel any air being blown …”