And by “manglish” I mean the sort of English that is mangled, not the sort of English that’s spoken by a man.
From a newssite this morning:
“Some experts are therefore cautiously optimistic that – if Omicron turns out to be less lethal but more contagious and dominant than the Delta variant – the new mutation may actually be a blessing in the sky.”
The headline does in fact have the expected "blessing in disguise
What manglish have you seen recently?
I got an email around Black Friday with the subject “Queue the Great Deals”. I don’t think they intended to be advertising long lines, but maybe I’m out of touch.
Presumably they meant the deals are lining up, not the people taking advantage of them.
One term for this kind of mistake is an “eggcorn”.
Cool.
A personal peeve that makes me grind my teeth is every idiot who says “wallah!” instead of “voilà!” Unless they’re praying to god in Arabic, it’s a gross mispronunciation.
It’s the typical sound merge like cot/caught or Mary/marry/merry. All the same to me. I do spell differently, of course.
Would you prefer they say “Viola!” ?
I believe the expression they were thinking of is “cue”. Like giving a theater performer the cue that it is time to get on the stage. Give the bargains their cue that it’s time to be purchased. (Yeah, anthropomorphization.)
I had to look this one up. “The V is sometimes not heard”.
Besides the possible Muslim prayer, “walla” is a word for a street merchant in some places. The more annoying version for me is pronouncing “voila” in English, “voy-la”. If you can’t speak proper French (and who can?) just say, “Ta-da!”
I started a thread elsewhere about “the elf in the room.”
And, speaking of eggcorns, I worked with folks who said, “I was being sour-castic.” Another used “wimp-sical” to mean timid.
Y’all need to come south. There not enough time left in my lifespan to tell you guys all the egg corn I hear, here, hair, her.
It’s not an eggcorn, but Sr. Weasel mixes up common expressions all the time. My favorite is when he said “we have to put our butts to the metal and get it done.”
I don’t know if there is a name for that.
A malapropism, perhaps.
“Blessing in the sky” may well have been misinterpretation-by-robot of someone’s dictation. Which is why you always need to proofread before hitting send.
Try watching a YouTube video with auto-subtitles turned on. You’ll see a lot of things like this.
I think you meant: “ye ole sea olive sings lye kiss”.
I just heard an NPR news guy try to get his mouth around “the Omicron variant.” It came out “Omni-crone.”
I’ve heard “very close veins” for vericose veins, which are visible superficial veins.
My Wife and I have two Trivial Pursuit games. The very first one and one purchased about two years ago.
The questions on the new game are worded very strangely. Is this due to being produced overseas? Or perhaps a recent high school graduate in the US?
Don’t know. My Wife and I gave up on the new one, because the questions are so poorly worded.
“What the hell is the question”?
I say Viola. On purpose.