Thursday, September 25, 2008   1:57 PM

Divided by a common language

Despite my best attempts to become disgustingly multilingual, living and working in a globalized 24/7 interwebbed world means I still end up having to interact with people in places I've never heard of who would no doubt be more at home communicating in languages I've also never heard of, but restrictions on my cranial capacity mean we end up by default settling on the lowest common denominator, the language of Shakespeare and its bastard offspring.

I would thus like to take the opportunity to present to you, my faithful readers, an extract from an online "chat" I had the inestimable pleasure of participating in earlier today during the course of execution of my duties towards the furtherment of global capitalism, and inviting you to revel in the glory of the language which has clawed its way up from a minor northern European dialect of Old German to become the de facto inofficial lingua franca of this planet.

does it possible for us to make excel sheel if we listing

bcz i have copy in my excel sheet

but it show "reallocate tab

r u getting what i mean?

To which my response (somewhat paraphrased) was: "No i r not getting what u mean".


Posted in Odd Stuff
Comments
in ur aim, distortin' ur language
Posted by: john turningpin | 2008-09-27 04:51
Now that's an idea, LOLspeak as a global language standard.
Posted by: ThePenguin | 2008-09-27 09:27
It sounds like the poor guy used a translator engine to write the message. I don't think any human can be that incomrehensible, even if they don't know the language and just string words together using a dictionary.
Posted by: Auberginefleur | 2008-09-29 07:48
No, I am afraid this was actual live English from someone in the kind of country which counts the nominal ability to speak English amongst its more important "exports". It's not that I'm expecting perfectly-formed prose, but sometimes I am amazed about how little can be conveyed by so many words... (bangs head against desk)
Posted by: ThePenguin | 2008-09-29 12:29
its clld txtn nu lngo 4 mdrn yoof no caps no pnk2ashun so u cn rit how u lik its ok u c

Bore da!
Posted by: mummy penguin | 2008-10-04 15:20