Monday, June 21, 2010

Bien Machin


Las Machinas son bien machin...

Maquinas, de hecho máquinas, pero me hubiera conformado sin el acento.

The "Machinas" must be a new kind of machine... if they had used máquinas that would have been the machines that actually exist, or at least maquinas without the accent.

Monday, March 8, 2010

- No hay Salida
- Se Prohibe la Salida
- Salida Prohibida

- either of this would have worked better

Prohiba exists but as conjugation of the verb to forbid: prohibir

example:

- "El que prohíba la salida" (note the accent on the i)
- "He who forbids the exit"

Found this one in a parking lot of a hospital, who has actual translators and interpreters and their nurses go through bilingual training...

Sunday, December 7, 2008




Do you want some popis? For Spanish speakers, the written form of puppies would be spoken as "poo-pee-es" but popis would be the literal pronunciation of the word, which is probably why they wrote it that way. In Spanish most words are pronunciated like they are written, even accents, which many English speakers find confusing, help to indicate where you should put emphasis in a word.


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"Popis" supongo se refiere a cachorros que en realidad se escribe "puppies" pero su pronunciación se acerca más a "popis". Por la gran diferencia de la lectura a la pronunciación, muchas personas que quieren aprender el inglés se les dificulta pues en español no hay tanta diferencia, como se escribe se dice, incluso lo acentos, que los angloparlantes encuentran confusos, sirven para indicar en que parte hacer enfasis en una palabra.

Tuesday, July 1, 2008


I took this one from the label of a universal absorbent. It's indicating it can be used as cat litter, which is fine, but the Spanish translation is wrong. It says "cat's bunk bed". I don't have a cat but I doubt any cat likes to sleep on litter. They didn't even bother to translate "cat" which is "gato".

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Ingles: Arena higiénica para gatos - Traducción al español: Litera del cat (?????)

Sunday, June 29, 2008

Introduction to this blog

Welcome! this blog is about misspelled words on signs around the streets that I have found. I don't mean to embarrass people or make anyone feel bad, I just think it's kind of funny and hopefully you will too. I'm certainly not perfect in spelling and grammar but I do have some experience in writing so I do enjoy the "correct" (or shall I call it official for the social linguists?) use of language.

I will also show pictures of signs in Spanish but I will explain. Feel free to send pictures at denisefixcat [at] gmail.com

This first picture of the blog I found on a restaurant window:


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Traducción literal: Contratar una señora, hablar buen Ingles. Obvio que la necesitan!!!

Espero no ofender con este nuevo blog que he decidido enfocar al uso "incorrecto" del lenguaje, tanto del ingles como del español, que son los dos idiomas que yo conozco y en los que tengo algo de experiencia escribiendo. El lenguaje se aprende y se vive. Este anuncio lo encontré afuera de un restaurante. Si tienen alguna foto con lenguaje chusco o curioso mandenla a denisefixcat [arroba] gmail.com