Back right now yesterday
Tuesday, October 30th, 2007
I’m back from having been away, as the Dutch say. While waiting for my luggage yesterday, I had this Dunglish bit staring at me in the face repeatedly. Call it my last vacation picture or my “Welcome back at Holland” picture. (Yes, that mistake was deliberate.)
I don’t have a picture, but a story of some reverse Dunglish. In Montréal where I was on vacation, I visited a T-shirt shop that sold country logos. The one for the Netherlands was an odd version of the Dutch football team lion (a cross between the KNVB and the Postbank lion) and instead of “Nederland” (the country) it read “Nederlands” (the language). It was the only country with a mistake, and I left without pointing it out.
What’s really wrong with this picture? The bad use of the present tense. The use of “right now” commands the present continuous (or progressive) and not the simple present. A very basic mistake. “His” should be in capitals as well and I would have written this bit differently, but then that would be work.
