I’ve been having one of those weeks in which my brain is completely filled with tasks that must be completed, problems that must be solved and the looming feeling that both Christmas and my as-yet-not-really-organised holiday are closer than they should be. As you can guess, that translates to not much writing, and not even much inspiration – it’s one of those survival-mode weeks.

Inspiration where you don’t expect it

As most of you know, I teach English as a Second Language three days per week, and my students often provide me with inspiration through the discussions we have and even some of the language they use. But this week I had some unexpected inspiration from, of all places, the clothes they wear!

I’ve got a new Korean student in my class, whose name I won’t mention in case he ever stumbles across this blog, although he’ll probably figure out that it’s him anyway … in any case, he has a habit of wearing T-shirts covered in Konglish – Korean-English. That is to say, at a quick glance it seems to be English, but if you read it carefully, you don’t really know what it means. While the students were working on a grammar exercise yesterday I sneakily copied down the writing from his shirt. In fact it was all written in capital letters but I just find that too irritating to read, so here’s the upper and lower case version (spelling errors are as on the shirt, not mine!):

Energy.

Although you compleatly differ from me, you are the same consciousness will be centraized on the skin.

Beca.   Aid.

Young men are watched warmly. It is the grown. Up role which is helped so that they can shine like the sun.

Planet.

Use you see,

Yes, it really ended with a comma, totally leaving me dangling. But instead of laughing too loudly (because then a Japanese or Chinese guy will cackle in return at the bizarre Chinese characters we emblazen on our T-shirts or sometimes worse, tattoo onto our skin!), just read it as a poem. Isn’t it great? I love the young men who will shine like the sun!

It’s somehow heartening to think that you don’t have to use language correctly to allow it to have a positive effect. Perhaps it’s a good reminder that rules are made to be broken; you can start your sentence with “but” or even write just half-sentences and it could still sound beautiful. Well, it cheered me up good and proper and that’s what I needed this week.

PS: If unusually-translated English is your thing, then I totally recommend The Chinglish Files. The site is run with respect, explaining why the Chinese would have chosen particular English translations and offering improvements. Culturally-sensitive fun, so to speak!