Now, I don’t want people to think I’m making fun of non-native speakers of English. I’m aware that if I were to go to China (the place of origin of the business owners), I’d likely be just as error-prone as anybody else, and damnit, I hope people would find them funny too. So, yes, some of the errors I’ll talk about are rather funny. However, I think they’re all of greater Linguistic interest than just “Haha! He’s learning a language entirely different entirely different from his own!”. Here’s just one example:

So, the other day, I went out to dinner with my girlfriend at the local hole-in-the-wall-yet-oh-so-good chinese restaurant. There, I happened to notice something fascinating on the menu board. Written in bold dry erase marker, displayed prominently, was the heading “A la crate“.

Now, this is interesting for me in several ways. First, it’s handwritten, so it’s not just an idle typo caused by some minor keyboard mistakes. Second, this menu board has been up for several months. That means that either nobody’s noticed, or they don’t see a problem. Also, it’s dry erase, so changing it wouldn’t be an issue. Finally, it’s not the error I’d expect.

“A la carte” is an expression which means that something can be ordered separately (on the side), from the French “à la carte” (‘according to the (menu) card’). It’s pronounced “ah lah cart”. Now, given the strange spelling (compared to the pronunciation), I wouldn’t be shocked to find “a la cartay” or “ala kart”, but “a la crate” doesn’t sound like the expression at all.

I’m not sure precisely what train of thought would lead a non-English speaker to make that switch. Perhaps the writer had never heard it pronounced, and simply remembered seeing it someplace, then copied it from memory. Perhaps he or she wasn’t experienced with the English writing system and was just copying it from a menu (given that the posted shift schedules are in some variety of Chinese characters, this wouldn’t shock me).

There is another option, though. Maybe they’ve just got a crate of green beans out back that they’re looking to sell. Considering how good their green beans are, I think I’d definitely be interested in making an “a la crate” purchase.

Tagged with Conventional Linguistics, Language Humor, Language Usage, Speech and Grammar Errors, Words, Phrases, and Idioms | Leave a Comment


Hello everybody,

I’ve just finished the first week of classes here, so my apologies for the lapse in posting. However, there’s always more interesting language to explore.

This week, I was asked about the origin of the term “tongue-in-cheek”. For those unfamiliar with the term, it’s an adjective describing a thing or action as less-than-serious, or indicating that the speaker was kidding for a certain remark. Here’s an example of its use (involving a good deal more sexual harassment than one might expect) from the EnronSent Corpus:

oh, you don’t know the half of it. Look for baby #5 from the baby machine to be conceived by next x-mas. Oh, yeah! She has repeatedly dropped hints that she would like to have another one. Mark it down.

See my typical tongue-in-cheek response below.

“WOW! I’m sure you’re not having any pre-marital #$%! as to save that “special moment” until after the ceremony.”

Charming, no?

Moving on, it was surprisingly absent from my normal sources for etymology (the study of word origins), OS X’s built in dictionary, and my pocket etymology dictionary for Palm OS. However, Google (and by association, Wikipedia) prevailed:

Origin of the term

The term first appeared in print in the book The Ingoldsby Legends by Richard Harris Barham, published in 1845. The author uses the term describing a Frenchman:

He fell to admiring his friend’s English watch,
He examined the face,
And the back of the case,
And the young Lady’s portrait there, done on enamel, he
Saw by the likeness was one of the family;
Cried ‘Superbe! Magnifique!’ (With his tongue in his cheek)
Then he open’d the case, just to take a peep in it, and
Seized the occasion to pop back the minute hand.

There you have it. Single paragraph that spawned a phenomenon.

Now, the curious part is why “tongue in cheek” means what it does. Here’s the only explanation I’ve found:

It’s believed that this saying was created by an English humorist in the 1800s. Most people have difficulty saying anything with their tongue in their cheek. But some people actually do stick their tongue against the inside of their cheek after saying a joke to show that they’re only kidding.

Personally, I’ve never seen anybody do that, but hey, whatever. If you’ve got a better idea why this means what it means, feel free to leave a comment!

I’ve got my own theory, though. Try talking with your tongue in your cheek. It didn’t work, but your attempt was likely funny to the people standing around you. See, tongue-in-cheek is funny.

Tagged with Conventional Linguistics, Language Usage, Site News, Words, Phrases, and Idioms | 1 Comment


Not long ago, I discussed the increasing usage of “their” as a gender neutral English pronoun, as in “every student was on the edge of their seats during lecture.” I’d highly recommend you go back and read the original post if you haven’t, it really explains the issue more thoroughly.

In that post, I touched on my belief that “their” would soon be the de-facto gender neutral pronoun, and pointed to the fact that it’s on a billboard as a good sign. Well, I’m quite happy to say that I’ve got more evidence in favor of that. Generally, when a new generation (or those respected within that generation) begin using language in a certain way, acceptance to the mainstream isn’t far behind.

I’ve stopped using the facebook as some of their policies and alliances really, really creep me out. However, I recently spotted (while on a friend’s account) the following message in their creepy little “News Feed”:

Holly has changed their profile picture.

Now, I understand their motivation, as they likely don’t even want to try guessing a person’s gender (or using their database to do so) for every update. However, the fact that they’ve used “their” rather than “his or her” is pretty interesting. Same situation as I discussed before, but much more blatant.

I hope that now that the Facebook is hailing “their” as an acceptable genderless possessive pronoun, more and more young people will start to pick it up and use it and its counterpart, “they”. Now we just need to get Snoop Dogg and Bill O’Reilly using it, and society will be all set. Hey, a man can dream, right?

Tagged with Conventional Linguistics, Language Change, Language Usage | 1 Comment

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