English from a Different Angle
From an Air France magazine:
- In a Bucharest Hotel:
- The lift is being fixed for the next day.
During that time we regret that you will be unbearable.
- In a Leipzig elevator:
- Do not enter lift backwards, and only when lit up.
- In a Belgrade hotel elevator:
- To move the cabin, push button for wishing floor. If the cabing
should enter more persons, each one should press a number of wishing
floor. Driving is then going alphabetically by national order.
- In a hotel in Athens:
- Visitors are expected to complain at the office between the hours
of 9 and 11 am daily.
- In a Yugoslavia hotel:
- The flattening of underwear with pleasure is the job of the chambermaid.
- In a Japanese hotel:
- You are invited to take advantage of the chambermaid.
- In the lobby of a Moscow hotel across from the Russian Orthodox monastery:
- You are welcome to visit the cemetry where famous Russian and
Soviet composers, artisits and writers are buried daily except Thursday.
- Outside a Hong Kong tailor shop:
- Ladies may have a fit upstairs.
- In a Bangkok dry cleaner:
- Drop your trousers here for best results.
- In a Rome laundry:
- Ladies, leave your clothes here and spend the afternoon having a good time.
- In a Rhodes tailor shop:
- Order yous summer suit. Because is big rush we will execute
customers in strict rotation.
- A sign posted in Germany's Black Forest:
- It is strictly forbidden on our black forest camping site that
people of different sex, for instance, men and women, live together in
one tent unless they are married with each other for that purpose.
- In a Zurich hotel:
- Because of the impropriety of entertaining guests of the opposite
sex in the bedroom, it is suggested that the lobby be used for this
purpose.
- In a Czechoslovakin tourist agency:
- Take one of our horse-driven city tours -- we guarantee no
miscarriages.
- In a Tokyo bar:
- Special cocktails for ladies with nuts.
- In a Copenhagen airline ticket counter:
- We take your bags and send them in all directions.
- On the door of a Moscow hotel room:
- If this is your first visit to USSR, you are welcome to it.
- In a Norwegian cocktail lounge:
- Ladies are requested not to have children in the bar.
- In a Budapest zoo:
- Please do not feed the animals. If you have any suitable food, give
it to the guard on duty.
- In the office of a Roman doctor:
- Specialist in women and diseases.
- From a Japanese information booklet about using a hotel air conditioner:
- Cooles and heates: If you want just condition of warm in your room,
please control yourself.
- From a brochure of a car rental in Tokyo:
- When passenger of foot heave in sight, tootle the horn. Trumpet him
melodiously at first, but if he still obstacles your passage then
tootle him with vigor.
- Two signs from a Morocan shop entrance:
- -- English well speaking
-- Here speeching American.
Lawrence A. Crowl,
crowl@cs.orst.edu,
19 May 1995