Language Chaos Roundup, #1–10
Something to lift your mood on a Monday
Those who follow me in the Substack app or website will know that I am doing a series of Notes called “Language Chaos”. These are pictures of things that, in one way or another, represent funny or unfortunate uses of language.
For the benefit of the e-mail based who only read my Posts, not my Notes, I have decided to do a periodic roundup of the Language Chaos entries, a bit like a comical coffee table book. Here is the first installment.
Please note that if you want to read the full text of the Note, you will have to click on it. This will open the full Note in your browser. Also, if there is more than one photo included, you will only see the first one here; to see the others, you will need to click on the Note.
I hope that at least one of these will give you a little lift!
—Gregory
ok so this post is making me think about the thing i'm most afraid of when it comes to moving abroad, which is how deeply and passionately i love the english language. if i can't speak the native language well enough, how will the people know how funny and charming and clever i can be? :) how can we share in language play, which is one of my favorite parts of life? how can we laugh at dick and his pics if we don't both get the joke? and so can i truly know someone and can they truly know me if we don't share proficiency of language? then it's like, what does it even mean to know someone? we already project all sorts of crap onto people even when we do speak the same language - we assume all of our experiences and understanding of a word are shared by the person we're talking to and we're both operating from the same definition but i've actually found in my work as a couples therapist that it's rarely true - the same word means vastly different things to each person, even though we share a technical definition in the language. so then what happens when one or both people are not proficient in each other's languages? it all becomes an ontological conundrum if i think about this too much, which leads me down a rabbit hole of fear of feeling disconnected/lonely in a country where i can't express myself using english. (whoops that was a long thought!)
I kept a piece of packaging from a toilet tissue brand in Turkey called "Glob."
Also, when I lived in Turkey, the disposable diaper brand was "Popi" a little too close to "poopy" for me.