Ridiculous English signs

English speakers sometimes like to amuse themselves with ridiculous English signage from around the world. www.engrish.com is a typical example and I have to admit that there is some pretty hilarious stuff there. At the same time, I can’t help feeling that this kind of humor is adding insult to injury: first, we make the whole world speak English and then we laugh at how poorly they do it.

So, I thought we should institute a Ridiculous-English-Signs-Challenge on Language on the Move, where the joke is not at the expense of some poor speaker of English-as-an-additional-language whose English may not be quite perfect. Rather the joke on the Language on the Move Ridiculous-English-Signs-Challenge is at the expense of an English-speaker, quite possibly monolingual, whose English grammar is perfectly ok but who is meaning-challenged, quite possibly as a result of over-exposure to the language of marketing and management.

I’ll start the Language on the Move Ridiculous-English-Signs-Challenge with this sign from an Australian university. The writer/s must have thought that calling an establishment of this nature (a modest cafeteria with all the charm of a Soviet diner) “staff café” could bring the charge of un-Australian elitism against them and so, to guard against that terrible danger, modified “staff” with “everyone” and created this inadvertent oxymoron. It would have been enough to look around a bit to notice that this bright 21^st century corporate-identity sign with the charming French accent on the e looks nothing but ridiculous in the dreary 1960s concrete blocks and mesh-wire fencing surrounding it.