I've decided since I have and will butcher every foreign language I come across, I should at least offer some advice to those who mess up good ol' mother English. Simply because people are quick to correct and laugh at me. By comparison, English is very difficult to learn and one thing I've noticed is that all ESL folk make the same mistakes. Here are my two current favorite examples of common mistakes:
To all of the gracious people who work in a foodservice industry as a server, when your entire inventory of chicken as been completely depleted due to prior distribution and consumption it's appropriate to say, "No More Chicken" or "Out of Chicken." It's not okay to say, "Chicken Finished." That just makes it sound like the chicken is washing up and going home for the evening after a long day of dishing out the slop. "That's the end of my shift, people. This big pecker has left the building."
To all of the scamming cabbies in Bangkok, when you are lying about the functionality of your meter, it's fine to simply say, "Meter No Worky" or "Meter Broke." Under no circumstance has your "Meter Had an Accident." If that were really the case, then all of the meters in all of the cabs in all of Patpong have collectively wet themselves and short-circuited. Highly doubtful.
Alright then, that's the English lesson for the day. Now it's time for me to go garble through some Thai greetings.
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