Manglish 101, by Tom Dinard

Manglish 101, by Tom Dinard

Since I am on a business trip in Taiwan, I felt it appropriate to take all 27 of my FlipCollective readers and all 40 of my Twitter followers along with me. On a walk through this city this morning, which is actually your evening, or maybe your tomorrow afternoon, I found myself awash in the buckling humidity, the sometimes-overpowering smells and the always-vibrant culture of the cosmopolitan city of Taipei.

And, as in all Asian countries, the butchering of the English language on storefront signs otherwise known as Manglish.

Here are some early highlights.

There are definitely baby aplenty in this part of the world, and they all need toy. And I know that when my son was a baby, he had aplenty toy. He also was baby aplenty for my wife and me to handle, but we could get him to calm down with toy. So it all makes sense.

Is this redundant? I’m not quite sure. I mean, I know I’m usually pretty amiable, but I’m not usually very stylish, so I’m not sure what my outlook would be. An “amiable stylish outlook,” however, is something we should all strive for, I think. And if you want to shorten “amiable stylish” for Twitter purposes, you can just call it “Amish,” which is also very fitting.

There is some serious philosophy going on in this paragraph, and I’m not quite sure if it’s Confucian or Taoist, but if we, as a society, paid heed to it, we might not live such stressful lives. Then again, I’m not sure it’s “simple” for someone to just pick up and move to the British countryside. And I know for a fact that it’s definitely not “simple” at all for someone to just pick up and move to the British countryside Australia.

Yes, so I do I. And I hate forgot. And I absolutely despise never knew in the first place.

Alright, here’s the situation. You’re stranded in the Sahara and your canteen has run out. There’s no oasis in sight. Guess what? It’s a perfect time to close your eyes and hope that Kate Beckinsale pulls up in an air-conditioned double-wide that has a Tempurpedic mattress, a fridge full of Hamm’s and a couple of fresh buckets of KFC.

To finish off our introductory course of Manglish, we leave you with what I believe is a telling commentary about commerce in the 2010s and what it means as part of a larger socioeconomic-geopolitical stratum. Thank you for your time. We’ll see you for the graduate seminar later this week.

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