Living Spoof
Accidents of Language: A page from the past.
Translations into English occasionally go slightly awry, giving an off kilter nuance to a simple word or phrase. I'm sure we've all encountered this in the the odd, and very often amusing translations of instructions into English.
Colloquialisms are also particularly difficult for non-native English speakers. I remember a vendor once tried to convince me to buy his product because it sold like "hot-dogs." Another one once said, by way of consolation, "Don't worry, it's small peanuts." I love these little absurdities and the phrase, "small peanuts" is now forever incorporated into my vocabulary.
Simple efforts to be straight forward also lead to unintentional accidents of language. Sometimes something wonderfully funny happens when telling it like it is, no frills, straight out.
I see this most often in business names. Again, a lot of stores with these sorts of names are located in ethnic neighborhoods. I'm pretty sure the names are simply a result of very literal translations into English.
Here's one of my favorites, the Decent Convenient Store, located on Clark Street just north of Foster Avenue in Chicago, IL.
I feel certain it was related to the now defunct restaurant on Devon Avenue which was named Pretty Good Food. Unfortunately, I never got that photo, so you'll just have to take my word for it. And, unfortunately I also missed the chance to document the Alien Travel Agency, before they changed their name to the Aline Travel Agency. I think they wanted to be frugal and used up the letters they already had when they made that change.
I do, however, have photos of the House of 220 Volt Appliances, also located on Devon Avenue in Chicago. Perhaps they refer people to the Adequate Electric Contractors.
I've only kept a mental list of these up until now, but it would be fun to try to document and update occasionally with more photos of local businesses.
