Quote:
Originally Posted by DougF English is a crazy language. |
I seldom read this thread but today I got an e-mail about a post and had some spare time and decided to have a look. DougF's post hit my funny bone and I just had to tell you all about an event I experienced back in 1981. I was in Japan negotiating a contract. As my translator, the Japanese negotiator and I were walking into the local hotel, I laughed about a motorcycle parked there with the word “Lead” splashed across the fuel tank in a clearly professional logo. I pointed at it and said, “who in the world would want to buy a ‘Lead’ motorcycle.” The Japanese negotiator responded with, “that’s not a lead motorcycle, that’s a ‘lead motorcycle’” using a long “e”. I told him that no one really fluent in English would interpret the name of something to be an adjective if a noun interpretation existed. He responded with, “Oh... That’s probably why they didn’t sell in the U.S., we had wondered what the problem was”.
Have fun -- Dick