It’s that time of year again. Grammar Nazis, this might hurt.
The tourist season is upon us and is still in full swing, and the grammar is speaking (or not, as it happens) for itself.
We’re back with another in the Lost in Translation series. If you’d like to read the rest in this linguistically rich series, feel free to click here, here, here, here, here, and here. Yes, there is a lot of material out there in various Croatian tourist destinations, and we’re highly unlikely to be done just yet. With tremendous thanks to the Facebook groups t(i)jedan polu pismenosti and Jezicni FAIL – Nepismenost nasa svagdasnja and their numerous faithful contributors from across Croatia and the wider region, as well as some of the tongue-twisting wonders we’ve been sent, let’s get started.
Angela Rezo
If nothing else, it grabs your attention. At this price without the viagra, just tomato soup on its own would be a little steep.
Bruno Hendija
Piće sa strane (literally: drinks on the side), hence ”sider”. Strongbow, a drink which is now often more expensive than lager and has re-branded itself into the drink of the better class. With all its new fruity flavours, this golden liquid has come on leaps and bounds from its days of being an alcoholic beverage once sold very cheaply, primarly to British working class men (and even women) who liked to engage in a good old brawl in the pub on a Sunday evening after eight or nine too many. Of course, the idea here was obviously cider.
Goran Krnic
The actual translation from Croatian to English would be ”Please keep an eye on your things [property] because we won’t be held responsible should something go missing”. What this certainly doesn’t say is that this business won’t be ”respoding” for someone else’s white wash. Either way, if you can take one piece of advice from this, then it’s not to mix whites and colours.
Ivana Softic
You’d better watch out.
Matija Jurcevic
A nice dinner awaits the Pearson family, which consists of four people. Everyone else need not bother coming.
Nikolina Demark
Price list. Price list. You won’t be winning anything here, sorry.
T(i)jedan polu pismenosti
Halloween came early in this charming establishment.
T(i)jedan polu pismenosti
Okhay. Todorić took all the big ones to London with him.
T(i)jedan polu pismenosti
Anyone up for some swiming araund Zadar? You need to make a private reservation so hurry up, there’s a surcharge for the extra M in swimming, too.
T(i)jedan polu pismenosti
Not sure about not ”teaching” enithing, but English certainly wasn’t taught. Diraj means touch, just by the way, not teach. The message does make me nostalgic for my own formative years in education and this sign would have done well as my secondary school’s motto instead of some ”inspirational” Latin message nobody understood.
T(i)jedan polu pismenosti
Anyone up for some panakes?
T(i)jedan polu pismenosti
Parasols and sun loungers, also commonly known as sun umbrellas and beach lies, are indeed what we Vitamin D deprived, rain soaked Northern Europeans and Scandinavians spend all year dreaming about. Not bad prices here, either.
T(i)jedan polu pismenosti
In addition to this fine machine and even more precise sign, the government is also out of other in many respects, too.
T(i)jedan polu pismenosti
Ah, duhovnost, to have spirit, soul, depth of character, and wit. If a girl is a duhovita osoba then she’s a person with a good sense of humour, it doesn’t necessarily say a lot about the size of her chest, as this sign may or may not suggest when read out loud.
T(i)jedan polu pismenosti
Cold deposits. The stuff of dreams. A hladna/topla plata is a cold/warm platter of food for X amount of people. What this restaurant would appear to be offering at first sight to the naive eye could be a down payment on a house, the answer to your cash flow concerns, an offer to pay your water bill or even the potential answer to Croatia’s worsening economic issues. Too bad. And there’s yeast in it.
T(i)jedan polu pismenosti
Bears everywhere, once again. We wrote an article not so long ago about the disappearance of Zagreb’s native bears, seeing as the city has so many places named after them (Croatian: medved). We now know what really happened to them. It’s a pity, but at least there’s a wide range to suit all tastes.
T(i)jedan polu pismenosti
Not a bad dish, and one cannot help but wonder if this beef carpaccio is sentenced with better grammar than the menu presenting it is.
While we love to pick apart the bizarre world of spelling and grammar in translation, we also love to look at some of the mistakes foreigners tend to make when speaking Croatian. If you’d like to learn more about that and tip the balance again, click here. In the meantime, stay away from Google Translate, and enjoy your many bears and cold deposits in Croatia this summer.
