イントロ

Hi, I’m Sarah, welcome to The Daily English Show.

I’m sure you’re all familiar with sites that have examples of funny English. There are a few of them out there and I came across one the other day that I hadn’t seen before called engrishfunny.com - and I thought it was pretty funny.

One of the signs that I found the most hilarious was a sign outside a tower somewhere that said:

The ragamuffin, drunken people, and psychotics are forbidden to enter the Tower.

So, what is strange about that sentence?

I think the funniest thing is the choice of words such as ragamuffin. Ragamuffin an old-fashioned word for a person dressed in ragged, dirty clothes. And it’s not the kind of word that you would use on a sign like this.

When you write rules on a sign, presumably your aim is to get people to take the rules seriously so that don’t have to do things like kick people out because they’re causing trouble.

So, in order to get people to take the sign seriously, you need to choose words with the right tone. And this can be hard if you’re just picking the words out of the dictionary. For example ragamuffin might have the right meaning … but it doesn’t quite have the right tone. So if you use the word ragamuffin like that then I think people would be more likely to laugh at your sign rather than take it seriously.

If I was to rewrite that sentence on that sign, I would probably write something like this:

People who are intoxicated, wearing offensive clothing, or behaving in an antisocial manner, will be refused entry to the tower.







click here

The site I recommend today is called Not Always Right.



Have you heard the phrase: The customer is always right?
There’s probably a version of the same thing in your native language.

Of course that doesn’t literally mean that the customer is always right it just means you’re supposed to act as if they are so they buy more stuff. And, as you know, if you’ve ever worked in a job involving customer service, customers can be very stupid.

And this site has stories of funny things that customers have said.

Here are a few examples.

#1

Customer: Do you have a picture book of dinosaurs?
客：　恐竜の写真ありますか？

Me: Sure.
私：　もちろん

(We walk to the dinosaur books and I show him many books with various sketches and paintings of dinosaurs.)

Customer: No, not pictures…PHOTOGRAPHS. Photos of dinosaurs, please. Where are those?
客：　いや、絵じゃなくて恐竜の写真が欲しいの。　ありますか？

#2

Tech Support: So you’re having issues picking up your wireless signal … how many connections are there?
テクニカルサポート：　無線LANに関する問題ですね。　今シグナルはいくつありますか？

Customer: There’s two other networks but only one bar on each … those are my bad neighbors.
客：　二つあるけど両方ともアンテナ一本しか立ってない。　これは悪いご近所さんのシグナルだ。

Tech Support: So the good signal isn’t there? Hmm, your modem might be off; can we check that?
Customer: Modem?
テクニカルサポート：　信号がしっかり届いているものはありませんか？　あなたのモデムがオフになっているかもしれませんので、ご確認いただけますか？

(Tech support troubleshot that for a while before realizing the guy had never paid for internet before and didn’t own a modem.)
（テクニカルサポートはすでに、この男がプロバイダに支払わないで、別の無線LAN信号を盗んで接続しているのを確信している）

Tech Support: Sir, when you said the other connections were your ‘bad neighbors…’ Did you mean that the good neighbor with the good signal isn’t there?
テクニカルサポート：　悪いご近所さんとおっしゃいましたが、では良いご近所さんは良いシグナルの事を指しますか？

Customer: Oh, he moved?
客：　あー、あの人、引っ越しちゃったの？







STICK NEWS

Kia ora, in Stick News today Anpanman has set a new Guinness World Record for the highest number of characters in an animated franchise.


Soreike! Anpanman それいけ！アンパンマン is an animated TV series which has been on the air in Japan since 1988. The series is now the verified Guinness World Record Holder for the highest number of characters in an animated franchise with 1,768 characters. Apparently producers actually submitted a world record application for over 2,000 characters but some "characters" were not approved by Guinness.

And that was Stick News for Wednesday the 22nd of July.
Kia ora.

today's STICK NEWS pictures







Word of the Day

Today’s word is intoxicated.

Intoxicated means drunk. It’s a formal word so you might see it in a news report or on a sign but you wouldn’t usually use it in conversation.







conversations with sarah

　Guess what

Sarah
Guess what.
ちょっと聞いて。

Will
What?

Sarah
I went to the post office today …
今日、郵便局に行ったんだけど・・・

Will
Wow, that was a fascinating story. Tell it again.
ワォ、その話メッチャ面白いね。　もう一度話して。

Sarah
I haven’t finished yet. Stop interrupting!
話の途中で邪魔しないで！

Will
I didn’t interrupt. You stopped!
邪魔してません。　君が話しを止めただけ。

Sarah
I didn’t stop, I paused. It was like a comma not a full stop.
止めていません。　ポーズしただけです。　読点で決して句点ではありません。

Will
OK, whatever … carry on.
オーケー、面倒くさいやっちゃなー。　いいから続けて。

Sarah
No.

Will
What do you mean, “No”?
ノーってどーゆー意味？

Sarah
I don’t want to tell you anymore.
もうあなたに話したくありません。

Will
Why not?
なんで？

Sarah
Because now it will sound boring after all that build up.
このやりとりのせいで、せっかくの話しがつまらなくなるから。






サラのメモ：
The customer is always right. - Origin





Show 1098 Wednesday 22 July
The Daily English Show
http://www.thedailyenglishshow.com/

テーマ: 英語・英会話学習 - ジャンル:学校・教育

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