i flought to chicago

A community college teacher in Maryland has been collecting delightful gems of the Manglish language for many years now, and a Baltimore Examiner columnist has published several of them in a recent column. (via fark.)

Here's one, in which a student explains his absence from class in a note:

“I was absent on Monday because I was stopped on the Beltway for erotic driving.”

Sounds like fun...

Here's a few more gems, and there's many more here.

• “The person was an innocent by standard, who just happened to be the victim of your friend’s careless responsibility.” • “Society has moved toward cereal killers.” • “Romeo and Juliet exchanged their vowels.” • “Willie Loman put Biff on a petal stool.” • “Another effect of smoking is it may give you cancer of the thought.” • “The children of lesbian couples receive as much neutering as those of other couples." Or, when asked to use the past tense of “fly” in a sentence: “I flought to Chicago.”

The funny thing to me isn't just the mangling of the English language, but the utter lack of thought put into some of these. (And before you get all high and mighty about community college students versus large university students, i must say that i personally encountered lots and lots of examples of idiocy like this both at Front Range Community College as well as at CU-Boulder.)

Here's a couple of winners:

• “Benjamin Franklin discovered America while fling a kite.” • “Christopher Columbus sailed all over the world until he found Ohio.”

I also found this online dictionary section that lists commonly misunderstood/misspoken phrases that is amusing. "A blessing in the skies" being one of my personal faves.

I believe that children are the future.