Come Again? English So Bad, Even Americans Furrow Brows

Being a student of language and literature, I tend to enjoy noticing quirks of print and mangled phrases. In the states, these aren't too hard to find, but often are of the boring variety, such as formatting foibles or homonym issues. Of course there are countless grammar jokes to play on the your fellow citizens, such as suggesting that your local supermarket change its express line sign to "16 items or fewer"...then coming in the following week and telling them that it should actually be "16 items or less"...then finally coming back to argue that it would be more reasonable to make it 10 or 20 items...16 is not a very round figure, after all...

Naturally, being in this part of the world lends itself to a more amusing set of observable language mix-ups. This is especially true in the more commercial aspects of my days in both Kuwait and Iraq. For the aspiring capitalists in this area, nothing is better (in their minds) for sales than English labeling. Their eagerness to wield the commercial power of the language, coupled with a strong deficiency in terms of grammar & syntax, never ceases to brighten my day.

Here are a few examples I've come across so far:

In the dining hall, I've noticed that the napkin packages advertise "Family Fun Napkins! For Families that Enjoy Fun" - While I do appreciate having napkins around, especially with finger food, I hadn't really associated them with so strongly with fun.

From an odd-looking portable speaker set (from a company that doesn't seem to exist anymore): part of the description notes that the speakers are "magnificent enough" - which is good, because you wouldn't want them to be sub-magnificent while at the same time getting magnificent-plus would just be classless.

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