Badly Constructed English Sentences

We talk a lot about English, context for translation and clear communication on our blog.

On the funnier side of things, badly constructed English can lead to some comical misinterpretations. If you carefully listen to people talking you will hear many silly comments. You’ll nearly always know what they mean, but it’s not what they say, it’s how they say it.

Yesterday, I was listening to a lady on the radio discussing her morning working on the family farm and managing her children. She came out with this very simple sentence: “When I get up in the morning, I feed the chickens and my kids and then I take them to school“. We know what she meant, but the image of her bringing the “chickens and kids” to school makes us giggle.

Groucho Marx used this type of English misinterpretation to his advantage in a joke used to positive effect in his famous one-liners: “I once shot an elephant in my pajamas. What he was doing in my pajamas I’ll never know!”