Being Americans, we just assume that everyone on the globe speaks American English.
But apparently, when you’re spreading the Good Word, you don’t take any chances, as exemplified by this sidewalk sandwich-board display I cameraphoned on 42nd Street earlier today. It contained Christian religious flyers, translated into a few dozen languages. What I found to be the most amusing part: The only misspelling in the whole lineup? “Englishn”.
Go see the embiggened version on Flickr. And for completeness’ sake, here’s the row-by-row list of all the languages represented. I realize there’s probably no particular rhyme or reason to it, but I find the resultant grouping of disparate tongues interesting nonetheless:
First row: English, French, Arabic, Hebrew, Urdu
Second row: Armenian, Farsi, Afrikaans, Chinese, Bengal (sic)
Third row: Creole, Croatian, Czech, Albanian, German
Fourth row: Dutch, Latvian, Georgian, Estonian, Burmese
Fifth row: Cambodian, Greek, Tibetan, Hungarian
Indian dialects: Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam, Marathi, Punjab (incomplete; I didn’t get a clear look at all these)
Category: New Yorkin', Photography, Wordsmithing
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