Friday, September 28, 2007

fake polite in spanish


rough translation of this photo from Guatemala: please "don't" enter this bathroom

My favorite thing about this is this story supplied by photographer Kent, who is also a friend of mine: "This woman thought I was taking a picture of her, and since I didn't know Spanish, she didn't understand that I was actually more interested in the sign on the bathroom door behind her."

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't know if this is true in Guatemala, but in some places quotation marks are used for emphasis...so this would be okay.

Again, though, I don't know what the deal is in Guatemala.

Love this blog, by the way.

bethany said...

I've never heard that about spanish in my five years of education. Also somebody debunked the idea that that's true about german. So if somebody comes up with a language in which this is the case in standard writing, I'll listen. But probably still read it as sarcasm, because that's funny.