What this blog is for and about



I also offer personally-tailored, individualized English conversation practice (including etiquette) and coaching in writing techniques. Finally, I edit texts such as magazines, business proposals, memorandums, emails so they are presented in English which does not embarrass you or your organization. For further details, please mail me at: language.etiquette@gmail.com

Remember: all pictures can be expanded to full page size by clicking on them.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


10 June 2012

Master class #3: the Peking Hotel makes a salad of its grammar


In the brief notice above for the Manhattan Grill in the refurbished Peking Hotel on Mayakovskaya Square, there are several small points which should have been straightened out by Mitchell’s Elite Editing Services.

     - No need to have the name in inverted commas as if it is a quotation.
     - The name should not be hyphenated.
     - Is it a Grill or a Restaurant? There is no need for both.
     - In the text the first sentence should start with “the”.
     - I think they mean “authentic”, not “original”.
     - “Grill-house” should not be hyphenated.
     - “Ready to offer its visitors” is awful. A restaurant has guests or diners, or even customers, but not “visitors”, as if it were a museum. And reporting its “readiness” to sell food sounds as if there are times when no food is available there, which I doubt.
     - To talk of “refined dishes” sounds silly in English, as it implies that there might be such things as “coarse” dishes—which is possible in a roadside cafĂ© or a builders’ canteen. But why would the Peking Hotel feel the need to stress that it does not serve that kind of food? Also the way it is put, with “but also” implies that the “salads and snacks” that precede it are not “refined”.
     - “Freshest meat”: one would certainly hope so!
     - “Fish and also seafood”. Fish is seafood.

     I would offer this fair copy:

The Manhattan Grill is an authentic American-style restaurant which offers snacks and salads, as well as full meals and the freshest seafood.

3 comments:

  1. Dear Ian, you have not yet seen the Aeroflot website (I mean the English version), for instance:
    http://www.aeroflot.ru/cms/en/before_and_after_fly/carry_on_baggage
    You may see more of this website, but be sure to take some sedative medicine before!

    ReplyDelete
  2. On holiday with my daughter in Spain, the menu of a restaurant in Madrid invited us to sample the delights of "Them Salad Austrias". This convulsed us with laughter. Why should it be so funny? I don't really know - but maybe it has something to do with our scouse roots, as a common feature of the regional language there is to insert inappropriate demonstrative adjectives (as splendidly lampooned by Harry Enfield's scousers), so that we hear "He's gone to that London".

    ReplyDelete
  3. On holiday with my daughter in Spain, the menu of a restaurant in Madrid invited us to sample the delights of "Them Salad Austrias". This convulsed us with laughter. Why should it be so funny? I don't really know - but maybe it has something to do with our scouse roots, as a common feature of the regional language there is to insert inappropriate demonstrative adjectives (as splendidly lampooned by Harry Enfield's scousers), so that we hear "He's gone to that London".

    ReplyDelete