Mind Your Language

And things that are hard to swallow

Anyone who has grappled with learning a new language will be aware of the many traps and pitfalls an unsuspecting student may fall into. Or you may fare better with the newly spoken words but are not so hot when it comes to writing them down. Through the nineties and naughties I travelled extensively through Asia, especially India and Indonesia. I remember some of the tourist menus and shop signs where the use of English was, occasionally, a tad eccentric.

Sometimes it isn’t a problem with the language but just a clash of values, or slight differences in word meaning between cultures.

In the west we value free range eggs and are prepared to pay extra for them. Perhaps in Goa battery farming was still part of an aspirational modernising programme hence this sign I drove past. It was either that or they had a deep and wicked sense of irony.

The Infant Jesus Battery Chicken Farm.

To emphasise the point, the word ‘Battery’ was surrounded by flashing light bulbs. Goa was still Portuguese until the sixties so there remains a large Catholic presence. The sign is an odd juxtaposition of the sacred with the ill conceived modern.