To expect a cafe to be able to spell cafe au lait?

[Orangeanddemons]

On a picture on wall in said cafe. Spelt caff iau latt. Seriously.

What is wrong with these people?

[MrsTerryPratchett]

Oxford your friend is just reading it in the wrong language. It is Le Belle (pronounced Lay Bellay) in Italian, meaning The Beautiful Ones. Possibly. Or they can't write French.

[Beastofburden]

Lol reminds me of when Raymond Blanc opened his cafe called Maison Blanc. All the townies clustered round going " It's LA Maison, it ought to be Maison Blanche". Er, no, it's like Maison Dior or House of Fraser, it's the blokes NAME FFs.

Oxford, just a gentle tease to make Fanjo feel less alone :)

[Beastofburden]

Viking, I love it. Guerrilla grammar.

[PlotTwist]

beastofburden my dd1 was horrified when I whipped out a pen and corrected a sign on a pub door that read "This is an entrance, your not allowed to smoke here!"

My grandmother used to do this ALL the time when i was little, I swear she carried a pen for this purpose.

[Beastofburden]

LOL I have never done that myself!

[AKAK81]

I spent some time, to my childrens' horror and to the detriment of my thumb nail, scraping that apostrophe off.

Oh the irony

[AKAK81]

Sorry double post!

[Catsize]

Indeed Akak. [Shock]
Not sure the irony was intentional.

[Catsize]

Buggeration.

[Catsize]

As for split infinitives...

[spiderlight]

There's a very very naice ice-cream shop near us that has a permanent sign on its wall offering about twenty flavours, including 'Pisstachio'. I pointed it out to the manager but he looked at me as if I had two heads.

[Saffyz]

YANBU. Would be even better if they just put "coffee with milk" though!

And while we're at it, panini is a plural, so you can't buy one panini.

And latte isn't a LAR-tay, it's a LAT-teh.

[Collywibbles]

A fairly posh hotel near us offers "luxury accomodation" on their website! Makes me slightly twitchy ....

[pasdellyeuxunquenous]

Conversley, there is that old joke where the man goes into a pub and everytime he asks the bar maid for a quickie, she slaps him - in the end he has to show her that all he wants is a quiche, here on the menu . . .

[SanityClause]

There is a cafe near me which has a sign on e window saying "Sandwiches Bagettes Rolls Bagel"

Is the plural of bagel, bagel, like sheep? Or perhaps they couldn't afford the extra "s".

[Bryna]

We have a sign near us that says 'Chickens keep dogs on leads' . Lots of amusement for dds!!

[Bryna]

Sorry for double post! First time I've posted so not sure what happened!!

[areujoyful]

Bryna my dh and I know that sign well, it makes us chuckle everytime we drive past it to walk our own dog! That's assuming it is the same sign, of course!

While this is a fantastically funny thread, I must say though, somewhat in defense of the current generation of waiters and shop assistants, is that most children in state schools aren't taught proper grammar. I know I certainly wasn't! My sister (along with the rest of her class) was taught English grammar, by her French teacher, in her French lesson, so they could learn French...totally ridiculous!!

[LynetteScavo]

They only had squirts cream for the scones too

I would find that bloody offensive.

I think my dyslexic 8 year old may have written the sign in the OP, so I could over look that.

I'm loving pisstachio.

[WanderingStar1]

My DD's Yr 1 class just sent out a letter headed 'Spelling' which explained how we should help our children with their new spelling homework. Unfortunately, it contained the words 'Practice / Practicing' AS A VERB three times! . I imagine the spellcheckers don't pick it up as that's the US spelling, but it's not the first time I've seen this in newsletters, and I think I (and my pedant pants) will have to say something this time....... I feel awful as the teachers are lovely and so are the admin staff (I don't know who types these things) and I know they'll all hate me if I flag it, but I don't think I can turn a blind eye any longer.......! Aargh!

[Catsize]

wandering, you owe it to mankind to act now...

[GladitsnotJustMe]

I was once served 3 "Paganinis" in a cafe... One by one, she announced each "paganini" as it came out. By the time the last one came I wanted to eat my own hand.

I loved her and now always call them paganini's (with appropriate apostrophe of course!)

[Beastofburden]

areu we weren't taught grammar either, and I left school in 1980. We were kept in line when we got to work by fierce older people in management.

The problem may be it is now my generation that are the management.

But like many wearing pedant pants with pride, I did modern languages. I'd be interested- how many of my fellow pedants here are linguists?

Perhaps we are not pedants at all, just sensitised to language?

[Yonihadtoask]

I got an A in my English Language 'O' Level - many years ago. However, I don't recall being taught much grammar then.

I learnt how to use apostrophes when I went on, years later, in word processing lessons.


So, unless English language teaching has improved since the '80s then I don't hold out much hope.

[Beastofburden]

The only grammar I was taught was in my German lessons, and that's probably because with 16 options for "the" you have to understand the grammar. I did A and S level English and grammar was never mentioned.