On the BBC One Graham Norton Show it was Taylor Swift versus John Cleese on British television where first Graham and then Cleese poked fun at Taylor’s love of cats. to be fair, Norton took the avenue of foretelling that Swift would one day have 17 cats and stage whispered “Here comes Taylor, crazy cat lady.” The Shake It Off performer replied that would be a few years down the road before that happened. After the joke he then moved on to show a picture of Taylor’s cat to John Cleese and the audience.
We westerners love to make fun of foreigners who have difficulty with the English language. This “mickey-taking” (English slang for making fun of) does not limit itself to making fun of the Japanese’s confusion about English and its non-logical methods. Also known as Engrish, which to me sounds a little insulting; I have decided that in the world of blogging there is another kind of “Glish.”
Spamglish, like its distant cousin, Japanglish has the same illogical application of nouns, verbs, pronouns, subjects, adjectives and tenses. The notion that there is a world of blog writers who don’t have enough of a command of the English language to spam properly tickles me. So, in my mind at least, I’ve created a new sort of language. One that is spoken and written in Spamglish.
I don’t know if I’m just easily amused or if I have a “cracked” sense of humour; but, I just adore spam comments. You know the ones I mean. The ones that akismet take and put in their spam folder in order to show how good they are at protecting your blog from unwanted sales oriented spammers.
Most of them can make me laugh until I cry. They are truly hysterical. I know that a contributing factor is that the spam comes from countries where English isn’t even a second language and they have to rely on Google Translate or other similar programs.
A lot of the time these “spam” comments start with the words “Hi, I do believe your website has browser compatibility problems.” This statement or the not too dissimilar, “I see you are lacking some factors on your site'” and the many variants of the same message make me groan and quickly empty my spam bin.
Some, though, are worth a read. They invariably make me laugh and wonder if the person writing the comment has editing problems or if they were inebriated or stoned while writing their “comments.”
Here are a few examples:
Excellent publish, very informative. I wonder why the other specialists of this sector do not understand this. You must continue your writing. I’m sure, you have a great readers’ base already!|What’s Taking place i am new to this, I stumbled upon this I’ve discovered It absolutely helpful and it has aided me out loads. I hope to contribute & help different customers like its helped me. Good job.
*This was from a Polish site…I think.*
your posts gives me motivation to keep on my intention to create a blog one day. thank you for all
and
i didn’t even see something like this before because of the scarcity of this type of information *Portuguese*
分析的很透彻，很欣赏你的看法，学习了 *Now this one is Chinese (basic Han, whatever that is) and it translates to – Analysis is very thorough, appreciate your views, learning* amusingly the page view shows an advert for Babylon Translator something they did not bother to use.
I have had a lot of other amusing comments all by “sales sites” and they vary. Some start as a sort of mangled congratulatory message. For example: “I used to really like reading your blog but now not so much”. Another one is: “You used to be expert at this subject now I think don’t have enough knowledge.”
Of course the comments are amusing by themselves but the blog post that they appear on usually highlights the comedic element of the comments.
I would like to think that the problem is just translation, but after reading a few young people’s letters (where they use “text speak and spell”) and the horrendous sentence structure – I know, I’m no champ myself – I am beginning to believe that the art of communication via the written word is a dying art. It also appears to be contagious.
Some spammers though are trying to appear legitimate with the elegant and downright flattering tone of their comments. I actually got halfway through an entire paragraph of praises when I realised that the comment was from a “sex aid” company. The blog post in question was one of my Quorn articles.
But my all time favourite has to be the last Portuguese comment I got today: haha! i agree with you! This was in reference to a book review I did on The Unlucky Lottery. This one at least “looked” like it could be a legitimate comment.
I guess that the more illiterate or garbled comments make me think of the character Manuel from Fawlty Towers (played to hilarious perfection by the English actor Andrew Sachs) whose attempts at communication in English were classic comedy. In my mind I see a score of Manuel’s all sitting in front of a laptop adding what they know are pertinent comments on blogs that they are attempting to spam.
Of course were it not for askimet and their wide spam catching net, most of these would be read anyway, but, because askimet have rounded all the “offending” spam into one easy to access folder it makes reading them less annoying and more entertaining.
Andrew Sachs as the lovable Manuel in Fawlty Towers.
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