I’ve been travelling Korea recently. In my travels, I’ve found many kinds of English errors on business signs and government buildings.
The mistakes I’ve seen include the following: spelling, grammar, word order, punctuation, and sentence structure.
I decided to take pictures of the errors that I see. Hopefully readers can learn what mistakes English-speaking foreigners may see. Let me know if you want to see more of this kind of content!
Here’s my question for you: can you spot the error below? Please look at this image:
Notice the English on the left side: “time to healthy”. There is a problem here.
The correct English is: “time to be healthy”.
Although this is the correct answer, it is actually not proper English, and is actually an expression used in more colloquial English. Let me explain how this works.
In proper English, full sentence structure is required, unless you are giving a command or a question. Proper sentence structure requires:
Subject + Verb + Object.
In the phrase “time to be healthy”, we actually have two objects connected by “to be”.
The full sentence should be “it is time to be healthy”. “It” is the subject, and “is” is the main verb. The word “time” is the object. “To be healthy” is an extension, which explains more about the object.
If the sentence is “it is time”, the sentence does not have any specific meaning.
Therefore, “to be healthy” is explaining what the object “time” is supposed to be.
However, in business ads and colloquial English, we can actually shorten the sentence form. “Time to be healthy” is actually a kind of expression, meaning “from now on, try to be healthy”. It is advice, written as an expression.
If you look hard enough, you can find English mistakes everywhere.
Keep learning and I will see you in the next post!