h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm so glad you finally got this through the mills of God. "Schlafen Sie guet miteinand" as my Swiss friends used to say at the end of the evening if more than one of us were taking our leave.

Thank you for commenting. The way language spills over into culture and the whole thing about misunderstandings is quite fascinating and, although I hate being embarrassed by misunderstandings happening, I can't forget them and will no doubt carry on collecting them.

Another variant came up last night when I met some English friends and one told us about lots of words that have smuggled themselves into the English spoken among her colleagues which are just not right. When she comments, she is told "But they say that in Brussels" ("they" presumably being lots of different nationality of contributors speaking English as their lingua franca).

Examples she had were "a scientific" - for a person who does things scientific (why can't they say "scientist"?) and the pronunciation of accompanying with the "y" being pronounced as "eye". Material for an Entry on Euro-English. Or what would you call the English spoken by foreigners which no English person would dream of speaking? (foreigners of all parts of the globe, not just Europeans)