Cathay Paciic

Maybe typo of the year..

[Leosghost]

Cathay Pacific missed an F on one of their own planes..
[bbc.com...]

Our local hyper market ( or their signwriter* ) missed an S out of the name of our town across it's entire fleet of vehicles for hire..
They have yet to correct all of them after two years..

* adhesive lettering, 20 cms high ..an abomination unto nature..

[engine]

Oh dear. Perhaps they were standing too close.

[lucy24]

Oh, gosh, I had no idea Cathay Pacific was still in business. I thought they'd gone bust years ago, what with delectable practices like Rolls-Royce engines and after-dinner brandy in tourist class.

"There should be a blank gap in between letters if it was a real mistake I think."

What an amazingly dopey thing to say. I hope the speaker isn’t responsible for anything remotely approaching typographic decisions at his own airline.

[NickMNS]

This comes as no surprise. I traveled to Japan in 2005 and saw plenty examples of misspelled English signs. Not on airplanes though. After speaking with others it appears to be common place throughout East Asia. Just do an image search for "Funny Japanese signs" the internet is full of great examples. Bill or TorontoBoy could chime in as they have far more experience in that part of the world.

Who knows this could have been a publicity stunt.

[keyplyr]

Cathay Pacific missed an F on one of their own planes..

I guess they don't give an F.

[LifeinAsia]

Just another example of corporate cutbacks- someone, somewhere, probably decided that Fs were too expensive.

[Leosghost]

This comes as no surprise. I traveled to Japan in 2005 and saw plenty examples of misspelled English signs. Not on airplanes though. After speaking with others it appears to be common place throughout East Asia. Just do an image search for "Funny Japanese signs" the internet is full of great examples.

Cuts both ways ..the internet also has very many examples of tattoos ( some on some very famous people ) using Asian symbols ..
in particular Kanji*, where the errors ( by either the tattoo artist, usually "western" ) or the client , usually "western" ( either typographical , or just using completely incorrect symbols, are hilarious, embarrassing, or both..

The French are often spectacularly bad at using the correct English word, ( such as a "parking" for where you park your car as opposed to what you are doing with the car when you park it ) or spelling, or pronouncing the English word correctly..example many say they ride 'arley davinson motorcycles..Dropping the "H" when saying Harley is normal for French, but why the substitution of "n" for the second "d" in Davidson is a mystery to me..

The English and Americans are just as bad with the French language.."fox boys" for "faux bois", I have a lot of French domain names, many of them are registered via a US company, the pronunciation of them by the customer service reps in the USA is usually horrific ( but to be fair to them they do say "I'm sure I'm going to say this name badly" ) ..fortunately they use copy and paste in correspondence .. :)

I also see many mistakes in French on French signs, and in French forums ( and in many English forums, including this one ) ..but that is down to the degeneration of English in both the UK and the USA , and of French in France..All down to appalling teaching and the subsequent illiteracy..and, as it is now considered to be incorrect or impolite to correct the errors in spelling ( not talking about typos here ) or misuse of words by others..Those making the mistakes remain, unaware that they are doing so..

In my opinion, that does them no favours..

I always think when hearing about "funny signs" in English in Asia, about the saying, often attributed to the Navajo..
" Every time you point a finger in scorn—there are three remaining fingers pointing right back at you.”
[quora.com...]
We can be amused when non native speakers of any language "get it wrong", but we should not be too scornful, as we would probably commit far greater errors in their language..

Or even in our own language..
[603copywriting.co.uk...]
;)

*Kanji may , or, may not be , both the singular and the plural form of this word, I eagerly await to be informed.

[Leosghost]

Ah..Muphry's law strikes .. :) this paragraph should have read..

I also see many mistakes in French on French signs, and in French forums ( and many mistakes in English, in English forums, including this one ) ..but that is down to the degeneration of English in both the UK and the USA , and of French in France..All down to appalling teaching and the subsequent illiteracy..and, as it is now considered to be incorrect or impolite to correct the errors in spelling ( not talking about typos here ) or misuse of words by others..Those making the mistakes remain, unaware that they are doing so..

In my opinion, that does them no favours..

[lucy24]

“The English speak French even worse than the French speak English, which is quite an accomplishment” or, if you prefer, “. . . something that is almost impossible to do.” I’ve yet to find the locus classicus for this utterance, so I don’t know if there is a canonical form.

I’m pretty sure Japanese doesn’t have a grammatical plural, and am even surer that Chinese doesn’t.

[Leosghost]

I've been trying to picture what they meant by "a blank gap"..as opposed to a "non blank gap" or a "gap with something in it"

"There should be a blank gap in between letters if it was a real mistake I think."

this is the nearest "thing" that comes to mind..
[xkcd.com...]

btw..on that BBC page , after the items from twitter commenting on the Cathay Pacific error, is a typical BBC "horror"..a link to another article with the words ..
"Musk to fly Japan billionaire around moon" ..Japan billionaire..not Japanese billionaire..
The BBC does that a lot..."Italy man says".."China woman spoke", "India ship sinks" etc ..
A r r r g h h h !

Do they not know that such misuse of the English language is enough to make kittens eyes bleed..

L ... :) Thank you for the information concerning Kanji :)

[Leosghost]

^^^ ' missing apostrophe ... ;)

[lucy24]

I've been trying to picture what they meant by "a blank gap"

I assumed he meant there should be an F-sized empty space, as you get in dead-tree books when one piece of type is slightly out of alignment. (In ebook errata, I record it as “letter ‘F’ invisible”.) It is not perfectly clear to me why he thinks this is more likely than if the “F” were simply omitted. F is for Forgotten, kind of thing.

"Italy man says".."China woman spoke", "India ship sinks"

Is it possible someone finally got it through to them that “Californian” is not an adjective, and now they’re hypercorrecting elsewhere?

[topr8]

>>Funny Japanese signs

Cathay Pacific are based in Hong Kong not Japan though and there are plenty of native english speakers in Hong Kong.

[brotherhood of LAN]

Their supplier was unsuccessful in giving a flying F...

[graeme_p]

"Musk to fly Japan billionaire around moon" ..Japan billionaire..not Japanese billionaire..
The BBC does that a lot..."Italy man says".."China woman spoke", "India ship sinks" etc

Journalists are obsessed with short headlines.

Cathay Pacific are based in Hong Kong not Japan though and there are plenty of native english speakers in Hong Kong.

and they are controlled by Swire whose HQ is in London these days.

but that is down to the degeneration of English in both the UK and the USA

Very true.

Another to add to your list of causes: dictionaries deciding that they are "descriptive not prescriptive", ignoring the fact that people want to use dictionaries to get correct spelling and meanings.

[NickMNS]

ignoring the fact that people want to use dictionaries to get correct spelling and meanings.

No won use dictionaries four spelling, that's what spell-check is fur!

[RhinoFish]

I'm guessing their painting guy just lost his ocus that day.

[lucy24]

people want to use dictionaries to get correct spelling and meanings

What’s the expiration date?