wronglish

The heyday of the word manglish was in the 1980s when there were even a few published collections of contemporary examples of the kind of thing that we should all try to avoid.  Advocado for avocado, for example.  We seem to be less obsessed with mangled English these days so that today Manglish would more commonly be understood as the Malaysian equivalent of Singlish. 

 Examples of manglish were often taken from the English on packaging produced in countries where English was not widely spoken, but they could be homegrown as well and certainly included the mixed metaphor.  Aquapuncture for acupuncture, and antipasta for antipasto are manglish, but so is the pronunciation [aks] for ask, and so is the mixed metaphor he buttered his bread and now he has to lie in it.

 A new word that seems to have taken over where manglish left off is wronglish.  Again this is specifically the kind of error that people make when English is not their first language, particularly in translating from their first language to English.  A sign in Japan says Extraordinary female Toilet, but what they meant to say was Temporary female toilet. A menu says that the sponge cake is a cake that beats the egg, adds flour sugar and honey and bakes it with the oven.  This is wronglish at its finest.

 But, like manglish, wronglish also covers the mistakes that English speakers regularly make. A slither of cakeinstead of a sliver of cake. Up and Adam.  For all intensive purposes instead of for all intents and purposes.

 Who knows why we have switched from manglish to wronglish.  Perhaps the compounding of wrong and English is more self-evident than the compounding of mangled and English.