Most people miss out on a lot of language humor simply because of the way the human mind is set up. Our minds work so well that we can adjust for most errors by either filling in the missing parts or compensating for a poor construction. Editors, however, spend so much time with the written language that they develop "editor's disease" and find themselves editing almost everything they see, read or hear. As a result, editors often see or hear things that most people miss. Once such incident happened recently, and I just have to share it with all who share this linguistic disease.

It started a few months back with a television commercial for language lessons from a company called Rosetta Stone. In their original ad, the announcer begins, "Are you one of the millions of people who think they can't learn a foreign language?" It's a common error most people will miss, and not very funny, but it doesn't make sense. Who are "they" whom you think can't learn a foreign language? Why would you care? Most people would simple correct "they" in their minds and make it refer back to the singular, original "you". It happens all the time, but it is odd coming from a company selling a product to teach language. You just expect them to hold themselves to a higher standard. Apparently, someone pointed that out and the commercial was corrected. The correction, however, contains an even worse error, and this one is funny.

In the corrected commercial, the ad now begins, "Are you one of the millions of people who think you can't learn a foreign language?" If you have editor's disease, you might be surprised to learn that there are millions of people out there who think you can't learn a foreign language, and you might be one of them. Oh, sure, most non-diseased people would understand what was meant and simply make the corrections in their heads, but most, good, diseased editors got a good laugh off that one. On the other hand, it might just be a good sales ploy. After all, the pressure of proving all those millions of people wrong, (including oneself), might just be the impetus needed to get a potential client to fork over the cash.

Now, don't get me wrong. I may be diseased, but I know my language is in no way perfect. I fall victim to the traps and bad habits almost as often as other people do. Nonetheless, I love the opportunity to laugh at another's faux pas just as I would laugh at my own. We all learn from our errors and I am sure Rosetta Stone is learning from theirs. Personally, though, I am anxious to see what they come up with next!

Learn more about this author, Stan Dyer.
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