I’m an expat in Mozambique, and I’d like to share a little bit of this wonderful country with you in the form of our local “Engrish”, for lack of a better term. Sometimes business try to communicate to people whose first language isn’t Portuguese, which is the official language here. The result might be called Menglish, maybe, but I’ll just go with Engrish here. Here is a list of fun stuff:

Fun at the Water Park

The local “Adil” water park shares some goodness:

“We will not tolerate any offense against public morals, ethics and lack of bad behavior on the grounds of the park.”

That’s right. ethics are good, but bad behavior is better.

Resumé gems

Excerpt from a great cover letter (sent to 100+ organizations – To, not BCC):

Waiting for Your Excellency the greatest consideration and care to nurture more professional experience, hereby express their willingness to join in your workgroup.

Naturally closely followed by this, in case there were any lingering doubts:

English: Spoken and written fluently.

Also lifted from a CV:

Curso de Inglês no JEMES INGLiSH SCHOOL ΙΙ nivel;

We’d like to introduse herbly our company

Oh good. What does your company do then?

(Yes, it’s hard to read. The email was sent as an image.) It’s nice to know that the “trainnings” will be offered by world-renowned experts. Somehow I do hope that these industry and academia giants did not write this introduction letter. But fear not, we are in good hands:

That’s a relief, whatever it means. Ah, I see now that this message was brought to me not by the world-renowned experts but rather the company’s sales team:

Thank you! Sales Team! It was certainly “pleasent” to hear from you!