Heaven help the poor little Chinese children who learn English from these:

You have to read all the way to the bottom of this page to get the full impact.

http://peer-see.com/blog/chumble-spuzz/2006/07/09/#comment-12205

:wow:

shouldn't make teaching materials for it.

I was once asked to review a book that purported to teach people Japanese. The trouble was that the Englishman who wrote it barely spoke conversational Japanese himself, so it was full of mistakes, really serious ones.

For example, it was clear from the English translation at the bottom of the page that he was trying to say "It's all right if they don't serve coffee."

What he actually had written in Japanese was, "I sure hope they don't serve coffee." The whole book was full of equally awful mistakes, some grammatical, some cultural, some just plain using wrong or outdated words for things.

My review was so scathing that the publisher wrote and apologized for the quality of the book. They sent me a copy of their NEW Japanese book, which was written by a young woman--who, it turned out from reading the book, had never been to Japan. I figured that out because her "cultural notes" were all full of the usual misconceptions plus some that I'd never heard before.

Then there was just plain low-quality stuff, like spelling "Buddha" as "Buddah," something any copyeditor should have been able to catch.

I wrote back to the publisher detailing the problems with the book.

Last time I looked, both books were still on the market.

:D

:rofl: