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illustration by Jason Stout |
Two Zurich teens conversing in German caught my eye, probably since they were wearing Chicago Bulls baseball caps. My gaze locked on the long-sleeved T-shirt one of them was wearing. It was covered with MTV-inspired graphics and random splashes of garish color. On the back, written in block letters was: “Completely Switcher is Relax.”
Intrigued, I crossed the queue, hoping that the front of the shirt would provide a context for its garbled rear message. Instead, it read “Let’s Sporting!”
With my fries and a “Coke Light,” I took a seat. For the next 40 minutes I witnessed a bizarre phenomenon: dozens of items of clothing and merchandise adorned with words and phrases in totally meaningless English.
“Competition winning American tactics big standards division” read the backpack of a young Italian girl.
A pudgy, thirtysomething French Suisse walked in wearing a brand-name sweatshirt emblazoned with the phrase, “University of Athletic Sport.”
Moments later I saw not one, but two wannabe members of the “Genuine L.A. Traditional College Team.”
Later I wandered Bahnhofstrasse, the main shopping street. All around me I saw apparel sporting broken English phrases and references to American icons and sports teams. Many of the references were accurate, and many weren’t. I saw a sweatshirt for “Philadelphia University” and a heavily football-inspired jacket design for something called the “Alabama Beevers.”
This trend — identifying the wearer with some item of Americana — reminded me of a time not so long ago when, if you saw a friend wearing a Harvard shirt, it meant that he had at least been in Boston, and possibly even to the school’s campus in Cambridge. Today, all it means is that he’s been to Foot Locker.
Once you’re made aware of them, the fractured English phrases abroad emerge everywhere you look. They’re in Paris, Prague, Milan, and London. They’re on hats, briefs, bandannas, souvenir keychains, and beer steins.
By way of comparison, the current stateside trend in apparel decorated with references to sports teams, Disney figures, etc., seems linked to the “quality” (read: cost) of the garment. Poverty-stricken Chicago kids, living in the shadow of the Bulls’ stadium, wear $19.95, 100 percent wool, black-and-red Bulls baseball caps with the cardboard tags still protruding — to better ensure authenticity. The status comes from a cap’s fresh-off-the-rack newness. Overseas, American-flavored English words do the trick.
Over the final 18 hours of my trek across The Land of Neutrality, I compiled several examples of “old country” non-English used as a fashion statement, and here is what I saw:
An Izod-like chemise with an Anglo crest that read, “Tennis Cup for Singular.”
A T-shirt design featuring semaphore flags and the slogan, “Longitude Favor the Young.”
A windbreaker bearing the logo of the Oakland Raiders, stating inexplicably, “Rich Boy Company Fast Label That You Prefer.”
Could these abominations have been created by one company? And was it the same one which writes the technical manuals for Taiwanese electronic equipment?
By the time I reached the airport gate for my return flight, I’d devised a slogan-writing system of my own. I simply chose a few words from a basic flag-waving vocabulary list (including words like “Freedom, super, league, victory, All-American, active, California, shirt, classic, world, club, young, way of life,” etc.), and combined them in the most garbled way possible.
As I sat in a molded, fiberglass row chair in Zurich-Kloten airport, I mixed the words on paper randomly, checking to make sure they didn’t accidentally make grammatical or semantic sense. Among my favorite original phrases were “Race of Big Yachtings are Victor,” and “First Big American Car Shirting.”
When the efficient Swiss representative of American Airlines finally announced that our flight was boarding, I closed my notebook and grabbed my gear. But I stood up too late to beat to the gate a large tour group of seniors from Knoxville, dressed alike in matte athletic suits in colors that don’t occur in nature.
Wearily I got in line. Minutes later, the sea of silver hair parted, and there, printed in inch-high, raised letters, I saw the ultimate fractured English phrase on the back of a Dutchman.
The front: “Advanced Games University New Flying Baseball Certified Sporting Adventure Company.”
The back: “Let’s Having Fun.”
Yes! Let’s!
This article appears in May 16 • 1997 and May 16 • 1997 (Cover).