Having travelled extensively, I have often been refreshed by the novel uses of English I have come across. It seems to me that English, in spite of its sometimes arbitrary rules, lends itself to a multitude of unexpected uses.
The native English speakers are the first to admit this. There are numerous examples of the English taking a benevolent delight in the way those funny foreigners treat that bulwark of civilisation - The English Language.
Most native English speakers however, would be unwilling to admit that for example the language in these two advertisements for palm reading from India and Thailand, is correct English. They would point at the misuse of adverbs, lack of definite articles and confusion of tenses. And yet no one would claim that they were unable to get the message; someone wants to sell palm reading services.
This raises a question: Who decides what is correct English? And on what grounds? After all, there are some 350 million native speakers of English, ranging from Canada down to the Falklands, across to Australia and via India back to Old Blighty. But the languages they speak, even if mutually comprehensible, can hardly be said to be the same language, yet most people would term it English.
Perhaps it is time to admit that under the heading of English there are several different languages, just like we say Chinese to express the notion of the hundreds of different languages spoken in China. The English language, which used to be relatively homogenous, has today diversified so far that it is doubtful whether a Brooklyn dude would be able to understand a jackaroo from the outback. It would in all likelihood be easier for a Swede and a Norwegian to converse, and yet there are few that dispute that they speak two different languages.
We should learn to accept that what is today called varieties of English, are not so much varieties, as they are languages in their own right. This would make these advertisements into less of quaint little expositions of insufficient education and more into the first expressions of a new language emerging.
A recognition of this linguistic fait accompli would also make it easier to answer my first question: Who decides what is correct English? Once we thoroughly rid ourselves of the notion that correct English is spoken only at Eton and Cambridge, then we become free to appreciate all the varieties on their own merits.
Language should not be judged on the distance from its roots, but on how efficient it is in communication. And no one can deny that these advertisements, in spite of taking grammatical liberties, are a pretty success in that respect.