Bennett Salmon

In the middle of changing my meds. Hypomania! While watching Mrs Columbo. Funniest show I have ever seen on television. Wonderful and marvellous until you actually have to try and think straight about something, like IP addresses.

Lingua franca

http://youtu.be/VIB7bMBFfaA?t=12m

At the twelve minute mark of this video - the link should take you there directly - you can see an example of English being used to straighten out a little communication difficulty (caused by a cheeky Chinese-speaking band member deliberately feeding a mistranslation to his Korean colleague :).

It's a goofy variety show taking place in, as best I can work out, four languages - Mandarin Chinese, the Changsha topolect (or dialect), Korean, and a small but recurring smattering of English - typical stuff, as is the raising of laughs by playing around with language. You'll see two sets of subtitles - the large, colourful Chinese characters are from the original show, and the English translation at the bottom has been added by a fan, bless them.

(I do believe Mandarin has absorbed the word "romantic" from English, rendering it as làngmàn. That's come a long way from Latin.)