Careful when aglicising your message

Advertising campaigns can sometimes go very wrong if those responsible for them don’t do the necessary checks to see that their slogans can’t be misconstrued in some way. This is especially true when a foreign language is used.

In Spain, one of the largest supermarket chains is Eroski. They are based in the Basque Country, but they have outlets in every large town and city across the country. Eroski is currently running a campaign that promotes the fact that you can save money by shopping with them, and in the current economic climate, that is a message that is working well for them.

However, Eroski have chosen to Anglicise their message in a rather strange way by adding “ing” to the end of the Spanish verb for, “save.” That word in Spanish is “ahorrar”. While most people here can’t understand English, they mostly understand that the “ing” on the end of English words signifies a doing action.

With this in mind, you can see that the new Eroski advert of, “We Love Ahorring,” while making some kind of sense to Spanish people, is rather strange, to say the least, to those of us who understand English, especially in the way this hybrid word is pronounced.

This becomes even funnier when you realise that this new advertising slogan is currently emblazoned on the windows of each and every one of nearly 1,000 supermarkets right across Spain.

Regards,

John Coutts (currently living in Extremadura, Spain, and regularly shopping in the local Eroski without laughing out loud).