please be expected

[James Harbeck]

>Just a guess -- a native German was thrown by a translation from "bekommen"
>into "expect", and landed in "be expected". "Bekommen" is a problem word in
>both directions in German-English translation.

I'm fairly confident there isn't a single German
speaker working at that Mövenpick. It's in
downtown Toronto, and the staff are in the
majority East Asian, with the balance being
whitebread Canadian. So either it's an issue
between English and an East Asian language (there
are a few possibles among the staff) or it's from
a native speaker, perhaps a merging of something
like "you will be expected" with "please be
prepared".

Given that there are ~13,000 Google hits for
"please be expected" (in quotes), and many of
them are on sites that are altogether anglophone,
I think either explanation is possible in this
case; more to the point, it seems a manifestation
of a budding new valence for "expected" (or
perhaps for "please", or both) in some English
usage (forced-formal in a business context,
perhaps).

James Harbeck.

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