"Yes, we want!"

Recently, a new commercial and campaign aired for the bilingual program in Madrid... in bad English... If that's not ironic I don't know what is!

The commercial begins with a girl saying in perfect English: "We want to learn another language." The scene changes and there are a dozen children on a basketball court and they scream: "Yes, we want!" The scene then changes to some girls who say, "We want to speak and read English" and the group says: "Yes, we want!" and so on. This campaign is also featured on the radio and buses... Upon being initially heard, some people thought of the Obama campaign, Yes we can. However, there is a difference. This slogan, headed by the campaign the government is using to promote the bilingual schools, is gramatically incorrect.

Yes, we can is correct because it uses a modal verb (like must or should), and can be used in short responses, just like an auxiliary verb (to do, to be). However, "Yes we want" lacks a direct object and is therefore incorrect English. What the slogan should have said was, "Yes we do," which would have been the proper response/agreement to the statements: "We want to learn another language," "We want to speak and learn English" etc.

The objective of the commercial was to promote the bilingual program in Madrid which, similarily to the bilingual initiave in Andalucía, provides the public schools with a great opportunity to learn English from native speakers. So the question that has arisen for public school parents is if this commercial, which costed over 2 million euros to create, is grammatically incorrect and no one caught the mistake before it hit the air, are our children learning bad English in the bilingual schools?

Many Spaniards are afraid that this campaign, "Yes, we want," has ruined the image of the public school bilingual program. Parents are saying these campaigns are not what children need to learn good English. More is explained in this article in El Pais.

However, as my co-worker Dani pointed out: Increíble, no sé si será intencionado, pero no deja de asombrarme que se intente promover la enseñanza bilingüe con un slogan con errores gramaticales. En fin, cosas del marketing!!!

Otherwise known as the common saying, "there is no such thing as bad press." Touché.