Engrish
Engrish refers to unusual English originating in Japan, and often by extension other East Asian countries. The term itself arises from the ethnic stereotype that Japanese people often confuse the English phonemes "r" and "l", since the Japanese language has one alveolar consonant in place of both. The word is not used in Japan, as the actual Japanese word for the English language is eigo (wikt:英語).
While the term may refer to spoken English, it is more often used to describe written English. Engrish can be found in many places, including signs, menus, and advertisements. Terms such as Japlish or Janglish for Japan, Konglish for Korea, Singlish for Singapore, and Chinglish for China are sometimes used as well.
In popular culture
Engrish features prominently in Japanese pop culture. Many popular Japanese songs and television-show themes feature disjointed phrases in English amongst the otherwise Japanese lyrics. Japanese marketing firms helped to create this popularity, and have subsequently created an enormous array of advertisements, products, and clothing marked with English phrases that seem highly amusing or inexplicably bizarre to those proficient in English. These new Engrish terms are generally short-lived, as they are used more for fashion than meaning.
Engrish was frequently found in many early Japan-produced video games due to poor translation. One well-known and popular example of Engrish in pop culture is the video game translation phenomenon "All your base are belong to us", which also became an Internet meme. Engrish is considered distinct from improper translation, where a phase is translated into a completely different phrase between English and Japanese in order to account for editorial mandate or cultural phraseology.
Well-known fictitious uses of Engrish include the NewsRadio episode "Super Karate Monkey Death Car", where a character is forced to publicly read his autobiography after it has been published in Japanese and translated into English, and the song "Let's Fighting Love", used in the episode "Good Times With Weapons" of South Park which satirizes the poorly-translated opening theme sequences sometimes shown in anime.
Another example is "Do not point the weapon at the human responsible for the animal." on the back of an airsoft gun package.
See also
- Hong Kong English
- Non-native pronunciations of English
- Tinglish
- Wasei-eigo
External links
- Large Engrish Photo Collection on Weird Asia News
- www.Engrish.com—photos of Engrish from Japan and elsewhere
- Engrish Funny —photos of Engrish from around the world
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||