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ENGRISH: Funny? Politically Insensitive? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| rasputin Triglot Newbie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5965 days ago 21 posts - 24 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: German, Italian, Zulu | Message 1 of 25 28 June 2010 at 6:43am | IP Logged | |||||
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You would probably have to have been living under a stone for the past ten years if you had not yet encountered the Internet "humor" phenomenon called "Engrish".
The long and the short of it is: Asian speakers, primarily Chinese and Japanese, have appropriated snippets of the English language into their culture.... seen printed everywhere-- on t-shirts, stationery, candy, buildings, buses, consumer products, restaurant menus, and so forth. The "humor" lies in the fact that the English has been appropriated somewhat (or widely) shy of its correct original English context... Thus the field is wide open for many malapropisms, generally thought to be hilarious. Engrish seems to have taken off in the West dating back to post-WWII, when English, American and Australian soldiers in Japan would spy signs in a tailor's window such as LADIES HAVE FITS UPSTAIRS. Above and beyond that, it seems that the Japanese have, in the wake of the anime/manga craze, taken a perverse delight in incorporating random words and phrases from English... and linking them together in a free-form, terse doggerel which is not only funny.... but often quite surreal, often off-color if not downright obscene. I do appreciate that, in some quarters, a protest has been raised against "Engrish" as a source of (primarily Anglophone) humor. Is it a derisive humor? Anglo-centric, xenophobic, hegemonic humor ? Mean-spirited humor? Politically incorrect humor? What say you? Does laughing at interlingual gaffes constitute a kind of sociological tort? To see many, many examples of "Engrish" derived from real sources, visit the website: http://www.engrish.com/ Edited by rasputin on 28 June 2010 at 6:52am 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| johntm93 Senior Member United States Joined 5325 days ago 587 posts - 746 votes  2 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish | Message 2 of 25 28 June 2010 at 7:14am | IP Logged | |||||
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I find it pretty funny. Then again I find a lot of things funny that many would see as insensitive, racist, etc. Unless it's actually an insult, and not a joke.
I have a Taiwanese friend who is pretty good friends with me, and I give him (good natured) crap about his English constantly (although he is a very good speaker for having lived in the US for 3 years). "Engrish" comes from the generalization (I'm not sure if it's true or not) that because Asian language typically don't have much of a distinction between the "l" and the "r" sound, causing them to change "l" sounds to "r" sounds. Edit: Just remembered this. A couple hours ago I was messing around with a crappy Chinese airsoft gun I have, and I was looking over the manual again, and it said something about a light on the scope and use the term "hightest" and "highter" to describe the brightness of the reticule on the scope...I laughed at it. Edited by johntm93 on 28 June 2010 at 7:16am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Lemus Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6379 days ago 232 posts - 266 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Japanese, Russian, German | Message 3 of 25 28 June 2010 at 8:25am | IP Logged | |||||
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When I was in Japan, there was a sign in the women's bathroom that said "Please stay seated for the entire performance." Best Engrish ever.
6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6009 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 4 of 25 28 June 2010 at 1:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Some of the things I've seen on Engrish.com I do object to, as there is legitimate dialectisation in the Far East -- I've seen signs in Singlish being slagged off, for example -- but I've no problem with people being mocked for:
A) Using English to be cool and ending up looking like muppets. B) Rubbish translations that save a few coins over getting a proper translator in, particular in safety signs, official communications and the general "cheap imports" category. In particular, I love seeing things like (current example) "Englash Program" on the wall of a language school. That's just hilarious. Although it does say a lot about the state of the TEFL market at the moment, and is a bit saddening. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| chucknorrisman Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5446 days ago 321 posts - 435 votes Speaks: Korean*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian, Mandarin, Lithuanian, French | Message 5 of 25 28 June 2010 at 1:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think laughing at Engrish is okay as long as you realize that it's a joke and that not all Asians are bad at English like that. It may even serve as an educational tool, to let you not make the same mistakes later.
On a related note, this is a website pointing out Westerners who misuse Chinese characters: http://hanzismatter.blogspot.com/ Edited by chucknorrisman on 28 June 2010 at 1:57pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| exscribere Diglot Senior Member IndiaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5277 days ago 104 posts - 126 votes Speaks: English*, Danish Studies: Mandarin, French, Korean, Hindi | Message 6 of 25 28 June 2010 at 3:35pm | IP Logged | |||||
I enjoy skimming Hanzi Smatter once in awhile. I saw a sign when I went to get my nose pierced on Saturday, and had to take a picture of it - the shop also does tattoos, and had a PSA/denial of responsibility for foreign language stuff. (Big picture - link http://exscribere.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/photo-e1277731 606140.jpg) I think Engrish comes down to there being more people who are willing/able to find bad examples of English than speakers of other languages out finding bad examples of _their_ native tongue, and posting them. If you're foolish enough to assume that the English of a nonnative speaker will be on par with the Engrish site -- well, you assumed, and that says a lot. I do get a chuckle out of them on occasion, but recognize that there are reasonable origins for some of the mistakes -- and in other cases, it's purely lazy (someone mentioned 'Englash Program' ...) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| furrykef Senior Member United States furrykef.com/ Joined 6470 days ago 681 posts - 862 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Japanese, Latin, Italian | Message 7 of 25 29 June 2010 at 5:30am | IP Logged | |||||
I say if people didn't mangle English so much, we wouldn't need to laugh at it, now, would we? I'm far, far from an expert in Japanese. That means I know I have no business trying to put Japanese on T-shirts (except as a joke or some such) and, if I did it anyway, people would have every right to laugh at it. Somebody making an honest attempt to learn the language, on the other hand, shouldn't be laughed at. But, again, he shouldn't be putting things on shirts or getting tattoos if he doesn't fully understand what he's saying with them. And yeah, sites like Hanzi Smatter are good too. By all means, what goes around comes around...
I don't know about other languages, but in Japanese, it is true. Japanese has only an alveolar flap (roughly the same as a non-trilled Spanish/Italian "r") and has no "l" at all, so "r" is substituted for "l". The English word "level" becomes "reberu", for instance. Thus it's not too surprising that Japanese mix up L and R at times. - Kef Edited by furrykef on 29 June 2010 at 5:33am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| orion Senior Member United States Joined 7019 days ago 622 posts - 678 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian | Message 8 of 25 29 June 2010 at 7:21am | IP Logged | |||||
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Funny? No, hilarious!
Politically insensitive? Absolutely! On a side note, I was talking to my wife's uncle the other day, who is a veteran of WWII in the Pacific. He told me they used to select code words with lots of l's and r's so it would be difficult for a Japanese person to fake being an American on the radio. An example he gave me was "little yellow lollipops". Regarding hanzismatter, in my opinion, westerners with hanzi or kanji tattoos look like total idiots, so they get what they deserve when the tattoo says something like "ugly white boy", when they think it says "death before dishonor" or "lone wolf bushido warrior" etc. Edited by orion on 29 June 2010 at 7:28am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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