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Revenge for Engrish
It may be unavoidable to feel some kind of exotic atmosphere for foreign language. This is very paradoxical. If we study the language and can use it like our native language, perhaps we will stop feeling special for it. We are interested in the pronunciations and characters of foreign languages and are moved to use them, just because we don't know their meaning well.
Therefore, we always misspell and misuse foreign words, like a snack named Pokey. And this feeling is not only a Japanese thing. (I know Japan is conspicuous though)
"cafepress.com" is a on-line store which can sell the things that we designed by ourselves, such as t-shirt and mug. Many unique designed products are put on the store and there are also many stuffs designed with Japanese characters. Some of them are quite humorous for us Japanese, and the people who made them must not expect it.
Although the description reads "says meow in Japanese", some characters printed on the shirts don't even seem as Japanese. But when I look hard at it, it can read "It's a hose."
This is so funny. The Japanese top 5 of insulting words are printed on this shirts, but every Japanese must rather laugh than be angry when you say these words to him/her. Because these all expressions are too classical for the recent Japanese people and rarely used today.
I think the #3 word must be a mistake for "CHIN-CHIKU-RIN". It spells like this. 
"When you remove frost of my head, we want the donkey body depending upon me!"
Though I could not get any sense from this sentence at first, I found and really enjoyed this humorous article and got its meaning. But the Japanese translation still makes me confused. It says like "According to my mind, I want the donkey body when you take away the frost from my head part".
It's ungrammatical and hard to translate. This says like, "Japanese language be there"... It does not mention where the Japanese language must be or who must let the Japanese language be there. And the more funny thing is the words printed on its back. It does not have a meaning of "Not just a fad", but it says "Nothing". We always say it when we give someone a cold reply.
Who does want this mug which is simply printed "a stupid"?
No! It does not have a meaning of "poison" at all. This kanji says "a fish".
This one realy amused me with its wacky KATAKANA spellings. It says like...
"Metropaltane"
"Spacial Interview!!"
"Danilovic gardenia and sakura." (...what did he want to say?)
"This job is... very fun because... it's not a job."
September 17, 2004 in Language | Permalink
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Comments
The Top 5 Japanese Insults seem to originate from a english BBC3 show called "Adam and Joe go Tokyo". (see http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/tv/adam_and_joe.shtml )
Posted by: flynn | Sep 19, 2004 3:08:33 AM
Well, the program sounds so fun.
I was just going to write about the guy who claims that he invented floppy disk.
Posted by: xogij | Sep 19, 2004 3:06:26 PM
Hey, I was wonderinf if you wouldnt mind telling me a little something about Sapporo. Your site kicks ass.
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Posted by: John Lazon | Apr 27, 2005 3:47:59 PM
About the fish-kanji, i think there was a slight misunderstanding between English and French. "Poison" is French for fish. Just to let you know...
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