Talk:Engrish/Archive 2

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shouldn't All your bases are belong to us appear in this article?

--67.180.121.103 (talk) 02:15, 12 August 2008 (UTC) 

What happened to the photo of the Eric Clapton album?

Chinglish; delete this artical?

There is already an artical on Chinglish, which is better than this artical, I see no need for them to both exist. Perhaps mention Engrish is another name for Chinglish in the other article? Rominik (talk) 22:02, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

No one calls in chinglish anymore. I say the articles should be merged.
Merge for Engrish, it's the more common name.Yialanliu (talk) 03:12, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

What

"I feel asleep". Why doesn't that phrase make sense? 124.180.64.35 12:34, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

"Asleep" isn't an adjective. "Sleepy" is an adjective and would allow the sentence to work. Alternatively, you could exchange "feel" for "fell" to create "I fell asleep".--99.225.57.217 (talk) 20:28, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Learning Engrish

The content and necessity of including this section confuses me. It is kind of about the fact that the focus of English learning in Japan is geared towards passing exams and kind of about what phonemes are in certain Asian languages, but nothing at all about anyone being taught or learning Engrish. Unless someone can provide a justification for keeping the section and citations, I intend to remove it in the next week or so. 21:11, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

This didn't seem to happen. (Did you forget?) So, I did instead, for I agree with the reasoning completely. -- Taku (talk) 00:16, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
There may be some justification for keeping this article and I am sure most Japanese speakers would agree. However, the inclusion of thoroughly integrated English loanwords of the Japanese language as "Engrish" or even "Janglish" is insulting, misguided and uninformed. I am sure that this applies to other Asian languages as well, different as they may be from Japanese. Of course, loanwords from languages other than English also play an important role. Meanwhile, foreign loanwords especially of Asian origin are accepted as anglicized, even with significant distortion in meaning and/or pronunciation, by British and American English speakers with little or no native concern that these words might be bizarre or laughable. Be fair!Vendrov (talk) 07:18, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Unquestionably Derogatory

The term contains implicit mockery, and should be identified as slang. People who take entertainment from examples of "Engrish" are inherently racist. It's basically a short way of saying "Ha ha, look at those dumb Asians who can't speak English". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.171.0.143 (talk) 12:18, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps you haven't noticed, but no one spells or mispronounces english worse than the people who speak it, especially Americans.
Suppose you've never lived in a civilized part of America then. i.e. not Baltimore, LA, etc.
Quite honestly, I'm insulted when I see pictures of engrish on the Internet. It's mockery on both sides; they're making fools out of themselves and ripping English to shreds at the same time. I do, however, enjoy the cats on icanhascheezburger, because that poor grammar and misspellings are intended. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.148.65.179 (talk) 01:57, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

I am certain that we North Americans mangle other languages; is there an article about that?

Language, religion, clothes,disability, other elements of politics & culture, are all susceptible to misinterpretation.

< http://eightsolid.com/24-very-strange-funny-signs >;

< http://eightsolid.com >;


< http://engrish.com/faq.php >;

< http://engrish.com >;

< http://engrish.com/faq.php#Q4 >.

[[ hopiakuta Please do sign your signature on your message. ~~ Thank You. -]] 19:15, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

It is not 'unquestionably' insulting or racist. Only that you do not question your decision that it is. Anyone who has gone to another country and attempted to communicate using a language they are not completely fluent in will have made faux pas and errors that can be amusing. This would only be derogatory if someone then called you an idiot for getting it wrong rather than just taking pleasure out of the surprising combinations of words you have used that may perhaps have been very inapporpriate or even thought provoking. It would only be racsist if the person laughing at you did so stating that all you white/black/asian/latinos are idiots... As I once asked an old man for the Lingerie when I was trying to find L'Orangerie art gallery in Paris I could illustrate an example that had us both confused, then amused with neither of us thinking the other an idiot. As we were not of distinguishably different races our amusement could not have been derived from racism either. So I think we should be careful that some of these contributors hypersensitivity and fear of criticism not be projected on the rest of us, effectively sterotyping us as 'protronising racists'. Thankyou. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.64.38.97 (talk) 20:37, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Do we really need this article?

I have issues with the existence of this article. Not only does it not have any realistic citation to back it up (with the exception of the R for L sound), but it just doesn't seem like a well written article. Also, it just doesn't seem like an important enough thing to have a (whole) article on it, or at least not one that is this unnecessarily long. Most of it is just examples of various occurrences of "Engrish" and "Japlish" (A term I have NEVER heard). Also, most of the information provided in the article is presented in a way that makes it sound very informal. I suggest that this either be merged into an article about different English accents (not sure if one exists), or make the article less like a collection of examples. Pyrotics (talk) 14:27, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

There are many pages on the net deticated to scouting it out. Engrish.com has been around since 1996. If you take it down, someone will inevitably put up a new one.

Engrish

Personally, I love engrish as a source of humor, but I don't like the way this article is written. It doesn't have the professional-sounding writing style that other articles have (excuse me if that was crude).
In response to Unquestionably Derogatory:
What separates Engrish from butchered languages in North America is the widespread use of English in Asian countries, as opposed to the very obscure exposure of foreign languages in America (that are very often targeted and made by native speakers, thereby probably not incorrect)

I don't think there is anything derrogatory about Engrish. It's funny when people spectacularly butcher language, regardless of who does it.. English speakers do it too, but, not knowing the language, we tend not to notice it. There are stories which may be urban legends of Pepsi slogan translating "Come alive with Pepsi" as "Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the dead" and a coke slogan translated as "bite the wax tadpole". True or not, the fact that many English speakes find these mistranslations funny indicates that it's not racist - we find it just as funny when we are the ones making the mistake. There was also an episode of MASH where Frank Burns means is speaking to a group of Koreans, and means to wish his audience "prosperity", but looks up the wrong word and wishes them a prostitute. That certainly wasn't racist, we're laughing at the American's mistake.--RLent (talk) 20:01, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Other Way Around

I'm starting to hear of a lot of examples where people translate english in very horrible Chinese. Does anyone know the term for this? Leah (talk) 19:33, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Better Examples to work with

Those images are really really bad examples of Engrish. They make too much sence, nothing is misspelled, no incorrect words were used, & no words were rearanged to make a wong meaning. & who calls it Japlish? Veterans from WWII?

Taking examples from the most prominant Engrish page:

Engrish replace/switchword: An incorrect word is used.

Engrish commonword/botchword: Not quite a typo, instead of getting a word completely wrong, the sentence will have an incorrect related word.

Engish gibberish/hash/mashup/jumble: Words or sentences unrelated to eachother in english bunched togeather into a nonsensical paragraph.

Engrish typo: One wrong letter gives a sentence a whole new meaning.

Engrish rambling: English paragraphs that go on & on about the product they're printed on, but seem like complete nonsence.

Engrish Tlansration: A botched translation aimed at English speakers, that usually fails to get the point across.

Engrish tag/grafitti/tagging: A single word or short sentence used inapropriately as a title. Common among stores, salons, magazines, & band names like "Fragile Rocking Chair" & "Bump of Chicken."

Engrish randomness: Akward sentences applied to product packaging.

Pseudoengrish/buffalaxing/mondegreens: Not really english, but when read or heard as if it was, sounds very ammusing. This also includes faux translations of foreign songs, misheard lyrics of english songs, & restaurant names that sound like bathroom jokes.

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Non-standard?

It's not "non-standard" English. This implies that it is abnormal, but still correct. A better description would be "Crappy English" or simply "Wrong English". 98.238.188.211 (talk) 01:10, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Why does wikipedia have an Engrish article in the first place? This is the second weirdest article I've read on this site so far, before that Buffalo buffalo Buffalo one. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.108.245.195 (talk) 20:58, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

How is it wrong? Technically, American english is "wrong" in light of British english since American English breaks some rules that Engrish does too. It's a dialect which doesn't mean it's right or wrong, just different. Oh and "crappy" is your opinion. I could just as easily call American english crappy compared to british english. It's just a dialect.Yialanliu (talk) 03:14, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
A set of mistakes made by non-native speakers does not a dialect make. It has no internal consistency; you can't really put together a coherent grammar of Engrish the way you can with, say, African-American Vernacular English. — Gwalla | Talk 18:04, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
Sorry, but using a comparison of British English to American English when discussing Engrish is just plain lame, and seems to be a case of "there is no such thing as wrong, only different" taken to a "I don't wan't to offend anyone" extreme. Anyone who has been to Japan and witnessed the ubiquitous, and uproariously hilarious, Engrish would not even try to make a case that it is simply another dialect of English. Claiming it is is akin to me pasting random French words everywhere and then according such randomness the status of French dialect. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.141.154.118 (talk) 05:56, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Third image ( File:AntiJapanesePropagandaTakeDayOff.gif ) not relevant

File:AntiJapanesePropagandaTakeDayOff.gif

I don't see any noticeable Engrish in that poster.--Tyranny Sue (talk) 07:56, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Me neither. Exploding Boy (talk) 16:03, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
Whoops - sorry - reverted before I saw the talk page, which was a bit naughty of me. Anyway, it's grammatically Engrish (droppped article, and perhaps the overuse of "please" in requests/commands). And it's of historical note. VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 03:01, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
Sorry if my removal of the image seemed premature.
Three major signs that it's not Engrish:
1) It was created around 1940, before the word 'Engrish' existed.
2) The text is "Go ahead please - TAKE DAY OFF!". If it was Engrish, it would at least spell please 'prease'. And a single dropped article does not make it Engrish. (Also, one use of "please" is hardly 'overuse'!)
3) It was written by native English speakers. If anything it's a *very* mild case of sarcastic pseudo-Engrish (though, again, the term 'Engrish' is anachronistic in terms of the poster's age).
The image really doesn't illustrate the concept of Engrish at all, and doesn't help this article in any way. (Perhaps it would work well on an article about US War propaganda?) --Tyranny Sue (talk) 10:10, 26 June 2009 (UTC)


On reflection I think you're right. I don't think your first and second reasons are that strong - phenomena can exist before names take hold for them, and that not every aspect of Engrish is in a phrase does not make it not Engrish. However, I think you're right to say its anachronistic. Engrish comes out of the position of English as the dominant global language, which didn't really take place until after the second world war and the dominance of the US politically and culturally in the region. So I've reverted.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 02:26, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

This needs a complete re-write

This article is a bit poor at the moment.

It needs to have clearer definitions of the different meanings of the term Engrish. In particular, it should really only be limited to examples of what appear to be attempts at English, but are not simply the mistakes of an East Asian learner of English (although such issues can explain the nature of some examples of Engrish). In particular, loan words and false cognates (such as petto bottoru) are not Engrish - they're Japanese plain and simple. Just as sushi is an English word, that doesn't actually just mean raw fish in Japanese, and the English word sumo is not part of a phenomenon called Nihonglish because it's pronounced significantly differently from Japanese.

Oh, and the Nihonglish section needs to go. OR all the way.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 14:51, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

agreed. This article is a big pile of original research.1 source and 1 note for such an article is not remotely enough.--Crossmr (talk) 01:47, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

External links

The "External links" section of the article has been tagged for inappropriate or excessive linking. I have checked each link, and found many of them were only marginally relevant. Some did not refer to Engrish as such, even if they were not totally unrelated. Some were links to web pages where there was just a little bad English somewhere, if you looked hard enough. I have pruned the links down considerably, and I think what is left is more than sufficient to illustrate the topic. JamesBWatson (talk) 13:02, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Japlish.

Half of this article is about "Japlish". It has its own article.  Aar  ►  23:37, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Likely due to engrish.com, which started as a site listing weird English found in Japan. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 01:19, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Non-East-Asian use of "Engrish"

I've been using the term "Engrish" to describe English of non-native speakers of non-East-Asian origin (more specifically, European and Mideastern languages). I wonder if there are other such uses out there. 192.12.88.7 (talk) 16:16, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

I've heard "Spanglish" used to describe the pseudo-English used by many Latino immigrants in the United States. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 01:19, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Offensive...

This article is horribly offensive. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.40.233.145 (talk) 08:44, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Really? It's factual. There's only so much you can do to sugar-coat a truth that some people find offensive. The article has a "Nihonglish" section which is a term used to describe the equivalent mistakes by non-Japanese (usually English language native) speakers of Japanese - I don't find that offensive in the slightest. However, it's clear that the situation crops up so much more in countries like Japan because there are far more English translations made there and the language is so different from English. And the trend of arbitrarily and randomly inserting English text produced by obviously extremely poor speakers into J-POP music simply serves to make the whole thing more funny, ridiculous and well-known outside of Japan. I mean, if I was writing a song with lyrics, I wouldn't add Japanese lyrics (not without at least running them by a native or at least fluent Japanese speaker which I know I'm not), or Hindi or Icelandic or whatever other language. Plus a lot of the worst examples of Japanese Engrish are from public signs which have clearly been translated by a machine, which is also hilarious, especially when the resulting translations are littered with obscenities and demonstrating that the "translator" made practically no effort at all to check the quality of their work and perhaps just pasted the source text into Babelfish or Google Translate and used the results directly. Face it - it's funny! Destynova (talk) 16:25, 1 January 2010 (UTC)


This all stems from English being used as the de facto business language of the world... do you really think Japan, China and other non-English speaking countries want to make the effort to learn English and use English signs if that weren't the case? Much like in Britain and America we are extremely arrogant in refusing to learn non-English languages, (see the Dora the Explorer talk page to see what I mean) the non English, non native speakers have been "forced" to do so out of necessity. The English speakers would be ridiculed in greater levels if the situation was reversed, e.g. if Chinese was the de facto business language of the world instead. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.111.120.73 (talk) 20:53, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

I also think that calling this phenomenon "Engrish" is an attempt by Caucasian native-English speakers to coin and popularize another Asian stereotype. Face it, it's a small group of patronizing Westerners who are having a big laugh at the Asian-biased "Engrish" moniker, and I can see how it would offend Asians. The term should be renamed since the supposed point of the movement is to produce amusing examples of WRITTEN, not spoken, English grammar and vocabulary from all around the world.114.148.228.146 (talk) 03:32, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

It appears in the academic literature, and in Japanese academic literature at that, like this [example]. In Japanese there is the term "wasei-eigo", which I've never noticed anyone Japanese objecting to. What I think you (inadvertently) raise is that this article really needs some better sourcing.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 03:56, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
Seriously, it must be a pretty miserable life when you are seemingly looking for reasons to get offended. The notion that Engrish is an attempt to "coin an popularize another Asian stereotype" sounds like the boilerplate you would read in a bad social sciences graduate thesis. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.141.154.118 (talk) 06:02, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Uninformative

This article includes numerous pictures of what most people understand as "Engrish", i.e. people who can't speak the language attempting to write it for tourists' use or other. However the text of the article is about the insertion of English into Asian languages, as an affectation, and vice versa. It goes no way to explain the reasons for which English is commonly misused in East Asia especially, for example, it could highlight the presumably great grammatical and syntactical differences which are not as significant between European languages or Asian languages themselves. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.67.138.111 (talk) 15:29, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

source

This article sites urbandictionary.com as a source. That's some great research right there.... 2CrudeDudes (talk) 14:54, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Without any valid sources there is no reason for this article to exist. "Engrish" is a derisive slang and nothing more. Someone man up and delete this worthless waste of bandwidth. 189.100.232.118 (talk) 15:05, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
I removed urbandictionary and inserted a better explanation that mildly implies the term is racist. I believe the article itself is probably notable, but chiefly as a Western Internet phenomenon. 80.221.34.183 (talk) 14:14, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Issues

The article's refereneces to Eihongo have been removed, though Eihongo still redirects here. Also, shouldn't this article make a distinction between Engrish (ie mistakes like all your base are belong to us) and Japlish (ie deliberate and artistic uses of nonsense English? Serendipodous 16:15, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Serendipodous, we can make a clear distinction if the literature makes a distinction (otherwise we're doing OR). Luckily, I've just found this article which reflects on the conceptual difference, while suggesting that the outcome is often not much difference in terms of "correctness". It's been a while since I last looked at this article. A lot has been taken out which was simply poorly sourced (such as the impact of machine translation). I'm going to have a go at making this article better.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 06:13, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Good RS

Chinese government is making a move to solve the problem of Engrish lol http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/12/21/china_bans_use_of_english_and_chinglish_in_media The Resident Anthropologist (talk) 03:21, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

Chinese Railway Sign

When travelling on a train in China I saw a sign 'DO NOT SRIT ON THE FLOOR. DO NOT THPOW YOURSELF OUT OF THE WINDOW'. To be fair this was in 1992. Maybe such signs are rarer now. SmokeyTheCat 09:14, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Disambiguation for Japlish /English

Reading the main article and Talk page, it seems different people define the respective terms differently, personally, I had thought Japlish is an example of poor translation as in the related images (which could easily have come from any country though most countries have no Japlish/Spanglish equivalent) and in well known examples within video games and other media where as Engrish is defined by the interchangeable 'L' and 'R' which is clearly defined in the first paragraph yet not displayed in the images. Regarding deliberate examples by English speakers, the use of Engrish by playground bullies, actors and comedians is quite common, I'm not sure deliberate grammar based japlish is significantly common. Given that there is already a Japlish page, I feel the related images should clearly represent the L/R error. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.47.37.193 (talk) 09:19, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Needs a Rewrite

This is focused mainly on Japanese use of English, which as already noted has its own page. A lot of the examples (such as L and R) that are attributed to Japanese are in fact common is many Asian languages (L/R for example is the same in Korean). Spanglish also falls under the heading of Engrish, but as stated this article is focused on Japanese. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.59.12.226 (talk) 05:40, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Needs a Re-Think

Though the article makes a point, I believe that this article is fundamentally flawed because it is speaking from only a single language's perspective and it ignores the fact that this particular phenomenon is strictly reversible. (i. e. Language "x" <<-->> English produces similarly ludicrous results when taken either way.) Likewise the phenomenon can occur between many languages when treated like this. (Language "x" <<-->> Language "y")

IMHO:

  • There ought to be a, (maybe there is?), linguistic term for the word-by-word translation from one language to another that leads to absurd results. If this is true, maybe this article should be removed and/or merged with the more global article - or at least contain a reference to it?
  • It should be made much clearer within this article that this phenomenon is not limited to translations into English - perhaps there is an article that discusses this in a more global way?

Just my two centavos.

Jim (JR) Jharris1993 (talk) 04:58, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

Is this neutral?

The end of the article says:

Instances of Engrish due to poor translation were frequently found in many early video games produced in Japan, often due to the creators not having enough (or just not wanting to spend enough) money for a proper translation.

Is it really neutral to say that they were "not wanting to spend enough money" for a proper translation? I shall remove this from the article. 72.230.135.196 (talk) 22:08, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

 Done 72.230.135.196 (talk) 22:10, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

What about mixing /th/ and /s/ ?

In addition to difficulties in distinguishing /l/ and /r/, would mixing the /th/ and /s/ sounds, for example in the word "gothic" / "gosick", be another example of Engrish use? Should it be included here? David Bailey (talk) 10:22, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

I'd suggest so; many non-English speakers, including the Japanese, have a hard time pronouncing the 'th' sound, and use an 's' instead. If that isn't already in the article, I think it should be. DarkToonLinkHeyaah! 10:28, 23 September 2013 (UTC)
Thanks. In that case, I'm going to append " difficulties in distinguishing /l/ and /r/" with ", or /th/ and /s/". David Bailey (talk) 10:42, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

What's the point of katakana at the beginning?

The article has katakana (イングリッシュ) at the beginning. It is true that if you try to transliterate the word "Engrish" to Japanese you would get this, but it's not the term that means Engrish. Pitan (talk) 03:32, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Is there an actual word in Japanese for the concept of broken English? If there is then that should be used, but otherwise I think the katakana just shows that English and Engrish are the same transliteration. (Obviously the actual kanji for English (英語) wouldn't be used). DarkToonLink 08:29, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Vintage Engrish

The following is allegedly from a book entitled "The Practical Use of Conversation for Police Authorities", said (by B.H. Chamberlain, author of Things Japanese, 1890) to have been published in Osaka in 1886. The spelling and punctuation are as in the original; the characters of "Cop" and "Englishman" are added for clarification.

(Japanese cop) What countryman are you?

("English blue-jacket") I am a sailor belonged to the Golden-Eagle, the English man-of-war.

(Cop) Why do you strike this Jinrikisha-man?

(Englishman) He told me impolitely.

(Cop) What does he told you impolitely?

(Englishman) He insulted me saing loudly "the Sailor the Sailor" when I am passing here.

(Cop) Do you striking this man for that?

(Englishman) Yes.

(Cop) But do not strike him for it is forbided

(Englishman) I strike him no more.

69.142.222.250 (talk) 00:40, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

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