Monday, August 10, 2009

Engrish....Ahem...I mean English...no really, I give you ENGRISH!

For those of you who live here in Japan; I know you can all appreciate this post. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, I present to you: ENGRISH! Yep, that's right. Engrish.

The Japanese absolutely go ga-ga over English words-- so they put it on EVERYTHING....t-shirts, packaging for food, etc. The problem is, it just doesn't make sense. Bad grammar, poor sentence structure, you name it.... I saw a sign recently that made me chuckle. STOP OF THE USE. Do you know what this means? The sign was meant to read NO ENTRY, but it said STOP OF THE USE instead. Sorta makes sense if you think about it. It's not entirely wrong.....

Unfortunately, I haven't had the chance to take too many photos of these funny signs (don't worry, I'll do it soon, I promise); but in the meantime, I thought I would hold you over with the following website dedicated to Engrish....

And before you reprimand me, let me just say; we're not laughing AT them, we're laughing WITH them....

~Chrissy

5 comments:

Kinderkouture said...

Hi, thanks for blogging about life on Okinawa. My husband and I are thinking about moving over there. He works for AAFES, and we have two kids. I am very excited and very nervous. Spent alot of time in Germany and Turkey, so I love to really live the culture. I look forward to reading more your very positive blog.

Chrissy said...

Hi Jeannine, welcome and thanks for reading! I think Okinawa is a perfect place for a family, Japan, in general, is a very safe place...low crime rates, extremely courteous and polite people, exciting culture and food, you name it. I would recommend it, that is, if you can tolerate heat and humidity. We are due to PCS back to the States in January of 2010; and I know we will miss this beautiful island.

Mary and Sean said...

Chrissy,
I wanted to ask you a question and was wondering if you could email me?

My contact is maryr_sd@yahoo.com. It's nothing major, just something about your job...

Mary

sunflowerchilde said...

Ha! I remember visiting Japan and having the BEST time reading everyone's T-shirts. My brother and sister and I would have a contest each day to spot the funniest one.

MayfloweR said...

This is very common in Japan and also in China, some engrish are so funny because they were translated directly from japanese/chinese, thats why sounds weird, as a chinese myself I do understand the problem. :P

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