Today on Engrish.com: “Trust me – she’ll look good at the wedding…” 🙂
Engrish??”Engrish can be simply defined as the humorous English mistakes that appear in Japanese advertising and product design. English is used as a design element in Japanese products and advertising to give them a modern look and feel. There is often no attempt to try to get it right, nor do the vast majority of the Japanese population (= consumers) ever attempt to read the English design element in question. ”
Photo courtesy of Mark Meyer.
Taken on a train near Sendai, Japan.
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The Japanese generally have an incredibly difficult time trying to pronounce the “L”, as they have no equivalent in the Japanese language. “R” is the closest most can get, so many words with an “L” come out of their mouths as “R”. Anyone who has spent time their has heard “English” come out as “Engrish” a million times.
They also get the two confused when writing, and sometimes swap them. A most infamous example happened long ago, when MacArthur, fresh from his stint as overlord of Japan, was running for president of the US. A crowd had gathered to meet him at an airport, and someone had made a big banner. Unfortunately, they forgot to get someone to proofread it. Going “down” in history, it read: “We play for MacArthur’s erection.”
Same thing happens in Thailand. English is used as decoration more than anything else. Bangkokians can read it but don’t know the mistakes. Up country few Thais know any English.
Thai people have many problems with English, like tenses and plurals since we don’t have those in the Thai language. In speaking the problems are with the buzzing sounds like V, Z, and TH like in “the” – we don’t have those sounds in Thai. And R is rolled a little like Spanish but lazier, sounds like L many times. Lots of other trouble sounds, too.