Random

[gothwalk]

Where does Engrish come from? The Japanese are so precise about everything else, and yet there's this imprecise (albeit evocative) stream of non-English coming from Japan.

For some reason, one of the top searches that keeps grounding out on dukestreet.org is "How to make a mechanical arm".

The Helsinki Museum of Modern Art has comics for sale. Why don't we get that in the Anglophone parts of the planet?

I like living in a time and place where I can discuss the pronunciation of haecceity, where to get episodes of Battlestar Galactica, and XSL selection, while listening to OPM's rather anthemic Heaven is a Halfpipe.

Comments

[mollydot.livejournal.com]

Perhaps she means that お has one sound - it can be longer, but is still basically the same, but there's many ways to pronounce the English 'o'. I don't know how to do phonetics, so the only one I can make a stab at spelling is "oh". Or I could use some of the words I've just used as examples - there's different Os in know, how, to, one, or.

But, actually, I think all that's irrelevant, as the problem with written Engrish is nothing to do with pronunciation. It's grammer and word choice. puritybrown may well have the answer.

And maybe English just looks cool and they don't care what it means - how many times have people used Chinese words here and not known what they mean or even if they're the right way round?

[loupblanc.livejournal.com]

I would tend to agree with you that they may think English "sound cool". The French often use an English word where there could be a perfectly adequate French word for the idea they're trying to convey (in French).

And not trying to brag, just experimenting...
know [nou]
how [ha&601;]
to [t&601;]
one [wan]
or [ôr]

[loupblanc.livejournal.com]

okay that didn't quite work as I'd hoped :(

[mollydot.livejournal.com]

The experiment is not a failure. You now know one more way that doesn't work :-)