Showing posts with label "Weird" Asia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label "Weird" Asia. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 05, 2010

Foreigners speak funny English! NYT

Warning: I cannot prove the part below about the movie poster. You'll have to take my word for it until I can, or just assume me crazy. If anyone else remembers it, or knows a link to the poster, I'd appreciate it if you let me know.

Ahahaha. This is so funny. I knew we were overdue for an article in a major US newspaper about the hilarious and funny English non-native speakers in East Asia use. Oh, ha, ha! LOL! Yee Haw! (I liked photo number 10 the best as it shows that even the most basic rules of photography---hold the camera still when you take a shot and use an adequate shutter speed---no longer apply to photos published by the Times.)

I guess that it is a symbol of Japan's dwindling influence (how can little to no influence dwindle?) in the world that it was not a target this time of the talented multilingual geniuses at the NYT. Of course it's all innocent, because yesterday the Times published a piece on Shanghai try to untangle "Chinglish" or some such thing. I shan't bother to link.

There was a US movie called Black Rain when I was in college. It starred Michael Douglas as your stereotypical corrupt NYC cop and his partner who came to Japan (the perfect country of the future back then) and got all involved in a culture clash. The rough, corrupt, screw-all-the-laws-and-rules ways of Americans meet the polite, rule/duty bound, alien and inscrutable Japanese. The opening scene over Osaka (never been to Osaka, but I doubt that it appears so otherworldly from an aircraft) set the stage for the rest of the bizarre movie. In the happy ending however, the surviving American departed Japan a little more introspective and maybe even a bit less corrupt, while we were left to ponder just how corrupt the American had made his Japanese partner.

Some movie posters at a local Pullman, Washington video store had Black Rain written in both English and katakana.* How international! Unfortunately, they had written the katakana backwards so that it actually read kurabu nurei(?)---or perhaps nurei kurabu? Don't remember exactly as I did not take a picture. Bahaha. Ain't it funny how those English-speakers mangle Asian languages?

*They were not locally made---I am pretty sure they were supplied by the studio.
I can find no examples online either.

**Edited: 1126pm

I have continued to search for the poster on the Internet, but as of yet have not found it. Really, I am not that crazy yet. My wife remembers it too. However, we could both be crazy.