English by any other name...
May. 28th, 2006 12:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trystinnShoping at local Asian markets is almost always an adventure. And the employees definately get a kick out of me desperately looking for Squid Jerky every payday, I'm never quite sure how to ask for it, given that the packaging is rarely in English. But that's on me, I don't speak any Asian languages, much less read them. Sometimes I get my Jerky and leave in peace, other times I wander for hours looking at the Buddhas, the incenses, and wondering anew what on Earth folks do with some of the stuff sold there. MSG in a shaker bottle, who knew? The condom packaging is hysterical. I still haven't quite figured out the cosmetics counter, possibly because I so rarely wear make-up its foreign to me anyway.
Often quite a bit of the fun is trying to figure out the signage, especially when the signs direct customers to do something. These signs are often not quite in English, but instead a variant known humorously as Engrish. Folks poke a lot of fun at these signs, but honestly, I find them quite heart-warming. Folks trying to communicate, making the effort to reach out. I'm brutally aware that their Engrish is a hell of a lot better than any attempt I could make in any of their languages, so I have a lot of respect for these folks.
My favorite example of this at the market in Bellevue was the "Open the UP!" signs posted on top of the frozen meat counters. I should say, one of my favorites, since a ditzy friend pointed it out to them and they quickly corrected it.
In any case, there's a site on the web that collects these little gems - www.Engrish.com Sadly, "Open the UP!" never made it there.
Often quite a bit of the fun is trying to figure out the signage, especially when the signs direct customers to do something. These signs are often not quite in English, but instead a variant known humorously as Engrish. Folks poke a lot of fun at these signs, but honestly, I find them quite heart-warming. Folks trying to communicate, making the effort to reach out. I'm brutally aware that their Engrish is a hell of a lot better than any attempt I could make in any of their languages, so I have a lot of respect for these folks.
My favorite example of this at the market in Bellevue was the "Open the UP!" signs posted on top of the frozen meat counters. I should say, one of my favorites, since a ditzy friend pointed it out to them and they quickly corrected it.
In any case, there's a site on the web that collects these little gems - www.Engrish.com Sadly, "Open the UP!" never made it there.
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Date: 2006-05-28 08:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-28 09:29 pm (UTC)I have this strange issue with wearing things written across my chest - figure they're big enough without drawing attention to them, I suppose.
The funnies thing about that site is trying to figure out WHAT they were trying to say - sometimes it simply cannot be done!
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Date: 2006-05-29 01:06 am (UTC)and http://www.hanzismatter.com/
and English to American as the US has all kinds of bizarre ways of using the Queen's English *grin*
Occasionally the signage is silly in Chinese (it's usually Chinese that does it) - where it will have a double meaning: one normal, obvious and -blunt-. The other naughty. Chinese puns are silly :)
Japanese (the language I do actually speak some of) don't pun as much. weird.
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Date: 2006-05-29 02:25 am (UTC)The directions that followed the bit about dropping it in water read as follows:
"Then stand back for the admiration of the swelling."
I did this in the lab I worked at. We amused ourselves with that bit of Engrish for years.
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Date: 2006-05-30 06:43 pm (UTC)But damn, the inuendo in English is fabulous!
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Date: 2006-06-01 05:09 pm (UTC)This is precisely why I still remember it some 20 years later! Oh how I wish I'd kept that bit of cardboard . . .