>>Gawker has this funny story about cultural mistakes. Sometimes the English language is so hard to define...

>>There is a picture of lots of posters taped to the windows of a store, hanging from teh ceiling and mounted (sorry) around the room.

>>

http://gawker.com/5874304

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Japanese Department Store May Want to Look Up the Word 'Fucking'

By Adrian Chen

Jan 9, 2012 10:50 AM

If only we could have sat in on the meeting where the marketing team for this Osaka department store came up with the idea for their "Fuckin' Sale," spotted early this month by a reader of Jake Adelstein's Japan Subculture blog.

-There should be some cool English words on these signs.

-How about "Fuckin' Sale?"

-What's that mean?

-Fuckin' means, like, really good. So it's a really good sale.

-And there's no other meaning to "fuckin'? Nothing at all that might embarrass us on the internet? Remember what happened with our Save-a-Shit-Ton promotion

It's not just the Parco Dept. Store in Osaka.... I've long collected strange English usages from Japan (beginning with my first visit there as a student in 1962). Just this morning a friend sent me a photo of the sign outside a Tokyo game center named G-Spot Amusement.

When I was in Japan I saw a Gatorade like drink called "Sweat."

So let me get this right, it's a fuckin' sale... so does that mean prostitutes are 20% off?

--LT

Slammr (imported) wrote: Wed Jan 11, 2012 2:06 pm When I was in Japan I saw a Gatorade like drink called "Sweat."

We have a whiteboard on the refrigerator where we write what leftovers we have. One time my brother wrote "sweat and sour pork". It was a misspelling of "sweet".

I heard a story recently of a mother whose daughter was looking through a picture book about animals. The little girl was pointing to the pictures and saying the names. "That's a frickin' elephant," she said. The mother did a double take, aghast at the words coming out of the child's mouth, but after looking at the picture carefully, she realized that the girl wasn't being crude. She was reading what the book said: African Elephant.

Sandi

A friend of mine adopted a Korean boy and one day when he wasn't being that attentive, he told the kid twice to "speak English" ...

He discovered that a 7 year old has a temper and that the kid knew most of those words we don't ever want kids to say.

Apparently, when you say speak English twice to a kid who was speaking a very accented English, the kid throws a real adult shit fit of dirty words.

My friend said that apologies and soothed egos later, the had a good laugh.

English is such a beast of a language for so many others who are not native speakers.

At work we used to get scientists from China with only 6 weeks intensive, submersion English. Brilloiant, hard working people. BUT the weirdest things would be said sometimes. They learned but the shades of meanings, the subtleties of the language were all frightful.

I once showed A visiting Polish scientist (who spoke Polish, English and Russian) the original Edgar Allen Poe poem of THE BELLS and he had only heard Rachmaninoff's musical version sung in Russian. I had the English translation of the Russian choral version but it lacked "tintinabulation"... You should have seen the look on the man's face as he read the side-by-side translations.

....

Dave (imported) wrote: Wed Jan 11, 2012 3:34 pm English is such a beast of a language for so many others who are not native speakers.....

If you want some amusement, try Google's translating tool. For grins, I typed in "shredded beef" for translation to Spanish, expecting to see "carne deshebrada" (but that's not what I got). I took what the Google tool gave and had it translate back to English. It came out "Meat of a destroyed cow."

Then there are the classic Japanese driving instructions (recorded multiple places with slight variations, including here: http://www.globalization-group.com/edge ... ith-vigor/ ):

* At the rise of the hand of the policeman stop rapidly. Do not pass him or otherwise disrespect him.

* When a passenger of foot hove in sight tootle the horn trumpet him melodiously at first. If he still obstacles your passage tootle with vigor and express by word of mouth “Hi! Hi!”

* Beware of the wandering horse that he shall not take fright as you pass him. Do not explosion the exhaust box at him. Go soothingly by, or stop by the roadside till he pass away.

* Give big space to the festive dog that make sport in the roadway. Avoid entanglement of the dog with your wheelspokes.

* Go soothingly on the grease mud as there lurk the skid devil.

* Press the brake of the foot as you roll around the corners to save the collapse and tie-up.

Finally, there was the story of an early machine-translation program, which was fed "Out of sight, out of mind" for translation to Russian. Translating back to English, it allegedly came up with "blind, insane."

English is, indeed, a beast of a language.

Sandi

...

C&TL2745 (imported) wrote: Wed Jan 11, 2012 6:11 pm * At the rise of the hand of the policeman stop rapidly. Do not pass him or otherwise disrespect him.

...

That admonition in bold just made me laugh out loud. It's precious.

Pretty funny. There is a lot of this kind of stuff at www.engrishfunny.com and www.engrish.com.

It is surprising how often the word "fuck" comes up. Here are two examples:

http://adult.engrish.com/2011/04/22/eur ... fucked-it/

http://adult.engrish.com/2011/09/09/don ... -educated/