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What do you think about Japlish?

Yan

先輩
8 Jun 2008
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For those who don't know what is Japlish, it is a form of language where the japanese and the english languages are mixed. There's something similar in Montreal commontly called "Franglais" in French. In Montreal, people are using many english words while they are speaking French and the official language (French) is now in danger in Montreal. I have nothing against bilinguism (is it good) but I have something against it when the official language of the city (the cultural identity) is in danger.

Do you feel the Japanese language is in danger in Tokyo or there's nothing to worry about? I tried to find some information on the Web but I had a little bit difficulty...
 
Do you think English culture suffered from the profuse importing of French into the English language during the 11th and 12th centuries?
 
Nothing to worry about. These sorts of scare episodes happen with languages often, France and Japan are just examples of a cycle. To think of Japanese as pure in the first place and being tainted and mixed too much with English goes against the whole history of languages from the start.

Every language is a mix in numerous ways, Japanese is no exception. Jez, the entire writing system stems from China... that alone should raise an eyebrow when questioning the amount of English in Japanese.
 
Do you think English culture suffered from the profuse importing of French into the English language during the 11th and 12th centuries?

I think, yes. It's not because I'm a French speaker that I don't care about English language.
 
It's part of the nature of language for it to become "corrupted".

What I can't stand though are people who squeeze words such as "kawaii" and "baka" into otherwise English sentences.
 
Nothing to worry about in Japan I think....

We do have to worry about that in the Netherlands I think... especially the younger kids are using a lot more English in their sentences than before.

If the Japanese language was only spoken by less than 20 million, maybe they should worry about it then.
 
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No real problems, IMO. Students need to know/unlearn what is correct and incorrect English, of course, but languages evolve. Besides, "Japlish" (or "Engrish") is widely used on billboards and other forms of advertising, probably because the marketers don't care if it's perfect or not, as long as it looks cool and foreign.

Can't tell you how bad this looks sometimes, though, especially with children's apparel adorned with F words or similar. I even saw a SMAP member wearing a T-shirt on TV with the F words emblazoned across the chest in foot-high letters. Sigh.
 
It's a unique part of Japanese culture to import English phrases and words, correct or not, and use them to catch people's attention in advertising and whatnot.

It's much the same as Westerners bastardizing kanji and the whole 'asian' asthetic, getting it not just emblazoned on t-shirts but tattooed on their bodies.

As for adoption of English words into the Japanese language, it's also part of Japanese culture to make things shorter and easier to say. Rather than create some elaborate compound using existing kanji that may or may not clearly get the point across (English is a little more flexible I think when it comes to naming new inventions and whatnot) the Japanese just adopt the English word, use katakana and shorten it by a few syllables. So in that sense I'm not even sure it's English that's invading the Japanese language, I think its moreso a uniquely Japanese way to add to their lexicon. I daresay most English speakers, even those who know katakana, still wouldn't easily derive the meaning from the katakana word.

To use an easy example, karaoke/カラオケ; would you know it meant 'without the orchestra' or 'kara orchestra' at first glance? (That's my understanding of the word anyway, if I'm wrong about its origin please correct me). Not at first glance, at first glance I'd think it just sounds Japanese and would be understood as such. So I think the Japanese twist is way more Japanese than English in many cases.

Now as for a mixing of Japanese and English into one kind of mishmash language with a more or less correct use of both leading to a dillution of the pure Japanese (like roughly spoken English/French 'Franglais' Canadian in places like Montreal), I can't comment on that personally. If I had to guess, it's possibly a result of the increase in foreigners in Japan and subsequently the number of bi-national children, international schools, study abroad returnees, proliferation of eikaiwas, etc.

There was an article today that mentioned 1 in 30 kids born in Japan had one foreign parent. To that point, I recently spoke with an individual who was schooled at an international academy in Tokyo and who speaks naturalized English and Japanese fluently. I asked him which he preferred, and expected a quick answer pointing to one or the other. But he said it depended on what he wanted to say. Sometimes the succinctness of Japanese was much better than the wordyness of English, (try getting the true meaning of 'genki' across in one English word as nicely as genki does itself in Japanese) and vice versa with some things in Japanese. To that end, is it possible that the increasing number of naturalized bilingual half-Japanese citizens may be leading to some kind of naturalized Japanglish type style of speaking?
 
No real problems, IMO. Students need to know/unlearn what is correct and incorrect English, of course, but languages evolve. Besides, "Japlish" (or "Engrish") is widely used on billboards and other forms of advertising, probably because the marketers don't care if it's perfect or not, as long as it looks cool and foreign.


On this note, if anything Japan needs to just simply learn correct English as you mentioned here. The English that gets to Japan and the way it shows up in class is a joke usually. It's just awful.
 
The English that gets to Japan and the way it shows up in class is a joke usually. It's just awful.

That'd be moreso an indication of how poor Western education systems are than any issue with the Japanese ability to learn English, as native speakers of English are obviously not learning their own language and/or how to teach it properly prior to coming here.
 
That'd be moreso an indication of how poor Western education systems are than any issue with the Japanese ability to learn English, as native speakers of English are obviously not learning their own language and/or how to teach it properly prior to coming here.

Just a minor point, but most Japanese people don't learn English from native English speakers, they learn it from Japanese teachers who sometimes cannot speak the language well themselves, and often teach the class up to 90%in Japanese.

Some may go on to learn from native English-speaking teachers, but generally the first exposure is in JHS from a Japanese teacher, although the inclusion of ALTs is becoming more wide-spread recently.
 
Languages evolve, and are living. To stop their evolution would be futile and, some would argue, counterproductive. I would be on the side of some.
 
That'd be moreso an indication of how poor Western education systems are than any issue with the Japanese ability to learn English, as native speakers of English are obviously not learning their own language and/or how to teach it properly prior to coming here.

Clearly you don't know how the system in Japan works at all. As becki stated, they learn from Japanese teachers. The native speakers are thrown on the sidelines usually sitting in frustration as they see how crappy the system is and how horrible the kids are taught.
 
Clearly you don't know how the system in Japan works at all. As becki stated, they learn from Japanese teachers. The native speakers are thrown on the sidelines usually sitting in frustration as they see how crappy the system is and how horrible the kids are taught.

Indeed. I wouldn't have put it quite so harshly, but the system certainly needs a complete overhaul.

However, although they may be in the minority, there are some great Japanese English teachers out there who are trying to change the system and teach real English to thier students. I had the privelege to work with several (as well as some admittedly less than stellar teachers) when I was an ALT.
 
Emoni, I'm well aware of the fact that Japanese people learn elementary English from Japanese teachers who are unfortunately sometimes underqualified to be teaching the subject. The rock I live under actually gets a decent amount of sun. I was simply replying to the previous post, which said that 'the English that gets to Japan' isn't very good. Anyone who has worked at an eikaiwa can attest to the fact that even from native speakers quality can vary.
 
On this note, if anything Japan needs to just simply learn correct English as you mentioned here. The English that gets to Japan and the way it shows up in class is a joke usually. It's just awful.
The English that "gets to Japan". What does this mean? My interpretation is stuff seen/heard from movies and music culture. It doesn't usually mean what is taught in the public school system, unless you mean some slangy or modern expressions proffered by the foreign teachers.

What shows up in a J teacher's class is usually some arcane grammar point that gets dissected so students can memorize how to do this on the college entrance exams, not to use it in conversation.

What the public generally sees in advertising doesn't stem from those classes. It comes from 2 areas, as far as I can imagine at this moment:

1) politicians' egos, when they want to toss out gairaigo and seemingly impress others (when all they do most of the time is confuse them), and

2) sales or marketing departments that really don't care about grammatical correctness, only that something looks foreign and cool (to them)
 
I mean the English that either comes through pop culture references or warping of phrases that Japan has reinvented, English that is incorrectly taught in classes public education or private classes, or simple misunderstandings. It seems as if there is a filter that exists between Japan and the outside English speaking community.
 
Thanks, Emoni. Could you give us an example of "English that is incorrectly taught in classes"?

Also, it is kind of hard to eliminate "simple misunderstandings" across the board. More examples, please?

Of COURSE there is a "filter" between Japan the the outside world. Japan put it there and continues to do so. That doesn't stop people like the politicians and admen from doing what I described, nor does it stop mainstream education from doing what it does (prep for college in Japan's own style). But you aren't going to really change any of these things, certainly not easily, and that includes the "warping" of gairaigo.

I agree with your earlier statement (if anything Japan needs to just simply learn correct English as you mentioned here), but I don't see as the stuff you just wrote about is applicable. Awaiting what you have to say about incorrect English from mainstream schools, though, because that DOES seem to be more relevant.
 
It's part of the nature of language for it to become "corrupted".

What I can't stand though are people who squeeze words such as "kawaii" and "baka" into otherwise English sentences.

There are times when you really can't express something without using the original word or it would sound weird in your ears if you tried to translate it although I don't thing "baka" and "kawaii" belong to these words..
They are just the first words you pick up when starting to watch anime.
In a sense it is just natural that they get overused.

I don't think English lone words pose any threat to the language.
That's just a part of how a language evolves.
 
Awaiting what you have to say about incorrect English from mainstream schools, though, because that DOES seem to be more relevant.

This isn't really in keeping with the flow of the coversation you two are having but to comment on this point..

As far as English taught in Japanese classes goes (not eikaiwa) the ALT often becomes a live version of the pictures in the textbooks and nothing more. He/she may mimic a few phrases but its not uncommon for the entire class to be taught in Japanese. The level of ALT participation varies but it doesn't usually supercede that of the in-house English 'expert'.

This may be one way of interpreting the idea that English is exported to Japan but still doesn't get taught correctly.

But beyond that I still maintain as per my earlier point that there are a number of inept teachers out there and their ineptitude started long before they arrived in Japan. That obviously wouldn't be the sole reason for poor English in Japan, but it can't help much either.
 
I havent read the whole thread but i thought id post my 2-en

Japanese will inevitably change, just like all languages change.
I remember reading somewhere on this forum, maybe in this thread, that the only language that doesnt change is a dead language.
For instance, latin? No one uses Latin on a day to day basis, and it does not change. If a language becomes obsolete, it wont change because no one will be using it.

As for whether its bad or not. Its just the way it goes, look at it as bad or good, it will still happen.

😌
 
You're right about ALTs, bakaKanadajin, just remember that ALTs are not the only form of foreign teacher in Japanese schools. There are FT and PT teachers, too, who teach solo or team-teach (with a JTE or foreigner). I've been FT and PT in a private school. There are also international schools where English education is a totally different story.
 
Its cute but can miselad the speaker into thinking that Japlish is real. Like Spanglish. Those who speak it in the US have trouble getting any decent work.
 
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