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Why do they do it?

AYNIL

後輩
6 Mar 2010
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Does anyone else find it odd and often irritating when a fellow foreigner inserts the odd Japanese word/phrase into a perfectly acceptable English sentence? Example: "Got a great new laptop for 5 man yen" / "the salary's ni juu gou man yen", etc.

It's not like I wouldn't understand the English, so what's it about? And I can process 250,000 a heck of a lot faster than a mauled pronunciation of 'ni juu gou man', anyway.

A strange habit, nee?
 
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Actually in the examples you mentioned I don't find it all the unusual to insert Japanese Yen readings in a English sentence. Actually saying 50,000/fifty thousand yen in English is a bit awkward and I'd use the Japanese reading provided I'm talking with someone who would understand and we were talking about a Japanese product purchase.

In certain large Japanese communities in the US (Honolulu, San Francisco, LA, NY), there are some who speak in a Japanese "pidgin"/mix where they insert Japanese words in English sentences when talking to others who aren't fully fluent in English. I had a co-worker who would always add the "onegai" at the end of her requests ("Can you go to the store and pick up some ice cream? Onegai...") or adding "domo" or "tasukatta" when saying thank you ("Thanks for all your help, Tasukatta").
 
Actually in the examples you mentioned I don't find it all the unusual to insert Japanese Yen readings in a English sentence. Actually saying 50,000/fifty thousand yen in English is a bit awkward and I'd use the Japanese reading provided I'm talking with someone who would understand and we were talking about a Japanese product purchase.

In certain large Japanese communities in the US (Honolulu, San Francisco, LA, NY), there are some who speak in a Japanese "pidgin"/mix where they insert Japanese words in English sentences when talking to others who aren't fully fluent in English. I had a co-worker who would always add the "onegai" at the end of her requests ("Can you go to the store and pick up some ice cream? Onegai...") or adding "domo" or "tasukatta" when saying thank you ("Thanks for all your help, Tasukatta").

Unfortunately the OP is probably long gone. But I will say that I agree with you and I do not find it odd at all. I do stuff like this all the time with other foreigners who I know speak and understand Japanese. Of course I would never talk like that outside of that circle of people.

I think I first started doing this when I studied abroad here and lived in a dormitory with a lot of other students from many different countries. English and Japanese were basically the two main languages used, and they got mixed up a lot.
 
The only one that used to bother me was "I have to write a 500字 paper for tomorrow." I used to always wonder what on earth a "gee" was. It would have been much more preferable for them to say 五百字 paper, or 500-character paper.
 
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