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To: devane617

24 posted on 02/27/2008 7:41:19 AM PST by Renfield (Turning apples into venison since 1999!)
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To: Renfield

engrish.com

LMAO!


25 posted on 02/27/2008 7:46:43 AM PST by Lee'sGhost (Johnny Rico picked the wrong girl!)
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To: Renfield

I guess the idea is clear enough, so without parsing the whole thing a few comments. I can sound out the katakana without looking them up, so the ads at the bottom caught my eye. The skylark ad says “re su to ran” at the top, or “restaurant”. At the bottom it says “ga su to”. What is that? You would expect “gast” but that’s no good. Well I searched for [ skylark restaurant Japan ] and found ... GUSTO! It’s the name of a restaurant chain in Japan owned by Skylark. Then the Chinese restaurant ad says “ba mi yan”, so I searched that and “Bamiyan” is the name of the restaurant - surprise, surprise.

With regard to the “engrish”, a comment on the use of “I” in the bottom line. The Japanese do not normally use the word for “I” unless they want to emphasize the unique individuality of some action or situation, which they rarely do. The phrase is “watashi wa” - “regarding myself in particular”. So normally you say, “went to store” rather than “regarding myself in particular, went to store.” Unless this was some kind of heroic action under the circumstances.

Well, whoever was composing the “engrish” was presumably aware of the converse fact - that english speakers say “I” all the time for no good reason, and so supplied it, instead of the more direct, “when parking discovered without permission 10,000 yen collected”


35 posted on 02/28/2008 12:34:32 AM PST by dr_lew
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