Talk:Japanese English

Article Checklist for "Japanese English"

Workgroup category or categories	Linguistics Workgroup [Categories OK]
Article status	Developing article: beyond a stub, but incomplete
Underlinked article?	No
Basic cleanup done?	Yes
Checklist last edited by	John Stephenson 21:27, 10 March 2007 (CST), Petréa Mitchell 12:57, 1 April 2007 (CDT)

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Engrish

The acceptability of this term is deeply debatable, so I have renamed this Wikipedia article to a more socially and academically acceptable term (also see Singapore English/Singlish for another example). Additionally, the use of (often rather bizarre) English phrases in Japan is just one aspect of the language's presence there. Obviously, many Japanese are fluent English speakers and there are several English-language institutions where English is used as effectively as anywhere else. What differs is often a matter of vocabulary: for example, police box is always used as the translation for 交番 kouban, but in fact this is a local police station, rather than a callbox specifically for contacting the police, as in Britain (see TARDIS :-) ). This 'fork' of English should also be covered. John Stephenson 01:39, 14 February 2007 (CST)

Other JE words

Words used in English that are used in a different way: as well as the ones in the article (e.g. 'police box'), I've just thought of dormitory (which is used to mean 'hall of residence'). Any more? John Stephenson 00:09, 21 February 2007 (CST)

Another: as a native English speaker I'd never heard of dust box before, but it exists in Japan. This led me to come up with three criteria for a true JE word, as distinct from pseudo-English loanwords used in Japanese:

• It's not in the dictionary - I checked and 'dust box' is absent;
• It either means nothing to native speakers of English, or means something completely different (I did find one site saying that a dust box is a hermetically sealed box used to contain resin dust during etching, but this has nothing to do with the JE term, which means 'waste bin' or 'wastepaper basket');
• It's not used in Japanese itself. So, for example, they say gomibako for a waste bin in Japanese, but this is translated as dust box in English notices. Likewise, see police box above.

John Stephenson 03:18, 19 March 2007 (CDT)

Another is use of trouble. This is a very common term in Japanese English writing, meaning anything from criminal activity to a slight nuisance. e.g. (university library PC webpage) "Since it causes making some trouble, please do not install any software or change the method." This page also exemplifies the use of the first person imperative: "Let's be sufficient, and take care so that it may not print on other person's paper." John Stephenson 23:17, 8 April 2007 (CDT)

Wasei Eigo

I don't wanna burst in doing edits if this is something that the previous authors have really thought through,but I think we need to make a distinction between transliteration of names -アクセル for Axel-, four character abbreviations -パソコン from パーソナル・コンピューター for personal computer- and true wasei eigo words like クーラー and OL (オフィス・レディー）. Any opinions or objections before I start editing? Axel Theorin 11:38, 18 May 2007 (CDT)

Not at all. Yes, names are just a transliteration, not wasei-eigo. One distinction to be made is between wasei-eigo words whose meaning is not obvious, like salaryman, and wasei-eigo words that appear to mean one thing but are in fact another - like the pasucon example. This was not a PC but a 1980s games console. Also, maybe OL is yet another category - words that are abbreviated to English initials, then pronounced in Japanese. 'Office lady' is often pronounced oeru (OL). John Stephenson 01:51, 19 May 2007 (CDT)

Comment

Excellent work, John. Stephen Ewen 01:08, 2 June 2007 (CDT)