English in Japan

(Big Danger in Little Osaka #25, 2009)

Everyone in Japan knows at least some English. For a start, English has long been compulsory for all junior and senior high school students, so if nothing else people will remember the set phrases that were drummed into them there. This doesn’t necessarily mean they will understand them, though: ask a Japanese person how they are and they will most likely reply “I’m fine thank you, and you?”, even if they’re writhing in pain on the floor at the time (apparently this has actually happened). Having a white face in Japan seems to be an invitation for random people on the street to practice their English on you (conveniently ignoring the fact that you might actually be French or something). Most of the time it’s just a passing “hello!” or “nice to meet you!”, although a long-winded treatise on, say, the regional dialects of Japan isn’t entirely out of the question.

But it’s not just half-remembered high-school English that people are familiar with: English is slowly becoming an integral part of the Japanese language itself. A vast number of English words have been imported into Japanese, albeit modified into katakana, a writing system used almost exclusively for foreign loanwords. Originally, English words were introduced when there was no Japanese equivalent, so ‘tennis’ would become tenisu, ‘coffee’ would  become koohii, and so on. However, as English has become more fashionable, katakana English words are increasingly used in place of perfectly good Japanese equivalents. With words like boiru (boil), chansu (chance) and naisu gai! (nice guy!) in common usage, English speakers in Japan can often bluff their way through a conversation with little knowledge of Japanese.

However, it’s not always that easy: a lot of English words mutate after they are introduced to Japanese. Many phrases are converted to katakana and then condensed into unrecognisable new words. Can you guess the meanings of such common words as pasokon¹, sekuhara², konsento³ and Burapi⁴? Sometimes words evolve to take on whole new meanings: sutoobu originally meant ‘stove’, but now it generally means ‘heater’. To add to the confusion, not all katakana words are even from English: the Japanese word for ‘part-time job’ is (aru)baito, from the German ‘Arbeit’. Japanese people often mistakenly assume that all katakana words correspond directly to English, not realising that a sentence like “I was sekuhara by Burapi at my baito” makes bugger-all sense.

With all this half-remembered high school English and mutated katakana words, is it any wonder that Japan has places called ‘Club Sexual Harassment’ and song lyrics like “please give me only heartful future”? I dedicated a column to hilarious Japanese English last year, and while I’ve seen a huge amount since then it’s getting harder and harder to find examples that really stand out. So, I’ll leave you with a single (strangely touching) example: a woman in Hiroshima, staring solemnly at the burnt-out remains of the A-bomb dome, wearing a t-shirt that screams the words “MONKEY PANIC!!!”

¹ personal computer, ² sexual harassment, ³ electrical outlet (from ‘concentric plug’), ⁴ Brad Pitt. No, really.