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    Twirling dragon Maciamo's Avatar
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    Post Characteristics of "Jengrish"

    NB : This post is constantly edited to add new ideas later mentioned in this thread. - Main article here

    Japanese-English* is characterized by a set of common mistakes or uncommon use of English as spoken by the larger part of the Japanese. These include :

    - agglutination of several nouns (direct translation from long kanji compounds) instead of separating them by "of (the)" (eg. "company meeting attendance rate analysis", instead of "analysis of the attendance rate of company meetings").
    - absence or mistaken use of articles ("a" and "the")
    - use of nouns instead of adjectives (eg. "minus image" instead of "negative image").
    - mistaken use of "almost" + noun (eg. "almost Japanese" instead of "almost all Japanese")
    - excessive use of passive (e.g. "my haircut was changed" instead of "I changed my haircut")
    - use of Katakana English (see below)
    - the excessive use of "hope" instead of expect, wish, would like, or want.
    (e.g. "I hope to meet you tomorrow at 6pm if it is convenient for you").
    - excessive use of "play" and "enjoy" (see post #8 and #9).
    - excessive use of "popular" instead of "common" or "usual" (eg. "Is snowing popular in your country" ?)
    - confusion of words like 'country' and 'company'.
    -...

    There are many more, which I can't remember right now. Please help me define Japanese-English.

    ---------------
    *Japanese-English (=English as spoken by native Japanese-speakers) is distinct from Katakana English (=English words used in Japanese). The characteritsics of Katakana English include :

    - creation of words by combining existing English words (eg. "salaryman").
    - shortening of words (eg. "remokon" for "remote control", "pasokon" for "personal computer")
    Last edited by Maciamo; Mar 29, 2005 at 22:59.

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