History GratuitousEnglish / RealLife

* There's a chain of Japanese children's clothing stores called Starvations: The supposed explanation is that they were going for a WordPureeTitle combining "star" and "innovations", but ended up with something that was already an English word.

* [There's a chain of Japanese children's clothing stores called Starvations: The supposed explanation is that they were going for a WordPureeTitle combining "star" and "innovations", but ended up with something that was already an English word.

* [[http://www.injapanthisisperfectlynormal.com/tag/starvations/ There's a chain of Japanese children's clothing stores called Starvations]]: The supposed explanation is that they were going for a WordPureeTitle combining "star" and "innovations" but ended up with something that was already an English word.

* Creator/AyaHirano, voice actress for LightNovel/HaruhiSuzumiya, wore a shirt saying "Did You Cum Twice Too?" and "Feel so dirty!!! I need a Tongue Bath!" at an official concert.

** Argentina: Newell's Old Boys,[[note]]Founded by alumni of an Anglo-Argentine school in Rosario founded by one Isaac Newell, among them his oldest son.[[/note]] Racing Club (de Avellaneda),[[note]]The name was directly borrowed from a French auto racing magazine owned by a club co-founder.[[/note]] River Plate[[note]]One of the founding members had seen Buenos Aires port workers leave their jobs to play a football game, and noticed that the boxes they left behind were marked "The River Plate" (the name the English gave to the Río de la Plata estuary).[[/note]]

** Uruguay: Montevideo Wanderers, Boston River[[note]]"Boston" was the name of a tailoring shop owned by a club founder. "River" is a specific shout-out to River Plate (above).[[/note]]

* The top men's professional UsefulNotes/{{basketball}} league in the Netherlands is the Dutch Basketball League. ''In Dutch.''

** Allegedly, in Israel, the back axel of a car is called a "beckexel", while the front axel is called a "beckexel kadmoni" meaning a front "beckexel", meaning a "Front Back Axel"

* Similar to other incidents above, Ana Botella (the mayor of Madrid at the time) [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SluVUMq0Q4g&ab_channel=gromenawer gave a horrible speech in English]] where she defended the candidature of Madrid as the Olympic venue of 2020. This made her the butt of thousands of jokes and parodies including [[https://youtu.be/hhJt3Tzjy8I one where]] she gave the speech in ''Film/{{Braveheart}}''.

** Strictly speaking, in Navajo, ''anything'' can be translated, but it takes a long time—the Navajo for "tank" (as in the vehicle) is "chidí naaʼnaʼí beeʼeldǫǫhtsoh bikááʼ dah naaznilígíí" and literally means "[[BuffySpeak crawling cart with a large causer-of-explosions that you can sit on and ride]]". Hence why most of the time they just say, e.g., "ni''tank'' yá'át'ééh" ("Nice tank.")

* Perhaps the funniest of the Engrish.com examples is [[http://adult.engrish.com/1996/09/16/dick-and-uprise/ Dick and Uprise]], simply because it's impossible to tell what meaning was ''supposed'' to be conveyed there. (Possibly "Enterprise").

* Happens a lot in Quebec and other French speaking parts of Canada (such as some areas of New Brunswick and Ontario), along with GratuitousFrench for the English speakers. For instance, many French speakers will refer to a waste can as "le garbage" rather than "la poubelle", though garbage is usually pronounced "gar-BAA-ge" rather than the English "gar - bidge".
** As noted, Quebec English is not devoid of French influence: for instance, convenience stores are known as ''dépanneurs'', or ''deps'' for short, in both Quebec English and Quebec French.
** One amateur video of the Lac-Mégantic rail disaster ([[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZTxQ60nQ4w here at 6:36]]) had the cameraman go from yelling in French to shouting "Oh my God!" in English within the course of a few seconds.
* In France, the habit of using English loanwords, adapted for French pronunciation, is both frowned upon by the Académie Française who made it its job to safeguard the French language... and quasi-universally widespread, in some fields perhaps more so than in Quebec and Belgium. Most movie titles which are translated into French for distribution in Canada aren't translated for distribution in France (i.e., "La Matrice" is known in France simply as "Matrix", pronounced ma-TREEX). It's also particularly notable in technical vocabulary, so much so that French people will use an adapted English loanword (say, "mail", pronounced mel, for "e-mail") until the Canadians coin something (in this example, "courriel", for "courrier électronique", which literally means "electronic mail"). Or "pourriel", which in France is just "spam", "gratuiciel" for "freeware", etc. Then they'll just keep using the English word, and only use the newly coined word in more formal settings, if at all.
** And then there's the expressions like "swag", "yolo", "cool", "frais" (literal translation of, and used in the same context as, 90's "fresh"), "selfie", "workshop" (but only in the yuppie meaning).
** Although there is some kind of "you have to translate the slogan" rule in that in advertising and even on its products, [=McDonald=]'s will keep the name of its burgers in English (or Translated To The Same Language in English, as with the [[Film/PulpFiction Royal Cheese]])... and then provide a footnote translating what the slogans ''mean''. Hence: "Flurr'it yourself"* (*"fais-le toi-même"), or "CBO: Chicken Bacon Oignons"* (*"chicken = poulet")[[note]]with "onion" ''already translated into French''[[/note]].
** Certain loanwords end up mangled as well: The accepted term for "schedule" is "le planning", while "footing" means "jogging" (and "jogging", in French, can also refer to sweatpants).

* The Philippines, being the largest English-speaking country in Southeast Asia, is rife with these, in so much as it spawned the term "taglish" or a combination of Tagalog and English. Thus, it is not unusual to hear things like "Magsho-shopping" (Going shopping) and "Ise-send" (will be sending) in conversation especially with teens.
* The people near the popular tourist spots of Thailand are surprisingly fluent in English, and evidently use it in Westernized or tourist areas. Unfortunately, they do not tend to know how to avoid AccidentalInnuendo, as an advertisement for donkey rides once read "Would you like to ride on your own ass?"
* Common in Cantonese due to Hong Kong being a British colony in the past, in contrast to Mandarin Chinese where it is almost nonexistent. For example, a baby in (informal) Cantonese is "BB", as in, that is how it's actually written, there aren't Chinese or Cantonese characters for it. In conversation, it's not uncommon to hear a few English words interspersed within. It doesn't help that most of the words are easily translatable like "lunch", "assignment", "caltor" (short form for calculator) or [[BreadEggsMilkSquick "in" (short form for integration in calculus)]] or even meaningless, expressive words like "Well", [[LikeIsLikeAComma "like"]] or some F-Bombs. Some particularly JustForFun/{{egregious}} speakers may be degraded as the so-called "Faux ABC"[[note]]ABC stands for ''American-born Chinese''[[/note]], meaning they are trying willfully to try to sound more "classy" like a fluent English speaker.

* The same applies to the Nguni and Sotho language groups native to South Africa. In Sepedi/Sesotho Sa Leboa, for example, we have "khomphutha" for "computer" and (less obviously) "mmotoro" for "car", while in isiZulu "ice cream" is commonly taught to students as (the slightly incorrect) "iAyisikhulimi" - phonetically similar enough to confuse the Zulu for English, despite how mangled the written form seems.

* [[http://www.injapanthisisperfectlynormal.com/tag/starvations/ There's a chain of Japanese children's clothing stores called Starvations]]: The supposed explanation is that they were going for a WordPureeTitle combining "star" and "innovations" but ended up with something that was already an English word.
* India is yet another country which loves to use Gratuitous English, up to the point that you'll often find stuff like English words in otherwise Hindi sentences in Indian works such as TV shows and films. That said, India is part of the Anglosphere with [[UsefulNotes/IndianLanguages English as an official language]]. The broken English characteristic of this trope is typically absent, as English words are carefully mixed in with phrases in local languages, in a manner that preserves its meaning.

** There are also some cases where English syntax is used together with German words. In the recent years it has become popular to say "etwas macht Sinn" instead of the correct syntax "etwas ergibt einen Sinn" to express "something makes sense" (sense is countable in German, but not in English (like fish,sheep,...)).

* In a similar vein, several years ago, Slovakia's then Minister of Economy Ľubomír Jahnátek was ridiculed for his hilariously feeble English pronunciation when he appeared in a welcome ad for an international economic conference. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLeF4IUUNe4 Observe...]] He was trying to say "We politicians will be there, on our behalf and together with our own and foreign experts, especially from the EU countries. We will try to find the best solutions and deadlines for Slovakia. For us.". Predictably, the [[FanNickname "Vee Politishens"]] speech soon became [[MemeticMutation a nationwide meme]] and has even stayed popular since then, often being invoked anytime a Slovak MP shows weak foreign language skills.

* In France the habit of using English loanwords, adapted for French pronunciation, is both frowned upon by the Académie Française who made it its job to safeguard the French language... and quasi-universally widespread, in some fields perhaps more so than in Quebec and Belgium. Most movie titles which are translated into French for distribution in Canada aren't translated for distribution in France (i.e., "La Matrice" is known in France simply as "Matrix", pronounced ma-TREEX). It's also particularly notable in technical vocabulary, so much so that French people will use an adapted English loanword (say, "mail", pronounced mel, for "e-mail") until the Canadians coin something (in this example, "courriel", for "courrier électronique", which literally means "electronic mail"). Or "pourriel", which in France is just "spam", "gratuiciel" for "freeware", etc. Then they'll just keep using the English word, and only use the newly coined word in more formal settings, if at all.

* In Scandinavia, commercials, even store windows are in English. This is meant to be cool and exotic, but studies in Norway suggest that most people actually prefer ads in their own language and that messages have a stronger impact if delivered in one's native tounge.

* India is yet another country which loves to use Gratuitous English, up to the point that you'll often find stuff like English words in otherwise Hindi sentences in Indian works such as TV shows and films.

* In response to a game-winning home run by Manny Ramirez, a Taiwanese baseball commentator [[NoIndoorVoice cried]] "GONE! JUST LIKE THE EX-GIRLFRIEND WHO WILL NEVER RETURN!"

** The German word for a cell phone is ''Handy'', which is even pronounced English, but a completely new German invention. MeaningfulName, much? Creator/StephenFry, by the way, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39EPz2JsbUk finds it hilarious]]. For those foreigners out there, handy has another meaning rather than "useful". It is NSFW.

--> "How do you say "Open the window" in Hebrew?
--> "Uphen de vindoh"

** One amateur video of the Lac Megantic rail disaster ([[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZTxQ60nQ4w here at 6:36]]) had the cameraman go from yelling in French to shouting "Oh my God!" in English within the course of a few seconds.