Line #33 GratuitousEnglish/RealLife


1	* Creator/AyaHirano, voice actress for Literature/HaruhiSuzumiya, wore a shirt saying "Did You Cum Twice Too?" and "Feel so dirty!!! I need a Tongue Bath!" at an official concert.
2	* [[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:IMages_Are_Hopefully_in_Your_head_since_1982_shirt.jpg This Japanese T-shirt]] saying "iMages Are Hopefully in Your head since 1982" and below the red star, "Lovey-Dovey Night" and "Highfalutin".
3	* As a general rule, Germans ''LOVE'' their Gratuitous English almost as much as the Japanese. Since both languages are very closely related (the Angles and the Saxons were German tribes before they settled England--they were from Angeln in Schleswig-Holstein and Lower Saxony, respectively), English words integrate very well into the German language and while many words in both languages are almost or completely identical, some similar-sounding words mean very different things. They are known as ''Falsche Freunde'' in German and ''False Friends'' in English. In General, using English words is the same as using XtremeKoolLetterz.
4	** The most infamous example is of German discount store chain Lidl once advertising "body bags". They meant backpacks. Many, many producers still call their backpacks "body bags". Doubly ironic since "rucksack", the German term for the bags, is also used in English. It is weird that they messed this up, since Rucksack, the German word, is composed of Ruck+sack, Ruck coming from Rücken (back) and sack, which is relatively self-explanatory. Therefore, the literal translation should also be backpack or back-sack.
5	** The German word for a cellphone 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.
6	** Technical inventions are almost never translated into German. At least since the '90s, they are always called by their English name.
7	** German technical terminology is heavily influenced by English. Psychology scholars routinely create "Denglisch" words to replace perfectly good German words: "encode" is "kodieren" in German, but rely on psychology majors to use the redundant "enkodieren"; also, psychologists have imported the phrasal structure of the verb "remember" for use with the German equivalent - in German it should be "sich an etwas erinnern" or "sich einer Sache erinnern" (similar to "remind oneself of something"), instead they use "etwas erinnern" which sounds as strange to the ears of German non-psychologists as "remember oneself of something" would in English.
8	** Similarly, the use of "realisieren" (to realize) in the common English sense of "to become aware of something" has started to infiltrate German and supplant other existing expressions.
9	** Job titles are more and more translated into English, even though studies show that Germans are reluctant to apply for a job that is given in the ad as, say, "Key Account Manager".
10	** 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,...)).
11	** The German verb "kontrollieren" is often wrongly used in the same context as the English "to control". O.K. the words have some overlapping meaning, but there is a big difference. The German "kontrollieren" means to get information about something without influencing it (similar to "to check" or "to supervise"), usually verifinging if something is in the correct state. The English word "to control" in most cases means to command/rule/drive something. This also increased heavily in recent years. The compound word "controlcharacter" is (correctly) translated to "Steuerzeichen" in a manual for a DOS-program, but may be translated to "kontrollcharakter" (verifying personality) in a manual for a Windows-programm. As a genral rule : If you translate the verb "to control" to German, then translate it to "steuern" and not to "kontrollieren".
12	** Though Gratuitous English is very often used by German media or some uneducated people, there are very many language purists in Germany who see a serious menace in Anglicisms and wrong syntax. Most people with at least some eduction or elder people are highly aggravated by the use of English words, syntax and pronunciation in German. This also spreads to names, someone who has an English name like Kevin, Justin is often considered to be white trash (even worse are AerithAndBob-names ), while having a Germanic (or at least Hebrew or Roman) name is considered to be someone smart. This phenomenon even has even its own name : KEVINISMUS - the inability to give children a human name. Though the word "Kevinism" comes from the German Uncyclopedia, the word is used in serious research about naming schemes.
13	** Around 2012, German merchants apparently conspired to introduce the word "Sale" for discounts and allowances, even though existing German terms such as "Angebot", "Aktion" or "Rabatt" aren't much longer. It was later mentioned on radio how somebody's boyfriend assumed "Sale" to be a hip brand.
14	** Germany's professional league in [[UsefulNotes/AmericanFootball American football]] is called the German Football League. ''In German.''
15	*** Also goes for Austria—the local German name for its professional American football league is the Austrian Football League.
16	* Before Belgium and the Netherlands merged their top men's professional UsefulNotes/{{basketball}} leagues, the top Dutch league was the Dutch Basketball League. ''In Dutch.'' After the merger, the joint league is the BNXT League in all three official languages (Dutch in both countries, also French and German in Belgium).
17	* A decent number of football/soccer clubs in the Spanish-speaking world have English-language names. Not that surprising once you find out that quite a few of the oldest clubs were founded at least in part by British expats.
18	** 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]] 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]] Racing Club (de Avellaneda) is an aversion; the name was directly borrowed from a French auto racing magazine owned by a club co-founder.
19	** Bolivia: Always Ready, Blooming, The Strongest
20	** Peru: Sport Boys
21	** Spain: The official name of Athletic Bilbao in both Spanish and Basque is ''Athletic Club''.
22	** Uruguay: 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]] Montevideo Wanderers
23	* Not just found in the Hispanosphere...
24	** Netherlands: Go Ahead Eagles. The club was even founded as "Be Quick".
25	** Switzerland: Old Boys (from Basel) and Young Boys (from Bern). The latter was intentionally named to mimic the former.
26	* In Japan, the top leagues of both men's and women's football/soccer exhibit this in their marketing. While both leagues, the J1 League for men and the WE League for women, have official Japanese names written in that language, their logos use English. Drilling down farther, the "J" explicitly stands for "Japan", and "WE" for "Women's Empowerment".
27	** Not to mention that the J1 League is part of the three-level [=J.League=], which also includes the J2 and J3 Leagues. All use English in their logos.
28	* It goes the other way pretty often, too, especially where tattoos are concerned. The website [[http://www.hanzismatter.blogspot.com/ Hanzi Smatter]] shows photographs of Chinese and Japanese characters used for shirts and tattoos and the like. It's Engrish put on its head.
29	** Car stickers as well. Especially funny if the Gratuitous Japanese is on an American or European car.
30	** Interestingly, there's also [[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/5170898/Chinese-craze-for-English-tattoos.html a growing trend for gratuitous English tattoos in China]]...
31	* Perhaps the funniest of the Engrish.com examples is [[https://web.archive.org/web/20101125031150/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").
32	* The interesting speech held by Ingrid Antičević Marinović in the European Parliament, is full of gratuitous pronunciation and had people in Croatia who speak English pulling their hair. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LH460wxQOTI This is what it sounded like.]] This is what she meant to say: [our tasks are] to combat corruption, rule of law, to reform judiciary, and so on, but we are aware, and we are aware to meet our commitment to our citizens, to resolve, to preserve, and even more to develop our welfare state. I think that it's our task in Croatia and in the whole Europe, because people must trust us. Thank you. - During the same day there was already a Gangnam style and Harlem shake parodies of the speech, and the saddest thing is, she could have spoken in her mother tongue with professional translators translating in English. When teenagers in Croatian schools speak better English than the politicians, one has to wonder where the country is going.
33	* 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."
34	* French PM Raffarin's "Win ze yes, need ze no. To win! egens ze no." (When the yes needs the no, to win against the no.) during the leadup to the (non-)ratification of the European Constitutional Treaty in 2005.
35	* There's a Norwegian band, created for a children's talent show, called the Black... ''Sheeps''.
36	* "Modern Hebrew" in general. If you don't know a word and it is something modern, just elongate the vowels and say it with a Sephardic Hebrew accent.
37	** There's a joke:
38	--->"How do you say "Open the window" in Hebrew?\
39	"Uphen de vindoh"
40	** Allegedly, in Israel, the back axle of a car is called a "beckexel", while the front axle is called a "beckexel kadmoni" meaning a front "beckexel", meaning a "Front Back Axle".
41	** However, much like Hanzi Smatter above, there are plenty of people with bad ''Hebrew'' tattoos, as documented at [[https://www.badhebrew.com/ Bad Hebrew Tattoos]].
42	* In Quebec, 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]].
43	* 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 tongue. Furthermore, the nations of Scandinavia have one of the highest rates of English fluency in the world.
44	* The oldest pizza delivery place in the Czech Republic is called "Pizza Go Home".
45	* One Chinglish fire extinguisher sign (providing the page image for BlindIdiotTranslation) says "Hand Grenade". Another says [[http://www.flickr.com/photos/brookstar/27713559/ "Forbid to embezzle fire apparatus"]].
46	* On the label of a bottle of (what appear to be) herbal pills, the following warnings are given the greatest emphasis:
47	--> The condition may not fit the constitution and rarely. The use of this product, diarrhea, vomiting, and if the Case of modulating body rash, please discontinue use immediately. \
48	If you are pregnant or nursing, please do your children. \
49	In consultation with our doctors, If you are taking your medication, please enjoy.
50	** On the shopping site proffering this item, not much is conveyed by long paragraphs of boilerplate, other than an evident horror of the possibility someone might take offense at...well, anything. Same spiel concludes with the [[MoodWhiplash peremptory admonition]], "About three months into the bottle type bag also!". The legend "Fuji Photo Film Co., Ltd." clashes--at first glance--with a product touted as "Health Food Made in Japan," at least for Western customers who firmly associate Fuji Ltd. with photography, unaware of the corporate behemoth's likely diversification.
51	* One neofascist political party in post-Mussolini Italy was known to sprinkle English into its slogans, perhaps as a way of mocking Americans. One slogan, for example, denounced "''l'idiozia dell'American Way of Life''."
52	* In Navajo, and presumably other Native American languages, lots of more modern words don't translate over. If you're driving over the rez and listening to the Navajo-language radio, it's not uncommon to be able to understand nearly a full quarter of an advertisement for things like a video game store or the radio station.
53	** Strictly speaking, in Navajo, ''anything'' can be translated, but it takes a long time—the Navajo for "army tank" is "[[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/chid%C3%AD_naa%CA%BCna%CA%BC%C3%AD_bee%CA%BCeld%C7%AB%C7%ABhtsoh_bik%C3%A1%C3%A1%CA%BC_dah_naaznil%C3%ADg%C3%AD%C3%AD chidí naaʼnaʼí beeʼeldǫǫhtsoh bikááʼ dah naaznilígíí]]" and literally means "[[BuffySpeak caterpillar tractor ['crawling car'] with a cannon ['large gun; large explosion-maker'] that one can sit on]]". Hence why most of the time they just say, e.g., "ni''tank'' yá'át'ééh" ("Nice tank.")
54	* [[http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lk1tj7RiUm1qbqt8go1_500.jpg This]] menu card supposedly translated for tourists. You'll notice that by saying "He/She came" they wanted to say "Wine".
55	** In some Polish restaurant's English translation of their menu, there was a phrase "Denmark from grill." [[note]]Polish word "Dania" can mean "Dishes" as in, food, or "Denmark".[[/note]]
56	** There's also [[https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-iAOknWpfOb8/SFlg9Z5ml5I/AAAAAAAABh0/HoKoG3lNc3s/s647/P180608_17.28.JPG this menu]] [[note]]"Wschód Słońca" is "Sunrise", but "Wschód" alone can be "East" as in, a direction.[[/note]]
57	** According to the In Your Pocket tourist guide, there is a restaurant in Poznań that translated its dish of poultry stomachs rather unfortunately as [[CountryMatters "goose cunt"]].
58	* All too common in Brazil, to the point that politicians have proposed laws to forbid the use of foreign words in advertising.
59	* In response to [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXvAT7vZMuA a game-winning home run by Manny Ramirez]], a Taiwanese baseball commentator [[NoIndoorVoice cried]] "GONE! JUST LIKE THE EX-GIRLFRIEND WHO WILL NEVER RETURN!"
60	* Similar to other incidents above, Ana Botella (the mayor of Madrid at the time) [[https://youtu.be/2xarUXTTssU 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}}''.
61	* Finns, as a whole, love GratuitousEnglish. There's even a dialect called "slangi" which is basically inserting random Swedish and English words into otherwise Finnish sentences. Finns also tend to swear in English (and German) sometimes, usually when they want to swear without sounding like they're actually swearing. There are even "Finnish" words that are basically just English words spelled phonetically in Finnish - "pliis" (please - Finnish doesn't really have a word for please), "jes" (yes) "jeah" (yeah), "oolrait" (alright) and "nevähööd" ("never heard", basically meaning "I've never heard of it") are all commonly heard among Finnish teenagers and young adults.
62	* One Polish manufacturer of shampoo named its product "Radical". It gets funnier when you consider it is for women aged 40+.
63	* 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.

Context GratuitousEnglish / RealLife