Gratuitous English - Television Tropes & Idioms

Return It To The Life And The God.
— Kamen Rider IXA's HUD, Kamen Rider Decade

Chiyo-chichi: Herro eburinyan (everyone)! How ah you? Fine, sank you.

Osaka: Oh my Gah!

Chiyo-chichi: Uh, I wish I wa a bird.

- Azumanga Daioh

This is not so much an Anime Trope as a feature of the Japanese language. It shows up prominently in anime and can easily be misunderstood by people who don't speak Japanese. The Japanese language includes many "foreign loan words" (Gairaigo). While a few of these words, like "tabako" (cigarettes) and "pan" (bread, from Portuguese), have been in use for over a hundred years, most date to the post-war period.

They are a common, everyday part of Japanese language with their own usage and meaning (often slightly sometimes very) different from the source, appear in dictionaries along side normal words (the same way that the word burrito appears in an English dictionary), etc. etc.

For example, a schoolgirl who feels she has just received a stroke of good fortune might squeal "Rakki!" This originates from the English word "Lucky!" (You can hear Mihoshi in Tenchi Muyo! say this a few times.) She is not "trying to speak English because it's cool" but simply saying what a Japanese person of that age and education level would say in that situation. (Though tangential to the discussion it's worth pointing out that Japanese have traditionally perceived luck/good fortune in a different light from Westerners, explaining why a foreign word was adopted to express this situation.)

To clarify, there's three kinds of English in Japan. English the foreign language, English that becomes Japanese, and Japanese-made English. It's interesting to note that the Japanese language has many loan words from English. Sometimes such words are often used in place of an equivalent Japanese term. That's in contrast to the French, who favor making new words based on French rather than using foreign words. Japanese-made English is something else. It often falls under Gratuitous English. One famous example of this is the "walkman".

Occasionally, gratuitous English will be applied in an effort to give something an exotic flair, usually resulting in a lot of Foreign Sounding Gibberish. It can also appear on signs, books and particularly T-shirts (this is true of T-shirts in most every country though). Sometimes this use is grammatically proper, and sometimes it's just bizarre. The site Engrish.com

has dozens, nay hundreds, of examples. What's odd is that Japanese consumer products have English not because it saves money on international sales, it's because it just looks cool. Japanese stereos have "Volume", "Bass" and "Treble" labels while they could've used the Japanese words for those. This can be extended to other "exotic" languages, but English is the most common. It's roughly the same reason why Western kids tattoo themselves with "Asian" signs (with about the same level of grammatic and syntactic success). It should be noted that Gratuitous English is more ubiquitous, however.

Sometimes using Gratuitous English can be convenient for Kotobagari. Foreign words can provide useful euphemisms for potentially offensive words. Gratuitous English can also be used in an attempt to add verisimilitude to a token foreign or foreign-raised character, as real people almost invariably revert to their native tongues when they are counting, cursing, startled, or otherwise stressed.

Gratuitous English is so common in the Japanese language that it's said if a writer wants to pen a historical novel with accurate period dialog, it's going to be hard to do — foreign loanwords now saturate the Japanese language and those loanwords have often displaced equivalent Japanese terms. The irony of this is that the Japanese have far fewer English speakers than South Korea and China. It's even been theorized that confusion caused by the prevalence of these loanwords actually makes it more difficult to teach standard English to native speakers of Japanese.

Gratuitous English is not exclusive to Japan: other nations also have their own versions. Germany, for example, has Denglish

(Deutsch + English), German with English words mixed in between; "I ride my mountain bike", for example, becomes "Ich fahre mit meinem Mountainbike". China has Chinglish

, English spoken by Chinese people with limited knowledge of English. In Korea it's referred to as Konglish

. The Philippines has Taglish

(Tagalog/English) and use of other major dialects sprinkled with English. Not surprising given that the Filipinos were under American rule for a few decades, AND is their official language. Gratuitous English is also widespread in Mexico, where it's widely used in advertising and in youth slang (words like "cool", "fresh", "fashion" and "nice" are common among preppy youths), and is also part of Spanglish

, a mixture of English and Spanish spoken in the northernmost states and within Hispanic communities in the USA. In France, Gratuitous English is so common that there are laws

against using English when French will do. Irish-language shows tend to have dialogue liberally sprinkled with English words and phrases. Hebrew is based on an ancient language, so many modern words (like Internet and telephone) are stolen whole cloth from English (however, many that you would expect to are not - for example, electricity, computer and thermometer all have Hebrew "translations").

Anime theme songs are rife with Gratuitous English but these are tricky to put into the actual show, lest you have rampant narms. Mind you, this doesn't stop many from trying, and is especially common with characters that are supposed to be American.

Subverted in the cynic's opinion by Surprisingly Good English. Compare Bilingual Dialogue for a more surreal linguistic experience. See also Blind Idiot Translation. See also Gratuitous Foreign Language, Gratuitous Japanese, Gratuitous German, Gratuitous Spanish

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