The Source of Engrish

One of the more well-known linguistic issues related to Japanese is its lack of L/R sound differentiation, which is where a lot of that cute and amusing “Engrish” comes from. In Japanese the sounds らりるれろ ra ri ru re ro exist, but the actual pronunciation is somewhere in between the L, R and D sounds in English. This issue is the reason my daughter snickers while reading user-submitted fan fiction websites that ask you to click the “clap” button (to show that she liked the story), though they write it “crap” most of the time, or why a Japanese friend of mine refuses to discuss politics because she knows she’ll eventually need to use the word “election” and she’s terrified of getting the L/R sounds mixed up. Of course, all languages have features that are challenging for learners from other countries, whether it’s gender for nouns in French and Spanish or tonal pronunciation in languages like Chinese. Some of the challenges English speakers face when learning Japanese include internalizing the difference between long and short vowels (少女 shoujo, with a long first vowel, means “girl,” while 処女 shojo with a short vowel, is “virgin”), or getting used to the mechanics of how information like formal/informal, past tense, conditional and passive voice can all be encoded into the form a verb takes. Remember, if you want to learn a little Japanese or a lot in 2014, J-List can help!

I feel sorry for the Japanese. English is frigging hard.