Posted by john on July 11, 2002 at 19:14:49:
In Reply to: Re: Japanese English slogans and ads posted by k@ on July 11, 2002 at 17:27:42:
: : If any of you remember Tomomi, who came to Crossover a few times, this is what he does. He writes English language advertising and slogans for Japanese consumers. He actually corrected me for making fun of the grammer last time I saw him, because really what they are doing is using Japanese grammer with English language. We do the same thing with Spanish and other languages here.
: : Now that I speak a little Japanese, I can see it more clearly. For example, in Japanese there are no plurals. Hence "we are fashion boy". Also many English phrases have been imported to Japanese and then translated back into English in these slogans, like "Let's skiing". The Japanese word for "to ski" is "sukingu wo suru" (derived from "skiing" [in english] and "to do" in Japanese.
: : ...not that anyone really wanted to know any of that.
:
: I did! Free you are to be explaining more.....
well okay... you really shouldn't have given me license to hear myself type.
One of the other interesting things about Japanese is that the verbs are not conjugated with any regard to the subject. Ex: "I go" "He goes". The same form applies for all subjects in the present, in the past, in the volitional, or the negatives of these, etc. Ex: "I, He, she, it, they go"= "ikimasu", "I...they went"= "ikimashita", "I...they want to go"= "ikitai".
...That, and Former President Bush has become a verb meaning "to throw up". No kidding, "Bush wo suru." Remember the unfortunate state dinner? Poor guy.
...and... okay I'll stop.