Jinglish

I had not been here long before I encountered misspellings in English, a couple of official ones being a Non-Step Bus, and Four-Thids (4/3) Digital Camera. I wondered how those came about. Error in copying from the dictionary? Oral spelling?


If I were to list all the misspellings I encountered, a book would not suffice, and anyway it's not my desire to ridicule their mistakes. The more interesting question is why English has not taken as much hold here compared to other Asian countries. Certainly Malaysia, Singapore and HK have the British colonial legacy. But even Taiwan and China are doing better at learning English than Japan.


Some point to the shy nature of the Japanese, unwilling to risk making mistakes in public.  An English teacher from Tokyo bemoaned his students' unwillingness to participate in verbal exercises.


I rather think it's because Japan is such a large internal market that advertisers don't really care about getting the spelling right and the Latin alphabets are just there to lend some cachet. Anybody who has tried to figure out a nonsensical Japanese T-shirt caption knows this.  So good translators are not needed.  If you see Soup in a shopping mall, it's probably not a restaurant ad, but perhaps a fashion ad.


Then too the government and industry have never put much emphasis on learning foreign languages to get ahead so English literacy is low. As a result, it can be a bit hit or miss whether you will find anybody who can speak English in tourist bureaus, especially away from the well-beaten track.


Of course, mass tourism and the Internet are changing things but it may be a while before we see the results.


Addendum on 2010-11-22: I recently came across this article about a young entrepreneur attempting Englishization of Japan. I didn't know that Japan ranks second worst in East Asian TOEFL results, just above Laos, but it doesn't surprise me.