US Shirt Design Fail

January 12th, 2009
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Fail. Don’t just go laughing at the classic Engrish shirts, and feeling smug and superior to Japan. It happens in America too. Ha ha.

(For those who don’t get it, the shirt is grammatically incorrect – as a commenter has noted on the page. The design is what you’d get if you just swapped out the I and NY in the I♡NY design for their Japanese equivalents. 私は♡日本 is wrong. 10 cool points to the commenter who corrects it first. ;-) Hint: SVO / SOV.)

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  • You guys have all pretty much figured out the issue, here. The particles are probably not too important, given the abstract nature of the shirt. Jonadab, 私は is often just implied, so leaving it out is ok - but 日本語 is Japanese (language), while 日本 is Japan.
  • Oops. Apparently pseudo-XML is stripped (or rendered) rather than being escaped, so my heart tags disappeared. The heart glyph, obviously, should go at the end, after whichever particle you use.

    <abbr>Jonadab the Unsightly Ones last blog post was: Arbitrary Screenshot</abbr>
  • Is 私は even necessary? I was thinking just日本語は, but now that you mention it 日本語を may be better. (Disclaimer: my knowledge of Japanese grammar is very limited. But yes, I do realize I changed the object. Call me a glossophile, but it's all about the language as far as I'm concerned.) Of course, we're all assuming that the Valentine-heart glyph would communicate, and I have no idea whether that is in fact the case.

    <abbr>Jonadab the Unsightly Ones last blog post was: Arbitrary Screenshot</abbr>
  • Lance
    I'm just learning, so this may be wrong.. .But should it be:
    私は日本を<3

    ?? I hope I got it right... =)
  • bingobangoboy
    It is wrong as a straight translation of "I love Japan" but potentially grammatically correct if you broaden your assumptions about what it's supposed to mean.
    私は♡日本 -> 私は、好きな日本could be interpretted as an answer to an implicit question about which country the wearer loves (as for me, it's my beloved Japan).
    Too much of a stretch? I♡NY is pretty abstract too, if you think about it.
  • Now this is my kind of shirt!
  • Chuck - it's only wrong if you want it more, realizing its flaw, so that you may wear the evidence of your superiority. Ha ha.
  • Nic
    It is wrong that I still want one?

    <abbr>Nics last blog post was: A Voyage There And Back: Fuji-san</abbr>
  • Alex - wow, that's moan inducing. But I bet it'd sell. We should start a "funny Japan shirt from people who know better" type mini-store on the net. We could put my t-shirt that I envisioned for the Malabar Indian restaurant on Waseda-doori. It would feature a really big sumo wrestler and have the line 「問題はナンですか？」printed on it. Get it? Cause they did ナン食べ放題 every afternoon! GET IT!? Ha ha. Man, I love me some naan.
  • Haha
    私は、日本<3

    That reminds me of a ridiculously corny t-shirt I wanted to make when I lived in Tokyo. I mean like seriously corny. Like, if corniness was what made up the heavens, this T-shirt would have been the corniness black hole. Are you ready to hear my idea? Here goes:

    愛 LOVE YOU

    <abbr>Alexs last blog post was: Second Japanese Study Group reading assignment</abbr>
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