Monday, April 1, 2013

If you love Elmo, crap your hands!

One of the things Walt misses about no longer living in China [Just in case any readers were wondering. Ed.] is the amusement of reading notices, signs and other documents written in Chingrish.

Chingrish, for those not familiar with the term, is a strange and hilarious amalgam of misspellings and mistranslations used by Chinese who believe that they can speak/write English. "Of cos I speak good Engrish! I got CET-4!"

One example that always made me smile was the little sign in the Renrenle supermarket showing shoppers where to find the "CHEWING GUN".

Perhaps the product was to be found just an aisle or two over from the "Rocking Elmo" pictured here. To be fair, though, I believe the admonition to "Crap Your Hands" is actually Japlish, first cousin to Chinglish.

The picture was posted on the ChairmanLOL website, which has hundreds of similar examples. Mind you, the Chinese and Japanese are not the only ones to mangle the language of Shakespeare and Churchill. Horrible examples of "Engrish" as she is spoken around the world -- including so-called English-speaking countries -- can be found at Engrish.com. Walt invites to read, laugh, and see if you can do any better!

1 comment:

  1. This error is definitely Japanese, not Chinese. There's a picture out there with a corrected box with a sticker that replaces "Crap Your Hands!!" with "Clap Your Hands!!"

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