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To: Lane3 who wrote (19799)	8/25/2002 2:56:36 PM
From: Lazarus_Long	Respond to of 21057

I'm thinking that those who are affected by it on several threads may perceive more of an impact here than there really is. That is undoubtedly true. And as for reading the Donkey thread, well, I have no sympathy for anyone of your persuasion who chooses to read that and then complain about it. I rarely look at it anymore. I used to do the Bray of the Day for RWET- -a selection of the day's best idiocy from it. And my one suspension was for driving them nuts before they could get me banned.

To: Lane3 who wrote (19799)	8/25/2002 6:35:28 PM
From: E	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21057

I'm beginning to think that perspectives on this are greatly influenced by which OTHER threads people follow....I'm thinking that those who are affected by it on several threads may perceive more of an impact here than there really is. Pretty clearly that's what's happened. I just put Donkey into Search and saw that thread. If life were infinitely long, I'd go read some of it. theglobeandmail.com Mangled words divide generations in Japan Youngsters mix English into the language but this can leave their elders out in cold By MONIKA DELMOS Special to The Globe and Mail Saturday, August 24, 2002 – Page A14 TOKYO -- Japan's streets are filled with the sights and sounds of English or, more accurately, with phrases that look and sound like English, sort of. "Push my nose! I might be changing to you?" beckons a T-shirt in a store in Tokyo's Ueno district. "Be a boy with a mind as broad as the sea. Be a girl with a heart as tender as a mermaid's," urges a shopping bag from a store named Captain Santa Club. The bottom of the bag reads, "Captain Santa sails around the world with reliable crew. They have same dreams and warm hearts, and love the ocean." Equally baffling messages adorn items from clothes to cigarette lighters to computer mouse pads, vivid examples of "Japlish," English phrases that often involve badly translated Japanese. Another form of Japlish includes the thousands of English words that have made their way into the Japanese lexicon. Although Japlish has been around for years, it has grown wildly in the past decade. Magazines and television shows are awash in it, and its popularity among young people has been fuelled by the impact of American TV shows such as Friends, as well as MTV Japan, which carries a heavy dose of North American videos, and the Internet. "Japlish words are easy to pronounce. And English sounds cool," said 11-year-old Mai Asai. "I don't think using Japlish is a bad thing as long as we don't lose our Japanese." While traditionalists say Japlish tarnishes the Japanese language, and English-speakers try to decipher the mangled phrases, young Japanese people consider both varieties of Japlish legitimate means of self-expression. "Western words sound very fashionable to Japanese people," explained Tomiko Kuwahira, a professor at Princeton University teaching Japanese at Tokyo's Jochi University. "This has been the long-term tendency in Japanese society, and it still goes on." Young people see English words as having meaning within the Japanese language, and believe there is room for both Japlish and Japanese in their culture. The words (also known as Japanglish) are often abbreviated and are created by rendering English sounds with letters from the phonetic Japanese katakana alphabet. Because many English sounds do not exist in the Japanese alphabet, the pronunciation often veers somewhat from the original word. For example, someone who is high mentay (maintenance) can make a weekly apo (appointment) to go to the estay (esthetic salon). Socially unacceptable behaviour and situations are often expressed in Japlish: seku hara (sexual harassment), misu (mistake) and shinguru mazah (single mother), for example, do not sound as bad in Japlish as they do in Japanese. Japlish may be popular, but the mangled language does not sit well with the Ministry of Education. Although imported words have been incorporated into the Japanese language for centuries, the ministry says the wave of foreign words and phrases is becoming a flood. In a bid to protect the Japanese language, the ministry, backed by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, set up a committee of 20 language experts to find Japanese alternatives to Japlish words. "The Japanese language should be understood by everyone in Japan," said Noyama Hiroshi, who works at the Japanese language division at the Ministry of Education. "There's a bit of a communication gap between the younger generation and the older generation." As a first step, the ministry is replacing the many English and Japlish words in government documents such as sukeemu (scheme), eensenchibu (incentive), deribatibu (derivative) and identyityi (identity). With younger people increasingly adopting Japlish, older people fret about a growing communication gap between generations. "It's not that I'm lazy, but I sometimes think, wouldn't it be nice if young people used words older people can understand," said 81-year-old Aya Yasui. "My grandmother doesn't understand these words, so I don't use them when speaking with her," admitted one of those grandchildren, 28-year-old Sayoko Yasui. But she said she and her friends do not deliberately use Japlish. "The words are everywhere. We hear them, read them and start using them ourselves."