Jenglish

One of my favorite things about working with the Japanese is the language. Indeed, it has kept me entertained for six years working with the same company, and has yet to get old. I love the interaction with a Japanese person willing to try speaking English. I give them credit for trying despite how hard some of our pronunciations may be, let alone remembering the words and proper grammar.

By far, my favorite of these interactions here in Japan has been with my first team leader. His English is not great, but it has been getting better with some encouragement. What is interesting is that he has developed a fondness for learning and practicing American slang, or common English one-liners.

Every day he tries using a new phrase he has found or heard. It's the delivery, more than anything that gets me. You hear the words you're used to hearing from back in America, but inflections and timing are out of sync. I love it. "Today I will leave at 5 sharp!" "After you." "That's disgusting!" "Once a slob, always a slob."

You have to understand. It's one thing to learn a language. Quite another to learn how it is 'actually' spoken. So, I give him a lot of credit. He has made it somewhat of a hobby now, and I love encouraging it. I suggested he watch the movie, A Few Good Men, because it has two of the best one-liner scenes I know. Both occur when Tom Cruise picks up his newspaper at the local newspaper stand. They are short scenes, but the dialogue between Cruise and the newspaper man in each case is a series of one-liners.

Not only did my friend buy and watch the movie last weekend, but he came to me the following Monday with each dialogue written in his notebook with the Japanese translations (see below). He of course, watched with Japanese sub-titles, but I was impressed that he picked up on the scenes I was telling him to look out for, and now he has a fresh set of one-liners for me.