Call us cynical, but we find that our standards over what constitutes funny Engrish have been changing. Unless it’s something really hilarious, perhaps involving naughty words or references to embarrassing body parts, we just can’t muster up the same kind of enthusiasm we once had. When it comes to English that’s just a little bit off in certain ways, it’s sometimes just not that funny, especially when you understand the number of reasons why Engrish happens in the first place. However, visitors to Japan will always remember that first taste of Engrish fondly, even if the same example might fail to raise an eyebrow after a few years of acclimatizing. The last piece of Engrish I felt was worthy of documenting can be seen above – it’s a T-shirt from a store in Osaka and several years later it still blows my mind. However, there’s also plenty of pretty mediocre Engrish to be found, as we’ll demonstrate after the jump.
The following amusing T-shirt pictures were posted by Reddit user k-popstar who discovered them when he moved to Japan to work as an English teacher. He was obviously tickled enough by these photos to document them, but we’re struggling to see anything truly ground-breaking here. A lot of them look like randomly-selected English words that aren’t particularly wrong or horribly out of place, just a bit meaningless. Personally, we don’t think any of these can hold a candle to the “HEMORRHOIDS” Japangrish shirts worn by hapless westerners when it comes to that “snarf” (snigger-laugh) factor. But what do you think of this selection? Have you seen worse?
You can see piles of T-shirts just like this at pretty much any cheap clothes store in Japan. Why not bring some back for your friends after your next vacation here? Just don’t be surprised if your western friends refuse to wear them in much the same way your Japanese friends might balk at wearing anything from UK clothing store SuperDry Japan…
Source: Boredpanda.com, Reddit
Main Image: ©Evie Lund/RocketNews24
Other Images: k-popstar