A funny Engrish sign in Da Nang

in english •  2 years ago 

One of the great joys of being an English speaker in a part of the world that gets a lot of tourists is that at least in certain parts of town, everything is in English and very little is done to accommodate other languages. More often than not, this English is almost correct but there is always some humor to be found and it doesn't really seem to matter how high-end the place is. Almost everywhere butchers the language and I'm not being judgmental because I only speak 1 language. I wouldn't even be able to make a sentence that made any sense at all without using technology to translate for me and even then it would probably still be wrong.


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I spotted this randomly while pulling over on my bike to talk to a friend. This was just some small minimart that I guess had an assortment of foreign products on offer. From what little I know about how various countries butcher the English language in their own special ways and the name of the place, I would guess that this place is owned by someone from Japan. From the "Engrish" I have seen come out of that country they seem to overuse the -ing suffix and also tend to try to turn everything into a poem.

While this is really funny to me, it actually intrigued me enough to go inside the shop and sure enough, most of the products were Japanese. The staff were also not particularly friendly so there goes the "best service" that is written on their sign. Instead, the person at the counter was just doing what most people do these days - staring at their phone and not even looking up to greet me. I wonder if she even knew someone had come into the shop at all.

I can't really tell from their wording if they are trying to say that we are ALSO from a different country like they are or if we are the ones that are in their country. I guess I'll never know because I don't really need any Japanese products in my life.

I will say that their sign is likely effective because if it hadn't been so flowery and weird sounding, I likely wouldn't have ever gone in there.

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