Oddities
Wikipedia defines “engrish” as:
a pejorative or humorous slang term which refers to poor-quality attempts by Japanese writers (as well as other, particularly Asian writers) to create English words and phrases, whether in mistranslation of original Japanese text, or in an attempt to create original text in the English language.
There is even an official web site for this phenomenon.
Those who know me are aware that I have a severe issue with those who misuse and abuse the English language by using non-existant words, such as, “alot,” or combine words when they mean the separated terms, such as using “setup” as a verb when the proper term is “set up” (setup is a noun, as in, “my computer has an unusual setup”) or use horrific grammar, such as “check you spelling” (your) or “he is suppose to” (supposed).
This stuff drives me to utter distraction. To make matters worse, a lot of people who make these mistakes have decent educations, yet their writing frequently leaves me wondering how they ever successfully completed university.
Engrish, however, is another thing altogether (notice I did not use “all together” — which means something entirely different altogether).
Engrish is a non-English-speaking person’s attempt to communicate to us English-speaking veterans; such faux-pas are therefore acceptable, if not even sometimes downright hilarious.
Such is the case with a product I purchased this past weekend at Marc’s: a self-adhesive furniture pad from MeiAnJu (see photo). The front of the package states, “effective to protect household and avoid causing” and “applicable to the bottom of furniture like table and chair etc”
Oh-K. Causing what? And you can apply one of these to both a table and a chair?
Seriously, however, I get what they intend: the product is effective in protecting scratchable household products like floors, tables, chairs, doors, and more.
But the really humorous part is on the flip-side, the directions.
(As I don’t have a scanner at the moment, I had to photograph the package, so the image quality isn’t that great; I apologize for the blurriness.)
In the application section, the paragraph reads, (I didn’t edit the punctuation, by the way) “applicable to the foot of furniture and electric appliances such as chair, table, metal,china or glass ware…”
Wait a minute… china? You’re telling me you’re going to place one of these suckers on the bottom of some fine china? Maybe Ming Dynasty stuff? Whoa! Lace doilies, step aside!
And I can just imagine my bride’s reaction if I were to place some of these things on the bottom of some of our Lenox crystal knick-knacks. I wouldn’t be writing this blog from the Cleveland metropolitan region for very long, if I was even capable of writing after she found out — and rightfully so, as these things are absolutely ugly (they sure work, though).
Also, in the instructions, they direct the user to “stick the mat on the clean surface. for special purpose, stick more for thickening”
Oh-K. Double-thick on the bottom of our Lenox bowl, the one with the sharp corners every four inches on the rim, the corners that slice the hell out of my fingers every time I misplace something on the kitchen peninsula. That would look great — until I knock it off the peninsula and onto the stone tile floor…
The real killer, however, was this:
It reads: “Caution:Inflammable! Never store it at high temperature, please keep it properly after unpacking.”
So… if it’s inflammable, why can’t I store it next to my furnace?
C’mon! Ya gotta smile…
ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US.
(73.8 — 28.6 — 45.2)
