Job Discussion Forums

[dajiang]

Here's a transcript of something I found on the Internet somewhere...
Thought it was funny as hell.


The following is a telephone exchange between a hotel guest and room-service at a fine Japanese hotel.

Room Service (RS): Morny. Ruin sorbees.
Guest (G): Sorry, I thought I dialed room-service.

RS: Rye..Ruin sorbees..morny! Djewish to odor sunteen??
G: Uh, yes... I'd like some bacon and eggs.

RS: Ow July den?
G: What?

RS: Ow July den? Pry, boy, pooch?
G: Oh, the eggs! How do I like them? Sorry, scrambled please.

RS: Ow July dee bayhcem--crease?
G: Crisp will be fine.

RS: Hokay. An san tos?
G: What?

RS: San tos. July San tos?
G: I don't think so

RS: No? Judo one toes??
G: I feel really bad about this, but I don't know what "judo one toes means."

RS: Toes! toes! Why djew don juan toes? Ow bow singlish mopping we bother?
G: English muffin! I've got it! You were saying "Toast." Fine. Yes, an English muffin will be fine.

RS: We bother?
G: No, just put the bother on the side.

RS: Wad?
G: I mean butter--just put it on the side.

RS: Copy?
G: Sorry?

RS: Copy, tea, mill?
G: Yes. Coffee please, and that's all.

RS: One Minnie. Ass ruin torino fee, strangle ache, crease baychem, tossy singlish mopping we bother honey sigh, and copy--rye?
G: Whatever you say.

RS: Tendjewberrymud.
G: You're welcome.

[canuck]

Not funny at all.

[azarashi sushi]

Ditto Canuck. Boring. The language problems are clearly not those of a Japanese.

[Apsara]

Hmm. On the South east Asia forum it might get more laughs, not pronouncing the last parts of words reminds me of Thailand. Doesn't sound like any of my students.

[Stosskraft]

ok, Lets hear your Japanese.

Baka

[JimDunlop2]

Yeah, I guess living here for a little while you stop laughing at stuff like that. Before I came to Japan I may have found that somewhat amusing.

Nowadays, if I had any of my students speak like that, I'd probably be tickled that they could formulate proper sentence structures, and understand what I'm saying to them.

This definitely doesn't fit the pattern of what Japanese students struggle with in English. The most common issues I find are: the improper conjugation of verbs (eg. using present simple in the past tense), using participles incorrectly, failing to pluralize (not using 's' on nouns that require them) and incorrect sentence structure: Eg. "What do you like sports?" I occasionally get kids not completing words, (eg. "oran" instead of "orange") but I'd say that's mostly a shou-gakkou problem that gets resolved by the time they hit high school.