Funny Engrish

Author’s Note: I wrote this story while living in Düsseldorf, Germany. It’s about people struggling with second languages, contains crude humor, and explores racial stereotypes involved with this week’s theme of failing to understand something until they have the full context. 

____________________________________

I admire people who pick up and move to foreign countries without speaking the language. This young man I met at a recent party, for instance. Our host introduced him as Hiroshi from Tokyo, and I was introduced as Noah from the States.

“I live in Washington State for two year,” he said. “Before I move there, I speak no Engrish.”

There are many countries you could move to without knowing the language and get by just fine, but America doesn’t seem like one of them. In a land where the average citizen speaks 0.2 foreign languages (this in the Taco Bell drive-thru), I envisioned Hiroshi having a tough time. “Speak English or go home!” says the beer-bellied man wearing the MY OTHER RIDE IS YOUR SISTER t-shirt. (I sometimes catch myself doing this — villainizing imaginary versions of real Americans — but the fact is most of us are pretty nice.)

“No one say bad thing,” said Hiroshi, “but they have hard time understanding me.” He told me that during his first shopping experience, he wanted to buy a frying pan.

“I ask lady for pans. She say ‘okay’ and I follow her. She take me to blue jeans. She say, ‘Here are the pants.’ I tell her ‘No, pans pans.'”

As Hiroshi mimed the technique for stir-frying, I recalled an incident that happened a few months ago at Kaiser’s, my local grocery store. Shopping for fruits and vegetables was easy, but I was too nervous to order from the large, stern-looking lady behind the deli counter. She had pink knuckles, and blonde hair pulled back so tight it looked painful. Standing with her arms crossed, she looked like a bodyguard, a bouncer, some bewitched lunch lady in a Grimm Brothers’ story. I spoke no German and was too intimidated to order sliced chicken in English.

Two months later I enrolled in German school, and two months after that I thought I was ready to order deli meat. Waiting in line, I silently rehearsed my order, repeating (what I know now as) the German word for “live chicken.” Huhn huhn huhn. When I stepped to the counter to address this woman, in my nervous state, I confused huhn with hund, which to her sounded like “I want 100 grams of dog meat, please.”

She looked at me like I had sauerkraut coming out my ears. “Vas?” she said, planting both hands on the counter. “You want what?” She wasn’t mad, just confused: Who is this foreigner asking for dog meat? Where does he think we are, Austria?

Hiroshi went to grab a beer from the kitchen. As is my habit in other people’s home, I scoured the bookshelf and found a book by Milton Berle, the 100-year-old American comedian. The jokes were arranged by subject. Flipping through it, I found a section titled “Accents.” I didn’t understand the Jewish joke, but I found one about a Japanese man that seemed apropos.

It was a party, after all, so I decided to read the joke to Hiroshi…then I paused — I didn’t know how they did things in Tokyo, but sharing a racist joke seemed like more of a third meeting-type thing. He didn’t seem like someone who’d take offense, so I decided to give it a shot. 

I carried the book over to Hiroshi on the couch. “This is a joke by an American comedian,” I said. Then I read it aloud:

A Japanese visitor went to an American eye doctor.

After an examination the doctor said, “You have a cataract.”

The Japanese visitor shook his head. “Oh no. I have a Rincoln!”

As he cocked his head and reread the joke, I pondered how I might go about explaining it. One needed two key pieces of information. First, the Japanese language doesn’t have an “L” sound, so speakers tend to use the English “R” for “L” inadvertently.

I was about to explain the second part when Hiroshi said, “What is a Rincoln?”

“Well, a Lincoln is a type of car, and so is a Cadillac.” Hiroshi blinked once, and reexamined the text. “When the doctor said cataract," I continued, "the Japanese man heard Cadillac. A common stereotype is that Japanese people cannot pronounce the letter L.”

“Ah, yes.” Hiroshi nodded. “Japanese people have many problems with L and R.” He said this as though his clan had a long-standing feud with these consonants. “My biggest shame come from this confusion.”

Hiroshi told me that he was at a bar with his girlfriend and a group of friends. They were sitting at a booth when someone mentioned a certain political candidate.

“So I announce to everyone at table, ‘There is a big erection coming up,’ and suddenly they start to laugh.” Hiroshi was beginning to talk louder. “I think to myself, Did I say something wrong? So I say, ‘It is a big erection,’ and they laugh even harder. I don’t understand why they laugh, so I say, ‘What is wrong with this erection?’ Now, they cannot talk they laughing so hard. Like fool, I keep saying: ‘Erection! Erection! Erection!'”

One by one, the conversations in the room around us fell to a hush. Our world is divided in many ways, but eavesdropping is universal. In Hiroshi’s defense, the difference between “election” and “erection” is slight, but it was comforting to know that I wasn’t the only one struggling with a second language.

As it stands, a mispronunciation like that is far more embarrassing than, say, requesting dog meat from a deli clerk. In my case, the humiliation would fade as soon as I hit the check-out counter. However, if Hiroshi’s friends are anything like mine, they would continue to bring it up for the rest of his life.