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This is a very long-delayed continuation of the Goldmine of Engrish I published previously. I wasn’t planning on posting an Engrish sequel, but the original was so popular, people are practically demanding an encore, so here we go These are some of the most horrifically badly translated subtitles ever put forth [...]

One of my favorite poems is the Kubla Khan of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (the same poet who penned The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, previously featured on this site). In fact I like this passage so much that, back when I was in high school, I memorized the whole thing. So instead of [...]

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834). It’s a very long poem, so it’s split into seven parts. The spelling of its name varies; sometimes “Rime” is spelt “Rhyme”, and sometimes “Ancient Mariner” is spelt “Ancyent Marinere”. There is a lot of archaic English throughout [...]

There’s been some debate in the United States about whether English should be the official language. It should not. Making English the official language would send an unequivocal message of unwelcome to the non-English parts of the world, completely counter to the melting pot ideal which makes the U.S. so great.
THEN WHAT SHOULD THE OFFICIAL [...]

As English speakers, we already know quite a few Japanese Vocabulary Words, without even realizing we know them. Japanese is a language where words get put together to form new words. We know a lot of compound words, and you can break those compound words down into their smaller pieces to get a whole ton [...]

One of the most interest things about any language is the language’s verbs. A verb, as you remember, is an “action word”, like “run”, “walk”, “talk”, “think”, and so on. Generally, verbs are the source of the most rich structure in languages. They conjugate, they combine, they modify, the possibilities are endless. One particular class [...]

Which of these sentences is correct: “I have drunk the water”? “I have drank the water”? Maybe “I have drunken the water”? This is just one of many difficult questions about English, and sometimes the dictionary just doesn’t offer much help. When I have a tough question about English, I use books.google.com to find the [...]

The purpose of this article is to put language difficulty into perspective for native English speakers struggling with foreign languages. Languages like Japanese, Russian, Chinese, Arabic, or even easier languages like Spanish, can seem very difficult, just because we’re not used to them. English seems sooo easy and simple, but that’s because we’ve been raised [...]

My friend K found the ultimate goldmine of Engrish. In case you don’t already know, Engrish is the wonderful dialect of English spoken in Japan. This goldmine is an anime called “Cheeky Angel”. The company hired some really lousy translator to create subtitles, and pure comedy ensues. The ironic thing is, the whole anime is [...]

They say people judge you on your vocabulary, and it’s true, but it’s misleading. People hear that saying and they translate it as, “need bigger words”. In fact, this is the basis for a whole industry of “increase your vocabulary” products.
Truth is, it’s better to know less words, and know them well. Of course, the [...]