Translating between Japanese and English is hard enough most of the time. Throw in some proper British lingo, and the whole thing starts going a bit Pete Tong.
I don’t think my accent’s too hard to grasp. Siri understands me, at least. (Sorry, Northerners!) It’s the colloquialisms that trip people up.
How exactly do I explain ‘Let’s have a butcher’s, then’, eh? Or ‘on your bike’. Or ‘not cricket’. Pretty much everything except cricket could be ‘not cricket’, where’s the distinction?
Also recently had to run through the etymology of ‘going for a slash’. Never again…
It’s been a pain, but I might just be saved. I found this handy Brit-speak guide on Twitter, and don’t know exactly where it came from. If you know, please tell me!
Google’s reverse image search tells me these are captioned stickers for the LINE messaging app. Some of them look fairly appropriate. Some of them are – excuse me – clutching at straws.
Sounds… legit? (Should I say that, or is it too American?) Anyway, they’re probably going to be very useful in future. I’m made up. They’re brill. Dead good.
(Fair warning, long image is long. But fun to read.)
This is going to make my life so much easier. Props for including ‘dodgy’, ‘kip’, ‘cuppa’, and ‘having a giraffe’ in there.
As if to cement my foreign-ness, I can recognise just how often I use these phrases. Were someone to count how many times a day I say ‘mooch’, I think we’d all assume I had a limited vocabulary. This proves I’m just a Brit with a love of slang.
And it’s helpful knowing what the nearest approximate Japanese phrases are. It’s never going to be perfect.
“But, why are you hitting hay when you’re tired? Where would you even get the hay from?” Sigh.
