37 thoughts on “For real”

  2. Wonderful! I once helped a Chinese man tell the ticket seller that he wanted to take a train to Billericay. He was having a terrible time with it! Our language is so littered with l’s and r’s that all sound the same to the Chinese ear!

  4. If I didn’t know better, I would say their language is jerry-rigged.

  5. I enjoy going to Chinese malls and looking at the groceries that are totally fraudulent like Organic Tea that imitates a known brand but with the ingredients all misspelled. I have friends that want to buy there thinking it’s a good deal but there is no reason to believe it is organic or tea. 😀

    1. Funny indeed! Not so different from the fraud present in a sizable portion of the “American” products that US consumers buy into though.

  6. I’d have a hard time putting that product on my kid or on any other skin, for that matter.

  9. It’s a perfect match, a perfect expression of you and evolution…Jerry and a product from fossil fuels.

  10. I was in Japan once, for a meeting. Flight to Osaka, then bus to Kyoto. Instructions said to get out of the bus and get a cab to the Hotel Sunflower. Nothing like a slip of paper in Japanese to show the cab driver came with registration materials. I said Hotel Sunflower. Showed him the name in English. Blank expression. He even went into the hotel adjacent to the bus stop to ask. Nothing. About to give up, a wry idea crept into my head. “Sahnfrower” “Ah, SAHNFROWER!!” Whoosh – we were off.

    1. There are different ways that it is funny. One way is that it illustrates the importance for sales and marketing people to pay closer attention to the difference between spoken and written language.

      Of course, if you have to explain why something is funny, one shouldn’t expect them then to laugh.

      2. It took me a moment to see the r’s. Your brain just makes it “petroleum jelly” instead of “petroleum jerry” as one chunk without further inspection. How the brain does reading …

  13. My wife is a doctor who used to work in an office staffed almost entirely with Japanese-Americans who would often mix up the L and R sounds. One day her medical assistant told her the next patient was there for lectar pain. “Lectar pain?” she asked? “Yes, lectar pain.” It was only after seeing it written down that she realized the problem, and then she couldn’t stop laughing. And we, of course, continue to joke about having lectar pain to this day.

  14. Also, there’s this (about the brand Lululemon)

    He [the founder of the company] told Canada’s National Post Business Magazine, “It’s funny to watch them try and say it,” when asked about his views on the Japanese pronunciation of the company’s name.
    In 2009, he wrote:
    It was thought that a Japanese marketing firm would not try to create a North American sounding brand with the letter “L” because the sound does not exist in Japanese phonetics. By including an “L” in the name it was thought the Japanese consumer would find the name innately North American and authentic.
    In essence, the name “lululemon” has no roots and means nothing other than it has 3 “L’s” in it. Nothing more and nothing less.

    Link to source: http://www.businessinsider.com/12-utterly-bizarre-facts-about-the-rise-of-lululemon-2012-4?op=1

  15. I read somewhere once that it therefore should be Mario and *R*uigi, and that “ruigi” has some funny meaning in Japanese. Any truth to that?

  16. When we toured China we flew to various cities on CAAC (as it was called then). I remember one snack bar that was labeled “FDUHY SESANE”. As near as I could figure, that should have been “Flaky Sesame.” I have evidence (146 hits on Google) that I was not the only one who had that experience!

    1. Should that not be stlawbelly jerry? Hang on while I try to put my teeth back in.

  18. From a noodle package:

    Mix the vermicelli, vegetable, ham and soup spicevevnly to make unique flavou dish.

    They are very creative when it comes to making up new words.

  19. Petroleum Jerry is a good one but if you get a chance to go to Japan, make sure to hit a vending machine and get yourself a can of the electrolyte replenishing drink, “Pocari Sweat.” Mmmmmmmmmm!

  20. paco: Japanese-Americans mixing their ls and rs? Really? I am married to one, and was surrounded by them in the Hawaii Dept. of Education, and never heard this.
    Of course immigrants from Japan and China, even after decades in the US, struggle with them.
    A Chinese geography prof in a cartography class kept going on and on about pair-a-wax. We finally caught on: parallax.

    1. Any Asian who grew up in an English speaking country is not going to mix ‘l’ and ‘r’, same as anyone else, unless they were cloistered somewhere. But if you are raised in, e.g., Japan, you will have trouble with them. They also don’t hear the difference between ‘b’ and ‘v’ so if you introduced me as ‘Dave’ or ‘Dabe’, it’d probably make no difference to many.

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