That Is Not the Truth

Now that I teach language learners, I feel a little guilty for having a fondness for Engrish. The best rationale I can offer is that mistakes in the English language are much cuter and more genuine when made by a non-native speaker. The fact that the use of English, even when used incorrectly, has become "trendy" in some cultures is additionally amusing to me.

I have a Vietnamese student who is a good student, but writes with awkward syntax and is often clearly confused, bless eir heart. For example, when I distributed a survey at the beginning of the year, the student's response to "What celebrity do you despise?" was "Christmas." On this same student's binder, the student has written the phrase "freinds 4eva" featuring pictures of eirself and only eirself. It's cute, really.

This language learning class is comprised mostly of students of Mexican descent who largely ignore the two Asian kids, except when there is a chance to make fun of them. When one of the Asian students makes a grammatical error, you'd think my Mexican students must be English scholars the way they criticize their peers, never mind that their dumb asses make errors at least as frequently. They also pick on the Asians students just to get a rise. One student loudly exclaimed that the Vietnamese student had a crush on the slobbish, drug-abusing Mexican student, an obvious mismatch. My Vietnamese student immediately became cross. "That is not the truth! That is not the truth!" The student's dismissal struck me as odd since most kids in America would say something like "That's a lie!" or "Not true!" "That is not the truth" seemed extremely formal. And familiar. And then it occurred to me where I encountered such a phrase before -- printed on this Japanese shirt:


What does this mean exactly? Putting aside the obvious errors, why would anyone want to wear that message anyway? And just what does the teddy bear signify? Peopie is one letter away from People, but also Poopie, which might muddy the interpretation further. I get the haunting feeling that this apparel was made by some patriarchal system to discourage women from accusing their rapists when they must have secretly wanted it all along. Then it was mass produced and the euthanasia (youth in Asia) bought it since it featured English words and a cute teddy bear.

Teeheehee. That is why Engrish is awesome. And that - that is the truth.