“Try? There is no try. There is only do or not do.” (Yoda, The Empire Strikes Back)
“No such thing as bad student, only bad teacher. Teacher say, student do.” (Miyagi, The Karate Kid)
“Never make fun of someone who speaks broken English. It means they know another language.” (H. Jackson Brown, Jr.)
Friends don’t let friends blog drunk–but why do authors make some of our favorite characters speak broken English? One simple reason: this trick tells us Yoda is “exotic” compared to good-old-boy down-home Luke Skywalker.
A less obvious reason for non-standard English is to seduce the reader by making him/her work harder to get the message. Richard Adams used this ploy cleverly in his wall-to-wall-sex-scene novel Maia–by refering to breasts (for example) always as “deldas” he enlists you to work with him for his naughty effect.
Super-wise characters often speak broken English for similar reasons–that is, when you have to work hard to figure out what they mean, you don’t notice that what they’re saying is already trite. (Trite? And why not? Is truth supposed to change as often as styles in skirt-length or lipstick? Okay, stop ranting, Betsy.)
I got some real enjoyment out of these Japanese-in-English pages, most likely non-fictional, devoted to dressing up your cat for photographs.
1. You need to dress a cat. And you will say to a cat
together with a family. “It has changed just for a
moment”. [ “it being very dear” or ] You will pass
pleasant one time.2. If a family and a cat become fortunate, you will
take a commemorative photo! Therefore, please photo
your cat lovelily with much trouble.3. If it finishes taking a photograph, you will make
it remove clothes from a cat immediately. You will say
then, without forgetting the language of gratitude to
a cat. “– be flooded — a way — good — having done
one’s best — ! — ”
You can dress up your kitty to look like a frog, a sheep, Ann of Green Gables, or a man in a red necktie (the Japanese word for that seems to be “nekutai.”)
Thanks for the link to Karen Marcello, guest blogger at Boing Boing.