http://websearch.rakuten.co.jp/Web?svx=s00126&col=OW&qt=haunted+house&adf=0&format=&dm=.jp&lg=ja
http://ci.nii.ac.jp/naid/120003550993
http://www.mikeseslbooks.net/pics/pdf/Mike's%20Janglish%20and%20Common%20Mistakes%20Sample.pdf
http://www.pgbovine.net/chinese-english-mistakes.htm
icnale http://language.sakura.ne.jp/icnale/icnale_online.html
Lexical Similarities in CJK English
Up until the last century, both Japanese and Korean languages shared great influence from Chinese characters, importing the ideas and turns of phrase along with the characters themselves. Therefore, the nuances of many terms in the three languages differ from English in similar ways. Take for example the word “play”. “Play” 玩 The first character /wanr/ is often associated with children’s toys; thus it carries the same associations as the English term, which, in the absence of a direct object such as a sport or musical instrument, is almost invariably associated with children. Indeed, if an adult is “playing,” to Western ears this invariably means they are up to no good. On the other hand, the character 遊 is instead clearly associated with adults and does not carry the implication that they are being lazy or doing something undesirable. It is this connotation that can be seen in writings by ESL students such as:
I have some good friends. We often play together. (C)
My parents were not at home so I had to play with myself. (C)
Everyone don’t have much money to use playing. (J)
Other examples of Chinese characters that carry connotations throughout the region are
Early/soon 早 I want to solve it early. (J)
1. Send 送 I will send you to school. (C)
2. Busy 忙 My work is so busy I haven’t time for sports. (C)
3. Before 前 I called you half an hour before. (C)
4. After 後 I won’t come today. I’ll come two days later. (C)
Like individual words, collocations of two or more Chinese characters also influence the use of English in the three countries in similar ways. A conversation about a “ghost” (=haunted) house or “golden time” (=prime time) television may well raise few eyebrows and have little effect on mutual understanding in the East Asian context, simply because each interlocutor is “translating” back onto a shared set of Chinese characters. East Asian “salarymen” (and women) may discuss how to “improve” (=solve) a problem, which may have users of other Englishes doing the equivalent of a linguistic double-take. Table X shows a similar list of Chinese character-based uses of English that are common throughout the region.
鬼屋 ghost house
黄金時段 golden hours
大雨 big rain
改善問題 improve a problem
参加例会 Join a party
体育精神 Sports spirit
運動靴 Sports shoes
逃学 Escape school
It should be noted here that Japanese and Korean English varieties share even more linguistic similarities, because much of the English that was imported into Japan from the Meiji era (1868-) was then brought into Korea during the period of annexation (1912-1945). Terms like mishin (sewing machine) and boru pen (ball-point pen) are left over from this era.
Moreover, perhaps due partly to exposure, partly to history and partly to linguistic similarities such as those described above, we can also see similar lexical processes in the three varieties. Although, less common in Chinese, the process of word-shortening or truncation is highly common in Korean and Japanese. Aircon (Japanese, Korean) and Air condition (Chinese) [air conditioner]; Depato (Japanese, Korean) and department (Chinese) [department store] are examples of truncation across all three languages, and Table X shows other examples of similar word-shortening that appears in Japanese and Korean alone. Note that this feature appears most frequently in Japanese, less in Korean and still less in Chinese, which is what we would expect from the fact that syllable structures becomes increasingly complex across the three languages in the same order.