History Main / JapaneseRanguage

* An engrish mistranslation resulted in one of the bosses in DevilMayCry, Nero Angelo (Black Angel in Latin), being referred to as Nelo.

* Krillin's hat reads "KULILIN".

* The opening credits of ''Slayers NEXT'' feature a map where the city of Seyruun is spelled "Sailoon"

* Referenced in ''[[{{Film/LostInTranslation}} Lost In Translation]]'' (Charlotte asks, "Why do they switch the R's and the L's?"), and briefly used ("Lip my stockings!").

* ''Remo Williams'' did this to intentionally anger his master Chiun, even though there's no indication Sinanju shares Japanese linguistic patterns.

* Jasper Carrott did a routine referencing this about how if a group of British people go to any far-eastern restaurant somebody in the group will impersonate the waiter too loudly "Flied lice, ha ha ha! As if he's deaf! He gets it every night of his life. He goes straight to the kitchen and pisses in the soup, it's your own fault!"

* TruthInTelevision: The endings to many Japanese-developed video games of the '80s and '90s managed to misspell "congratulations" along these lines. "Congraturation" was probably the most common, perhaps most famously in ''Stop The Express'' and ''GhostsAndGoblins''; "conglaturation" showed up in the ''{{Ghostbusters}}'' NES game; and ''Ninja Kid II'', a.k.a. ''Rad Action'', even managed to misspell it "[[http://www.vgmuseum.com/end/arcade/b/rada.htm conglatullations]]". See also AWinnerIsYou.
** ''GhostBusters'' for the Master System, while generally better than the NES game, had Gozer's name transliterated as "Gorza"

* The {{DragonForce}} GagDub video "Herman Li is Cool" exaggerates Herman's accent by making him speak like this.

* Japan has a particular fondness for the Dullahan, an Irish legendary spirit who's similar to the Headless Horseman. However, there's a tendency to mistranslate its name back as ''Durahan.'' The ''DragonQuest'' series and ''MonsterRancher'' are among the series to bear Durahans where they realy should have Dullahans.

*** Video games have done that too: in one of the MegaMan arcade games, Wily telegraphs an attack with [[CrosshairAware a moving crosshair]] that adds a small "ROCK ON!" label shortly before firing. Unless it turns out to be a pun on the protagonist's Japanese name.

* Apparently there are some people who've heard of a certain VideoGame series called [[FinalFantasy Fainaru Fantaji]]...
** Even better--at least one of the Japanese releases of FF5 for the PS1 has a jewel case proudly labeled as "FANAL FANTASY V".

** In WW2, this was also used as a shibboleth. If an American unit spotted someone claiming to be American, they would ask him to say "Lolapalooza"; if they said "roraparooza", they were shot.
*** Actually, infiltration by Japanese and/or Chinese claiming to be US was minimal, it was those claiming to be Philippinos (particularly in 41/42) that was the main issue. And per rule of thumb, it would be if they said [[KilledMidSentence rorapa-.]]

** '''[[SoBadItsGood I CREM MY EYES OUT OVER YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOU]]'''

The word {{Engrish}} itself is an example of this trope. Involved in some cases of SpellMyNameWithAnS.

There is some truth to this: because the Japanese language has no "L" sound, native Japanese speakers can have difficulty pronouncing it. They slip into the "R" sound, because it's the closest thing to an "L" sound; furthermore, the Japanese "R" is much more lateral than the English or even Latin R, and easy to mistake for an L. (This is often called a "liquid r".) Likewise, when translating Japanese, someone who's not fluent in English can have difficulty telling when to use an R or an L. If you want to know what this is like, try pronouncing some Welsh or Gaelic words. The same is true of Korean - it has R's and L's, but these are different allophones of the same phoneme, which is pronounced as an L when it serves as a coda (which Japanese generally lacks). Sometimes it's an honest mistake, rather than humor.

[[caption-width:356:In a fit of cosmic [[{{Irony}} ilony]], the editol who [[ClueFromEd inselted this footnote]] was kirred by a holde of roving [[{{Ninja}} ninjas]] the vely next day]]

* ''{{Touhou}} 12.8: Fairy Wars'' has one of the more amusing instances of this, as the accompanying english translation for the final battle music with the intended TitleDrop is written as "Faily Wars".

[[caption-width:356:In a fit of cosmic [[{{Irony}} ilony]], the editol who [[ClueFromEd inselted this footnote]] was kirred by a holde of loving [[{{Ninja}} ninjas]] the vely next day]]

There is some truth to this: because the Japanese language has no "L" sound, native Japanese speakers can have difficulty pronouncing it. They slip into the "R" sound, because it's the closest thing to an "L" sound; furthermore, the Japanese "R" is much more lateral than the English or even Latin R, and easy to mistake for an L. (This is often called a "liquid r".) Likewise, when translating Japanese to English, someone who's not fluent in both languages can have difficulty telling when to use an R or an L. If you want to know what this is like, try pronouncing some Welsh or Gaelic words. The same is true of Korean - it has R's and L's, but these are different allophones of the same phoneme, which is pronounced as an L when it serves as a coda (which Japanese generally lacks). Sometimes it's an honest mistake, rather than humor.

Whele a joke is made about plonouncing "R's" and "L's" in Japanese, or other plonunciations.

[[caption-width:356:In a fit of cosmic [[{{Irony}} irony]], the editor who [[ClueFromEd inserted this footnote]] was killed by a horde of roving [[{{Ninja}} ninjas]] the very next day]]

** The name ''{{Gradius}}'' was a bad transliteration of "Gladius". In the arcade version of ''WonderBoy in Monster Land'', the sword you start the game with is called the "gradius".

!!Exampres of use fol humoru: