Shiina's engrish

[jigenbakuda]

Oh the lulz, I love spam threads the best when I create them.

I was reading the tsumi to batsu booklet this morning and realized the hilarious engrish in the song 17. At first I thought it was just british spellings, but then I was like no way. Instead of scanning my booklet, I'll just get the lyrics from goo... Please keep in mind these have been changed from the booklet version, but still has errors.


now I'm seventeen
my school is in the country
students wear trainers
read the same magazine(magazins)
now I'm seventeen
my school is gettinng tiresome
teachers-they're so young
singling me out

※only like philosophy & after school the time
that's what I call my own time
nice girls meet nice boys end of school day
while other girls go strait home※

talking 'bout soaps'n' that

I go home alone
like it watching the nameless people

△surfing subways,travelling somewhere　“…nowhere…”△

now i'm seventeen i do not have a title
depend on no one else
busy being king[this was spelled right in the booklet] (to myself)

(※くり返し)

i go hime[this was spelled right in the booklet] alone and have dinner
in my sweet home praying again,
again & again (“…peace…”)

□i see the same faces in school
& they say that i am different i think it's an honour
i say it's an honour to B different (diffrent, only the second different)
i can't go their way□

(△くり返し)
(□くり返し)

now i'm seventeen
now i'm “…seventeen…”


Ah it felt good wasting your time, lol. But if you have noticed any other mistakes in shiina's official lyrics, I'd love to read them.

[clowezra]

At least she sings it right.

[ShinjiPG]

Honour. Singling.
And for what matters, "strait" is a correct word, just incorrectly used.

[jigenbakuda]

Originally Posted by ShinjiPG

Honour. Singling.
And for what matters, "strait" is a correct word, just incorrectly used.

I know like the strait of gibraltar

But to be fair if I said
パパイヤオマンコー
or if I typed
箸で生きたい instead of 橋で行きたい

I'd still be a stupid american (which I am, lol)

*begs freckle girl not to rain down mod fire because of his sub par moon talk*

Edit: Honour is where my british comment came from. But it is weird to use a british spelling and american broken english... well I'm not sure if "talking 'bout soaps'n' that" is exclusive to america, british people can probably say that too, she does not sing with a british accent either, so if nothing its weird. I also admit to being semi-owned by shinji-kun (I know you won't get the reference to shinji-kun), I jumped to some conclusions on some misspelings....

[ShinjiPG]

It doesn't make sense to mix UK spellings with USA spellings in the same sentence or text, unless you happen to be a foreign (artist) with few english skills. Even I sometimes write "colour" instead of "color" for no apparent reason. The same happens with foreign people trying to speak portuguese and switching from portuguese expressions and brazilian expressions in the same text/dialog/etc, as if they were interchangeable.

That makes me wonder, who helped Ringo write "17"?

[Scribble R]

Shiina Ringo is more British than American, thank you very much >__________________________>

[jigenbakuda]

Originally Posted by ShinjiPG

It doesn't make sense to mix UK spellings with USA spellings in the same sentence or text, unless you happen to be a foreign (artist) with few english skills. Even I sometimes write "colour" instead of "color" for no apparent reason. The same happens with foreign people trying to speak portuguese and switching from portuguese expressions and brazilian expressions in the same text/dialog/etc, as if they were interchangeable.

That makes me wonder, who helped Ringo write "17"?

Well I can say that (and I already said that) the same things apply to me speaking japanese. I constantly use warota in my mental dialog, although,I speak tokyo ben (neutral japanese/ standard japanese), so I understand.

17 was on her demotapes correct? So I think we can assume that she had little or no profession help in writing the song.

I went back and listen to the demo tape version, to me that version is better lyrically, much easier to understand. The lyrics are very different in many places, if she wrote that herself.. I'm not sure why she would release the single version, to me its inferior in almost every way to the demo version, from the way shiina sings it, to the lyrics... But oh well.

Edit: @scribble, but she doesn't sound british when she sings. Perhaps its only people with very strong accents in which you can tell the region in which the come from (i.e. artic monkey's lead singer, or royksopp). Is this the case, I can not pretend that I listen to enough english artists to know. Can you tell me if this is the case.

[frecklegirl]

She studied abroad in the U.K. and I assume that's where she got most of her English knowledge. It makes sense that she wants to use British spellings to stay true to her experience there.

[Scribble R]

Originally Posted by jigenbakuda

Edit: @scribble, but she doesn't sound british when she sings. Perhaps its only people with very strong accents in which you can tell the region in which the come from (i.e. artic monkey's lead singer, or royksopp). Is this the case, I can not pretend that I listen to enough english artists to know. Can you tell me if this is the case.

I'd say she sings 'British.' Kaban no Nakami ("They'd embarass me so please don't ahsk!"), Genjitsu warau... (Maybe nott, nott)

[TeslaGuy]

Most Commonwealth countries also use British spelling. America is the aberration.