As the de facto international language, English has been welcomed and incorporated into languages and cultures around the world. Many countries start teaching kids English as early as when they enter elementary schools. Therefore, perhaps it's inevitable that many languages have developed their own "English" phrases.
At first blush, they appear to be English. But to a native English speaker, they are not only grammatically incorrect most of the time, but also confusing as all get-out. Why? Because these "English" versions grew out of completely different cultural and linguistic backgrounds and, therefore, can only be understood in the correct context.
Here are a couple of examples:
Jetso being ing lah!
Own car repair fu good man!
What do those "English" words actually mean?
1. Jetso - the romanized pronunciation of Cantonese 著數, which refers to some special offer or discount.
2. ing - a borrowed form of the progressive tense, referring to any activity or action that is going on right now.
3. lah - a popular, albeit neutral and somewhat meaningless, sentence-ender in Chinese.
4. man - adjective; the equivalent of "manly."
5. fu - noun; the equivalent of "feeling" or "impression."
So those two sentences can be translated as:
Special Offer Going On Right Now!
Fixing your own car feels so manly!
I can't speak about other languages, but I'm guessing they have something similar as well. If a word can't be found in an English dictionary, at least we'll know it's made up. But a word like "man" in the example above can be pretty confusing. The only way to learn what they mean and how they're used is if you live them, i.e. in context or through immersion.
And I dare say, as the Internet furthers its reach, this type of slang will only grow exponentially.
Welcome to the digital age!
Please translate responsibly.
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