2.23.2006

My "trustship" of Japanese English

First off, am I forgetting English, or is "trustship" a word? Being surrounded by English that is half-right or completely wrong every day, especially when teaching, I fear that I'm starting to lose the ability to distinguish between bona fide English and Japanese home-brewed English. But this morning, in between my last e-mail and this one, I turned on the TV for a second to check out the news, and I saw a new commercial for Mitsubishi-UFJ Bank. It shows a man playing catch with his aging father, and he says (in Japanese) "I was always very serious when playing catch with my dad." Then the bank flashes their new slogan onto the screen: "Trustship." I attached a picture so you can see what I'm talking about. The Japanese word they use is 信託, which means "entrustment" or "trust" (as in charitable trust). I think it's great that they tried making a new word; it's very creative, but I suspect that a highly conservative bank didn't intend to do so. It's interesting viewing English through the eyes of non-native speakers, as they often try to match patterns (in this case, friendship and hardship are probably the models). During our first lesson, one of my favorite students, when asked what she would be doing in America after she moves there later this year due to her husband's transfer, responded that she would be "husband-sitting." This is probably my favorite pseudo-English phrase of all time. It was coined in earnest as she frantically struggled to express her feelings, and yet it bears a truth relevant to many so-called housewives (I don't hear the term homemaker much anymore, so I assume it's okay, i.e. sufficiently politically correct, to say housewives). To natives, it has a tongue-in-cheek sort of humor to it. I have heard so many interesting phrases like this, but I haven't made an effort to record them all, which I am starting to regret.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

No, "trustship" is not an English word. I cringe every time I get a business card from someone in Mitsubishi-UFJ Trust Bank (which is all the time since I work for a sister company).

08:59  

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