curiosity

Don't Mix Japanese and English in Your Fanfiction, or "Kamisama! Eigo to Nihongo majiru koto wa baka da! Gomen ne!"

An essay by Curi.

Don't mix Japanese into your shitty anime fanfiction. And fuck, don't use it in your stupid manga, especially if it's just the sound effects.
I will now proceed to explain why, citing examples. These examples are from real fanfictions that I found, I did not create them.

Example 1: Kamisama Used as God

"'Kamisama, what a day!' Ono Ranma leaned back against the seat of
the car he was driving, straightening his arms against the
steering wheel, and yawned." (D.F. Roeder, Hearts' Healing, http://www.shoujoai.com/fanfics/ranma/hartheal/2.asp )

Here we go. "Kamisama". It doesn't mean "God" as much as it means the encompassing spirit that permeates native Japanese Shinto religion, but we won't get into that.
Japanese people never, I repeat, NEVER use this as an exclamation like "Oh God!" in English. It does not work that way. At all, ever.
The only time I have ever heard it even closely used that way is in the Ulfuls song "Young Soul Dynamite" (which has a Western feeling to begin with, by the way) and the lyric, "Kamisama, kaze no muki o kaete kure" which means "God, please change the direction of the wind" (i.e. change my luck), but he is IMPLORING kamisama in this case, not exclaiming his name.
This does not give a Japanese flair to your writing, or make it feel as if the characters are actually speaking Japanese, it just makes you look stupid.

Example 2: Gomen Ne Used as "Sorry!"

'Whoa, whoa. Gomen ne, Mi-chan he said, leaning on the wall." (Shidou-san, Expect the Unexpected, http://www.shoujoai.com/fanfics/rayearth/exunex/ )

Just about every place in English fanfiction that the non-Japanese speaking author thinks they should use "gomen ne" or "gomen nasai" for "Sorry," a Japanese speaker would say "warui" or "sumimasen."
Guys, especially tough anime guys, hardly ever say "gomen nasai" unless the scene is super, super dramatic. And they would be much more prone to say "warui" or "sumane."
I see this phrase overused so many times it is insanity.

Example 3: Everything Baka

"Akane was in a foul mood. She really hated being left behind.
It was a bitter pit in her that Hinako had been *murdered* and her
family had no intention of letting her do anything about it. Instead,
she got to 'watch the house'.
'Baka Nabiki. Baka Kasumi. Baka Ryouga.'" (Hamster, Meeting Conflict, http://www.furinkan.net/fanfic/clan20.txt )

"Trowa awoke to the sound of a vacuum cleaner. Normally, Heero vacuuming wouldn't bother him except for the slight hangover he had from the party they had the night before. He quietly chuckled to himself, 'Guess the 'no baka' rule has taken the morning off.'" (Babaca, Party Aftermath, http://strangeplaces.net/silentpassion/fanfiction/partyafter.htm )

Sigh. Double sigh. Seems every anime fan alive only knows one word of Japanese, and that word happens to be "baka." Yes, it can mean stupid, nonsense, idiot, crap, all kinds of negative stuff. But no one ever seems to care how it is used, they just throw it around like it means whatever they want.
Here is one way "baka" IS used, with an example from Azumanga Daioh:

Tomo: Sore wa baka na koto da naaaa...! (That's just stupid...!)
Yomi: Omae wa baka da yo! (YOU'RE stupid!)

Now let's try forcing this super-Japanese word into English and see how it goes. It would be something like this:

Tomo: That's just baka!
Yomi: YOU'RE baka!

See? You're better off avoiding it altogether. Also, typically Japanese people don't go around shouting out "baka" at people, just like Americans don't go around shouting "stupid" or "idiot" at people (big surprise). So if you're gonna have an aneurism if your fanfic character doesn't shout it out, please put "yarou" after it. Please. I implore you.

Example 4: Sound Effects in Katakana

Sound effects are hard, and the likelyhood of a non-Japanese speaker screwing them up is about 100%. Hell, I speak Japanese and I still don't have a mastery over sound effects. So don't put katakana sound effects in the manga you draw. They are most likely wrong, and how many Japanese readers is your comic, in English, gonna have? If I were reading a Japanese comic with English sound effects it would drive me out of my mind switching between the two languages. You know, it would be a good idea to just avoid mixing Japanese and English altogether. Those who don't know it aren't going to be impressed by your mistakes and those who do are just going to be annoyed.

In conclusion, please write your fanfiction either entirely in English or entirely in Japanese. That's great that you learned four Japanese words off of some website, but you aren't fooling anyone. Thank you.

Curi.