kevyip1 (sexy name if I may say), in my opinion hanzismatter and engrish.com have different purposes and targets (if they have any). Most people who visit engrish.com come mainly for entertainment, to guffaw at weird English sentences appearing on various products and signs, and not out of language-learning motivations. The tone of this message board and its most popular forum where people actually attempt to imitate Engrish or create their own styles is enough to prove my point (the language study forum is just window dressing). Hanzismatter however, if I may boldly chance a guess at its marketing strategy, is targeted at language-savvy people (and particulary tattoo fans) who want to increase their understanding of Chinese and its characters or who are simply curious. Except for the e-mails I didn't see much humour on the site. Not to say it's not interesting nor at all funny but the contents are generally more explanatory than humorous (compare, for example, the comment below the Engrish of the Day pic which is often a pun, sometimes even salacious, and the rather objective, sober explanations of what the ideograms mean on hanzis).

You mentioned that the pages I listed where all in Japanese and not for Westerners to learn and laugh about their mistakes. There is probably no dedicated website but there are a couple of books that address the issue you're talking about, i.e. language misuses from Westerners explained to Westerners. You might know Mangajin, a magazine to learn Japanese with manga published in the 90s which also had a gaijin blooper section (a few are listed on this page www.mangajin.com/ezine/bloopers.html). Then there's Tom Dillon's "Japanese Made Funny" (www.civilbookstore.com/index/book/4915645215.html) which I recommended 2 years ago already (woo time flies!)(p197.ezboard.com/fengrishmessageboardsfrm7.showMessage?topicID=15.topic). Although the book is funny enough for non-Japanese speakers, thanks to Tom's entertaining writing style and the examples carefully chosen for their bawdiness and high inappropriateness factor, it is completely hilarious to people with a knowledge of nihongo. As jmcc said, a joke explained is not as amusing as when you understand it yourself.

EWNS, I want to argue with you, where and when can we do it?




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