和製英語、カタカナ英語、
またはジャパニーズイングリッシュとも呼ばれる
一見英語風に日本で使われている言葉は
実は
英語には無い言葉だったり（ポルトガル語やフランス語源）
英語ではあるけれども、
日本語で使う時と意味が違う言葉だったり・・・
英語学習をしていく上で、本当に紛らわしいですね。
今週から始まる
Lost in Translationシリーズでは
PEGL講座のOne to One Online Lessonsで
レッスンを教えているTyler講師が
実際に日本で出会った数々の和製英語を例に
英語との違いを説明していきます。
※アメリカ英語を基準にしています。
第一回は「マンション」です！
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Lost in Translation Part.1 マンション
Tyler Ayala
I have spent more than a year living in Japan, and there is one word that has continued to evade my understanding in Japanese-English: マンション. To be honest, I don’t know the exact meaning and use of it in Japanese. However, I do know that this is nowhere near the meaning in English. I will try to explain my confusion.
In Japanese, if someone says マンション, you probably think of this picture below.
However, in English, we would think of something more like the picture below.
Obviously, these are two very different types of buildings. So, when you are in an English-speaking country, try to remember this difference. For example, if you are visiting some business partners and they invite you to their home, they may live in what we would call an apartment complex (マンション). If you were to comment on how lovely their ‘mansion’ is, then they would most likely feel that you are giving them a much greater compliment than you intended and would most like try to disagree. This might give them the impression that Japan is a poor country if they do not know better since you called their apartment a mansion and pressed forward with your compliment. In your mind, you would be emphasizing the word ‘lovely’ while they would be focusing on the word ‘mansion’.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
※The English described in this blog is from an American perspective. Cultural reactions and vocabulary might be different in other countries like Canada, Britain and Australia.
いかがでしたでしょうか？
本シリーズを第二回～お楽しみに！
事務局・山口