Exile Catchy Best….Catchy….Catchy Best. In English that sounds absolutely horrible. No English pop group would dare put such a name on their album but there it is on a new best hits album from the J-Pop group Exile.
Sometimes it seems like the Japanese are intentionally butchering English to make some crazy point.
In Japanese, “Catchy Best” is not only acceptable, it’s excellent! Awesome, even. Possibly the new Hotness.
The problem is simple: We aren’t seeing what native Japanese speakers see.
If you were born in Japan and in the age group that enjoys Exile, Catchy Best would make perfect sense to you. But you weren’t and you aren’t.
The only way to see what they see, is to look at what they look at. Walk a thousand miles in their shoes and you’ll begin to understand what’s cool, funny and boring to them.
I can’t imagine what ‘Beavis and Butthead’, ‘Ren and Stimpy’, or 50 Cent sound like to non-native English speakers. How do you explain the jokes, the names, the lyrics?
If you really want to know, you’re going to have to watch a lot of English TV and listen to a lot of English music.
Curiosity and Appreciation
I pretty much listen to Japanese music exclusively now. Not because I’m trying to immerse myself, but because I enjoy it.
And although my collection is small, I rarely go back and listen to my english collection. Of course, at first, I couldn’t do this. At first, I found it really difficult to find Japanese music I liked.
And the reason was simple. I was looking for American music sung in Japanese instead of exploring Japanese music and learning to appreciate it.
And there are real differences between American and Japanese music. The biggest difference? You can sing off-key on a Japanese Album. This was hard to adjust to.
Singing off-key in English is for American Idol rejects. It’s a reason to cringe and change the channel not raise your hand and ask for more.
And this is where curiosity and appreciation are so important. While most Japanese music may sound strange or even bad to you, there are millions of Japanese who absolutely love it. Are you curious as to why?
Are you willing to jump in and explore and learn to appreciate what the Japanese enjoy in their music? And possibly even come to enjoy it in the same way they do?
Isn’t that what you want in learning Japanese as well? To be able to appreciate “Catchy Best” in Japanese and have a feel for why it works in Japanese.
It’s certainly popular to point out all the crazy examples of Japanese using english, but for the language learner, how valuable is that?
They aren’t actually speaking english. They’re throwing in english words while speaking Japanese. They may even be using a definition for that word that you’ve never heard of!
Japanese people who hear or see it understand and don’t bat an eye. Curious as to why? Explore and you’ll come to appreciate that too.
