Engrish of the Day

by Joey deVilla on July 7, 2008

“Engrish” — the gramatically and often hilariously incorrect English that you often see in East Asia or on East Asian products — typically makes at least a little sense. Not this t-shirt, which I spotted on an outdoor rack at the corner of Spadina and Sullivan Streets:

Engrish t-shirt that reads \"Enquired bump brsuh culuff\"

“Enquired? Bump? Brush culuff?” Feel free to theorize in the comments.

(This stores sells other shirts with Engrish, such as this one from back in May.)

{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Pete Forde July 7, 2008 at 1:50 am

I saw a very wholesome and innocent looking girl walking on Spadina last week with a white shirt that had a sort of lame Vegas vibe to it, which said (and please imagine the 777 to be a slot machine display):

The Grand Prize
777
My Cherry

Involuntary shivers to the max! Whatever happened to good old fashioned organ gambling?

2 chiamattt July 7, 2008 at 1:58 am

That’s a Korean clothing company. They are pretty big actually. ASK Enquired is the full name, and they are popular and expensive. They spend a lot on ad campaigns.
http://i22.tinypic.com/jfi8sl.jpg

Check em out
http://www.realcompany.co.kr/

If you ever end up in Korea…I’ll take you to Engrish Mecca; Dongdaemun Market. :)

3 chiamattt July 7, 2008 at 1:58 am

your site keeps eating my comments.

4 Brent the Closet Geek July 7, 2008 at 10:24 am

It looks more like “Brush cülüff” the ü is significant in that it makes the phrase more metal.

5 Joey deVilla July 7, 2008 at 10:28 am

@Brent the Closet Geek: You’re correct — I was just too lazy to go look up the HTML entity for u-with-an-umlaut.

6 Joey deVilla July 7, 2008 at 10:33 am

@Pete Forde: You picked 777 because that’s the girl’s real-life Unix permissions, didn’t you?

7 RichM July 8, 2008 at 7:38 am

What, no sticky bit? She said there’d be a sticky bit…

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