I don’t know about Japanese. But I’m Filipino, and it is quite normal for us to shift from one language to another, often within the same sentence. We do speak straight english when talking to foreigners or straight of whatever other language when speaking to someone who speaks only that language.
A.J.
Many artist in other countries use English words too, is the most common language.
Although there is many words in Japanese that sound like English, when the Americans got in Japan, Japanese learned many different words they didn’t know, for example…technological words or something new for them at that time, so you are maybe just hearing the Japanese words that sound almost exactly like the English ones
Example:
computer—-sounds and writes in Japanese romaji—computaa
God bless you
tiki_92090
Because they can.
MC Hummer
It’s not just songs. Many products names and advertisements use a few English words despite few people in that country speaking English.
From what I’ve seen, it’s mostly done to be “stylish”, to make the product or song appear “cool”. Unfortunately, many times you’ll see misspelt and mangled words, and sometimes ludicrous or silly words and
Read these for a few laughs:
Japan
Korea
China:
Interestingly, the Asian countries that have the most mistakes when they use English are the wealthiest; the Philippines and Thailand have excellent English among those who use it.
.
gs_at_ya
Well, it’s because they think it’s cool. You know, one major role of pop songs is to create a new trend and the feature of the generation.
If a lyrics is written in all Japanese, it reminds them an old song and they can hardly relate it to their life style. The surrounding culture of where they live now is the mixture of the Western and the Eastern. So for the young people, it is more natural to have English in a song.
Also, most J-pop musicians have great influences from UK/American music.
area 52
When they feel some words and phrases do not go right with the rhythm and the melodies, they use English lines. This has a lot to do with the characteristics of the Japanese language.
One of the characteristics is that Japanese words contain too many vowels, which make them difficult to crash many words in a bar, which sometimes ruins the rhythm of their western-influenced music.
One of the remarkable differences between the oldies and the J-pops today is the number of words contained in a bar to keep the rhythm going. In other words, how to effectively combine consonants in a line is crucially important to make J-pops sound cool. Not to mention, using English phrases is one of their choices.
{ 6 comments }
I don’t know about Japanese. But I’m Filipino, and it is quite normal for us to shift from one language to another, often within the same sentence. We do speak straight english when talking to foreigners or straight of whatever other language when speaking to someone who speaks only that language.
Many artist in other countries use English words too, is the most common language.
Although there is many words in Japanese that sound like English, when the Americans got in Japan, Japanese learned many different words they didn’t know, for example…technological words or something new for them at that time, so you are maybe just hearing the Japanese words that sound almost exactly like the English ones
Example:
computer—-sounds and writes in Japanese romaji—computaa
God bless you
Because they can.
It’s not just songs. Many products names and advertisements use a few English words despite few people in that country speaking English.
From what I’ve seen, it’s mostly done to be “stylish”, to make the product or song appear “cool”. Unfortunately, many times you’ll see misspelt and mangled words, and sometimes ludicrous or silly words and
Read these for a few laughs:
Japan
Korea
China:
Interestingly, the Asian countries that have the most mistakes when they use English are the wealthiest; the Philippines and Thailand have excellent English among those who use it.
.
Well, it’s because they think it’s cool. You know, one major role of pop songs is to create a new trend and the feature of the generation.
If a lyrics is written in all Japanese, it reminds them an old song and they can hardly relate it to their life style. The surrounding culture of where they live now is the mixture of the Western and the Eastern. So for the young people, it is more natural to have English in a song.
Also, most J-pop musicians have great influences from UK/American music.
When they feel some words and phrases do not go right with the rhythm and the melodies, they use English lines. This has a lot to do with the characteristics of the Japanese language.
One of the characteristics is that Japanese words contain too many vowels, which make them difficult to crash many words in a bar, which sometimes ruins the rhythm of their western-influenced music.
One of the remarkable differences between the oldies and the J-pops today is the number of words contained in a bar to keep the rhythm going. In other words, how to effectively combine consonants in a line is crucially important to make J-pops sound cool. Not to mention, using English phrases is one of their choices.