Naughty manga textbook

[snopes]

Comment: This is a photo I've seen on two websites and it has started appearing in my e-mail. It is supposed to be a picture of a legitimate English textbook in Japan, prominently displaying the phrase "I like you. Come over to my house and **** my sister!"

It looks real enough to have me wondering: is it?

[charlie23]

if it's shopped they certainly did a good job

[MidgardDragon]

Real? Perhaps. An English textbook? Probably not.

[Tantei Kid]

My guess is on a book for learning naughty English, not official curriculum though obviously.
There are a few for learning naughty Japanese after all, but they wouldn't be touched even in a college class. I read one a previous sudent had left while I was in Japan. It had a dialog to learn the Japanese to help convince your Japanese girlfriend to get an abortion should the need arise.

[ganzfeld]

100% real -- but not a textbook. Just a book to learn English with more... err... interesting subject matter? It's not an extremely rare genre. I guess studying language is pretty dull for most people so they try to add whatever subject they are intersted in. Some people read English cookbooks, with detailed explanations on how to talk about sauces and some people aren't excited by that kind of thing. In the multibillion dollar industry of English language books, there's room for some pretty weird stuff.
http://www.akibablog.net/archives/2006/06/2_cd.html
ETA - Safari isn't handling Japanese characters in my links correctly but the book is available on amazon.co.jp if you're really interested in ordering it!

[ganzfeld]

Here is the amazon.co.jp link to the book pictured:
http://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/switch-la...nguage=en%5FJP

[glisp42]

I wonder if perhaps the author of this book has seen Full Metal Jacket a few too many times.

[Artemis]

I noticed that for each of the words in the sentence "Come over to my house...," there's a Japanese word above the English word. Does it really work that way--i.e., would the word order for Japanese be the same as in English? And would the words correspond to each other in that order? Japanese does go right to left, no?

[ganzfeld]

Originally Posted by Artemis

I noticed that for each of the words in the sentence "Come over to my house...," there's a Japanese word above the English word. Does it really work that way--i.e., would the word order for Japanese be the same as in English? And would the words correspond to each other in that order?

That's just a pronunciation guide. Worthless, of course, unless you want to speak exactly like the worst parody of a Japanese person speaking English. (This is why some people actually talk like that.)

Japanese does go right to left, no?

No. When written vertically, Japanese lines go right to left and each one is read from top to bottom. When written horizontally, it is the same as English. (The word order is, of course, different.)

I hope everyone can see that the book is a little bit of a parody of English learning books. For example, it has, "Vocabulary check!" above the explanation of the explicative. The Japanese is actually pretty funny. The pronunciation guide is also in ordinary Japanese phonetics, not what would normally be used so I think it is making a subtle jab at these kinds of pronunciation guides.

The part where she is inviting someone to "know" her sister is really played up for laughs in the Japanese, too. It's not seriously teacing the phrase. But I think people do enjoy reading this kind of thing to learn real English phrases. I don't think anyone is going to mistakenly use one of these phrases out of context or seriously think they need to use these phrases in conversation.

[Eddylizard]

All I can think about now is Monty Python's Hungarian phrasebook

"do you waaaaaant ... to come back to my place, bouncy-bouncy?"

I think that's a fun way to learn a language! It looks like Viz crossed with Studio Ghibli crossed with Linguaphone.

There's nothing like a bit of motivation eh!

You know, Japan is like a whole 'nother country.......

[Hyper Squirrel]

Originally Posted by Doug4.7

You know, Japan is like a whole 'nother country.......

Hell, Japan is like a whole 'nother planet. One day I'm going there...someday...

Been there. Am i the only one that was just totally not suprised with the picture?

I bought a comic while there, to show friends the interesting pictures and the funny lickle symbols. Flipped a couple of pages and you'd swear i'd have got it from the top-shelf. This was bottom shelf stuff. An innocent schoolgirl sharing a cab with a friends when all of a sudden he - ...i'll spare the details.

Fascinating country though. Go if you have the chance - if only for the fish-sweets.