Englanese

I've spent the last four years or so enjoying Chinglish and Japlish and any kind of Asian inconsistencies in spelling, grammar or sentence structure (only to come back to the US and find its horrible effect on my own speaking abilities). But today, on the drive home from community college, I was delighted to see that somebody here in Texas had fucked up some Japanese, creating what I'd like to call Englanese.

I'm completely intrigued by this restaurant, that probably wanted to call itself AOYAMA or AOHYAMA. AO means blue, green, or sometimes new or fresh. YAMA means mountain. AOHYAMA can mean blue or fresh mountain, and is also the name of a really upscale area of Tokyo with lots of shopping and jazz clubs. It's a very common name in Japan.

But the problem is, this restuarant didn't call itself AOHYAMA, it has called itself AHOYAMA. New meaning entirely. AHO in Japanese means asshole or dumbass. In certain parts of Japan, it's a fighting word, and if you say it to someone, you'd better be prepared to fuck some shit up. Now YAMA still means mountain here, but the whole meaning of the restaurant's name has now changed to "mountain of dumbasses." I'm still intrigued by the restaurant, but much less likely to eat the food there.