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A Japanese-English Christmas Carol

If you’ve been watching much Japanese TV lately, you’ve probably seen this commercial, with Kaela Kimura singing a new Christmas song:

Did you realize she was singing in English? I didn’t. It sounded like gibberish until I googled it and found out she’s trying to sing, “a winter fairy is melting a snowman.” Fancy that.

Here’s a longer version of the song, which includes the part in Japanese:

And here is a Mom & Baby English class singing it:

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43 comments - What do you think? Posted by James - December 22, 2010 at 4:30 am

Categories: Odd / Strange Tags:

Yojimbo

Aaaaaaaaaaaagh!
RMilner

To be fair, English is a more difficult language to pronounce than Japanese.
http://twitter.com/adamukun Adamu

Instant classic!
lovely

wow – engrish like i`ve never heard.
kay

ok i can hear it LOL, its not the worst. but she does have issues pronouncing fairy. more like faywee
Vox24

I’ve been singing it as ” a wicker chair with welting? let’s go, man!”, but mainly to annoy my girlfriend.
Comment

The word “snowman” was easy to pick out. I couldn’t understand the rest though.
fh

I too thought it was gibberish until I noticed the “A Winter Fairy is Melting a Snowman♪” text at the bottom of CM (towards the beginning), and realized those were the words being sung. I guess it may be easier to spot if you have 地デジ or a large-ish TV.

I rather like this remix: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4EowDDarxc
http://www.billowykimono.com Senor Science

This reminds me how bad new j-pop can be
JamesK

This made me giggle.
shiz

This is my first time listening her song, it sounds very cheerful and fun!! I like it . anyway Marry Christmas to you all !!
http://tepido.org/ LB

Sounds like she took singing lessons from this guy
Simon

This is terrible. She has an English father, doesn’t she? I assume she speaks English to some degree (more than she’s showing here, anyway.) Perhaps the ad agency told her to katakanaise it so it sounds more comforting to the ordinary Japanese ear or something?

http://tepido.org/ LB

She’s Japanese, born and raised in Japan in a Japanese household, why would one “assume she speaks English” based solely on the background of one parent? A bit presumptuous. I went to high school with the son of Cuban immigrants – two native Spanish speakers for parents, and he couldn’t speak Spanish at all. He was born and raised in the US, and a part of the US where there was no Spanish-speaking community, both his parents refused to speak Spanish around him as they saw his (and their own) future as being in an English-speaking nation and he (and they) would need English, not Spanish, to survive. At the time we thought it was a bit odd, but on reflection it all made perfect sense. Perhaps Kaera’s father was fluent in Japanese and English was not used in the home?

http://ameblo.jp/charlottes-adventure/ miss_igirisu

Because, if I had a kid, I’d like to give it a head start in the world by bringing them up bilingually.

ponta

Kaela Kimura

Born in Adachi, Tokyo, Japan to a British father and Japanese mother

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaela_Kimura
yom

THANK YOU!!

My wife and I have been trying to work out what she was saying for ages now.

All i ever got was “snowman”
nagoriyuki

I wonder who has melted her eyebrows.
N

This has been the bane of my existence for the last few weeks! What an awful jingle. I don’t even know what they’re selling.
Mari

Ow now that makes sense!
♪A winter fairy isu merutingu a snowman♪
It sure got more phonemes than normal.
But the moms in the English class sounds understandable.
andrew

must be american writing this?..as they cant even understand English speaking English at times.
I remember in chicago airport having to put on an “american accent” to ask for some water as the shop assistant couldn’t understand what I was saying. As for the video, wasnt that hard to understand.

http://tepido.org/ LB

Cuts both ways – as an American in England I have had problems getting the natives to understand what I am saying sometimes. And from my perspective, I was speaking perfectly good English.

I have heard the same from Australians, New Zealanders, Scotsmen and the Irish as well about dealing with the English (and once a Cockney complaining about his fellow Englishmen).
J

“I remember in chicago airport having to put on an “american accent” to ask for some water”

Probably thrown off by your peculiar and rustic way of speaking? “chicago airport”? Hmm, is that like “new york airport”, “london airport”, “paris airport”, “tokyo airport”?

Craig

Holy shit that was painful to listen to

Jordan

Agreed. It’s nauseating.

Asa

I hate to be critical of Kimura Kaela because I really do like her music. But this one is a bit poor. She has other songs in English and she sang them well. For instance a song called “Ground Control” from her album, Scratch. There are others too!. So I have to wonder if she was singing that way to be “artistic” in some strange style or if she just did a poor job. Not that it means anything to her speaking ability but isn’t she the daughter of a British man? One would think she’s had more exposure to English pronunciation.
Anyway, I still like her and hope she does more good music.
checkoutmyskills

I kyan spiik englisch bicoz I hab larnd englisch fo obar 6 iyarz ror.
WC

Why would the fairy do that? What a —–.

Sandy

Finally, someone picks up on the real issue at hand here!
Anonymous

Yeah, I planned to mention this. It’s actually easy to figure out what she’s saying, but the bigger mystery is *why* they came up with that phrase. It makes absolutely no sense.
leitmotiv

Its the global-warming winter fairy.
nagoriyuki

You know why when you fall in love, kids.
Skammie

I can under why a SPRING fairy might want to melt a snowman, but won’t a WINTER fairy want to keep it frozen instead?!

Kenzo

Wow, my english is so good, let me take the mick of some Japanese pop singer singing a Japanese pop song for the Japanese market with the token Japanised english which is incoherent to the non-Japanese speaking folk. Hee hee, hilarious!

http://ameblo.jp/charlottes-adventure/ miss_igirisu

If you remember, we also cringed at that youtube girl who sang that “danjo jodan danjo” song thing.

andrew

Hear your LB and well aware of what you mean…. unfortunately they may have been being rude to you and actually understand without too much difficulty; there are plenty of small minded people like that.
My experience of working between US and Europe was that “in general” in Europe they were better at understanding a wider range of accents (of English) and that’s ignoring all the famously thick or heavy accents too. I guess maybe because of the geography of so many countries accent in close proximity.

Anyway, that’s not so important. What I’m more curious about is that am I the ONLY ONE who could understand her the first time?

Maybe Japan probe should put a poll on this one?? Could you understand first time? yes/no

I think it would be odd if i was the only one to say yes, especially I guess on a website about Japan where I would guess people would be used to Japan.

po

I agree with your statement about the poor intercultural communication skills of Americans(and Canadians). Let me say that, while I don’t have problem understanding and communicating with people of many accents, certain thick accents of certain localities of the North America are rather more difficult to understand than “Engrish” or “Chinglish” or whatever of sort.

BUT… I couldn’t understand what on earth Kaera was singing, except “melting snowman” part. And I’m Japanese, damn.

Alex

That just sounds like a very slight speech impediment… although the kids in the mom-kid English class are very cute!

JS

I was going to say she sounds like she is deaf.

David

I thought it was gibberish too… baby talk or something that sounded kawaii but with no meaning.

… and it happens to be “english”. I wonder why they keep trying to use english everywhere before they learn it properly. I’m not a native speaker and it hurts, so to you guys it must be terrible
Day-Bee-Toe

Wow, it’s quite shocking for me, a “domestic” Japanese guy, that her pronunciation is so “katakana” for native speakers…. To be honest, I thought her pronunciation was no problem, even though I didn’t be able to figure out any of her words.

Perhaps it is because her phonation, not pronunciation. The Japanese is language is pronounced using mouth only, while most of (perhaps all) European languages are pronounced using both mouth and throat. She seems to know how to use her throat to create a sound, so it sounds very English-like for our ears.

Anyway…, I think I’ve understood how it is difficult to be able to speak English for an ordinary Japanese. That’s a very disappointing fact, an inconvenient truth. Sigh….

john

Nonsense. Are you saying all Japanese words are unvoiced?

hiMe

This song is stuck in my head now. My mum thinks I’m crazy cos I was singing in under my breath while switching channels… ._.

A Japanese-English Christmas Carol

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