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Why do some non-English speaking cultures use some English words?

Asked by mrentropy (17213points) February 3rd, 2012

I’ve noticed this a lot with videogames from Japan and, today, some TV shows where the screen will be filled with Japanese words but one or two will be in English.

So, on a video game, everything may be in Japanese except for the word “Score” in the corner; or maybe “Excellent!” popping up on the screen.

On this TV show I’m watching everything was in Japanese except for “Winner!” One commercial was entirely Japanese except for the words “Today’s Theme.”

In the US here I notice the majority of stuff is English and, unless it’s an obvious attempt at being bilingual (i.e., an entire English block of text is translated to Spanish), it’s all English.

Why is this?

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