Miranda Kenrick - Gems of Japanized English: Is That an L As in Rome? No, Its R As in London.

IT WAS AROUND NOON one Sunday that I was in line at the American Club's buffet brunch table. I did that particular brunch almost every Sunday during the years my wife, Sarah, and I lived in Japan, not so much because everything laid out there tasted good (it did), but more because it looked goodbetter than anything I was likely to see while working around the local countryside during the coming week.

You know what I mean, I'm sure. Nothing spread on that buffet table was moving, and all the vegetables were near the same familiar colors I remembered from back in Cleveland. And the American Club's soups were always either cloudy or clear, never half and half like native varieties.

Anyway, on the particular Sunday I'm talking about, I was lined up behind two just-off-the-plane newcomers who were comparing problems that they had dealt withor thought they had dealt with during the previous week in Tokyo. "There's no two ways about it," one of them decided. "The problem here is the language."

When I heard that observation, I was positive they had just arrived. If they had been in Japan more than seven days, they would have known that there are two ways about it, and that's why language is definitely the problem.

Actually, there are four ways about the problem. That's because there are two languages involved Japanese and English. There are also, in turn, two Japanese languages. There's the one the Japanese speak, and then there's the one those of us foreigners who have taken Japanese lessons speak.

Same goes for English. There's the English we foreigners speak, and there's the English the Japanese speak. Really, it can get even more complicated than that, because only the Englishas only they could really mastered English. And the only people who really ever understand foreigner's Japanese are other foreigners who went to the same Japanese-language school.

Visitors to Japan get trapped very often because they don't really understand their own native language. For instance, I've seen Americans get more than somewhat upset with those girls who sit by the front doors in Tokyo department stores. They get mad because even though the girls wear big buttons that say "I Speak English," they don't seem to understand a word the visitors are saying. If that ever happens to you, please remember that the buttons say "I Speak English"they do not say "I Understand, English."

I bring that up because I want you to understand how all the Japanized English that Miranda Kenrick has collected came to be in the first place. It's all the product of those "I Speak English" people, a product that provides some of the best entertainment that the "I Understand English" people will ever find anywhere.

The only thing that might be more hilarious, in fact, would be if some of us "I Speak Japanese" folks started putting up Japanese signs back in Cleveland.

By the way, if some of you foreigners now living in Japan happen to understand exactly what the Japanese meant when they put together some of the gems in Miranda Kenrick's charming book, you really should consider going hometomorrow at the latest. Those who don't might retaliate with humor, like the foreigner who replied to "Is that 'L' as in Rome?" with "No, it's 'R' as in London."

But if you do decide to go home, take this little book with you. Nobody's going to believe you if they don't see it in print.

DON MALONEY

New York