One of the more bizarre language lessons that I've seen.  But in the interest of peaceful inter-cultural exchange, I thought that I'd share.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0W1VY4b9IQQ

I figured that we could use a break.

Hey, whatever works :laugh:

Lots of ways of learning things..some odd, some not so odd.

Thanks for the break Xeno

Better I guess than having to learn Arabic while flying an airplane.
DPH

lol saw this on Talk Soup. Pretty odd.

Quote - Better I guess than having to learn Arabic while flying an airplane.
DPH

True, true.  I've also heard about the look-alike 'Mickey Mouse' cartoon character for kids.  Farfour the Martyr Mouse.  Sad.

But what more could you ask than what's right here in this video?  Aerobic workout girls, threatened deadly violence, high drama and educational language lessons all thrown together in one show?  Only the Japanese can pull subject matter like that off in a convincing way.

Attached Link: Asian Prostitute English Lesson

i must have fallen off the humor wagon...or is that supposed to be serious ?

:blink:     :blink: :blink:        :huh:                  :glare:

Are they supposed to dance while repeating their new volcabulary? LOL!

I.....think that it's meant to be taken as a serious language lesson.

And yeah......it'd be kind of tough for her to dance & recite English phrases while she's being held by a couple of thugs.

I could swear that the one with the knife looks like Catanza from Seinfeld.
DPH

LOL - What's with that hanky on top of his head and tied under his nose??

Maybe they should throw a few martial arts moves in with that aerobic lesson. Then they could learn to speak REAL "American" English phrases - like.... 'You talkin' tuh ME. Mo Fo???"  :tongue2: :rolleyes:

My grandmother, who has been deceased for 37 years, used to tell me "If any boys get 'funny' with you, kick'em betrween the legs". It took me years to figure out WHy There??

Reminds me of a rather odd thing that happened to me in the 1980s...

My then wife and I were about to depart on a visit my parents in southwest France and had decided that we should take the opportunity to explore the architecture of Barcelona, only 200Km down the autoroute. We didn't have a word of Spanish between us, nor the money to buy any of the acknowledged language courses. We were really thrilled when she came across what appeared to be a school textbook on learning Spanish in a secondhand bookshop in Newbury, Berks, for pennies.

Got the book home and discovered it was published in the US, no big deal, just maybe some nuance shifts. The book was split into sections such as "In the Market Place", "Public Transport", "On the Road" etc.

Useful phrases included:

From "In the Market Place":
Government forces are approaching, we should disassociate ouselves from the demonstrators.
These detonators are old and unstable.

From "Public Transport":
I think those passengers are from the resistance, we should get off at the next stop.

From "On the Road":
There are checkpoints now on all major highways.
The high mountain passes are not watched.
The border guards are not expensive.

I never really understood who wrote it, or for whom they wrote it, wasn't very useful in Catelonia though. "Fill her up" and "Where is the the toilet" were more the sort of things I had in mind.

jwhitham:
That's pretty darn funny!

Really was a very strange book though. Could have been anything from a CIA to a Sandinista Manual. Or maybe some American surrealist planted it the bookshop just to confuse people!

It was a book most likely written during WWII. I majored in Slavic Languages in college during the 1970's, and our Ukrainian textbook had phrases to learn like "He was taken out to be shot". I'm not kidding.

I'm sure "resistance" meant the French Resistance, "the boarder guards are not expensive" meant the border guards could be bribed for a reasonable price. If you were near anyone demonstrating and the Vichy Government army (friendly to Hitler) was approaching, you would want to run because you would be shot with the demonstrators. Checkpoints at the highways  would mean they were guarding the borders or looking for someone in particular so you better have some good ID or better yet, sneak across the border where they weren't watching so closely. Through the mountains, most likely. As some of you may recall, construction workers in England (and elsewhere, I'm sure) are still finding undetonated bombs from the Blitzkrieg and WWII all these years later. Interesting book. Most likely a collectors' item.

I LOVE OT stuff and especially appreciate you pointing it out in your subject heading for those who get peeved at it.

This was priceless. I'm just stunned and vascillating between WTF? and laughter.

OT is the spice of life in the forums.

Alas, I have to report that the video is actually a spoof from a show called Zuiken English that ran on Fuji TV. They called the dancers "Zuiken Girls" and parodied Japanese stereotyped views of America and their own funky English lesson shows. 

I have to give it five stars.

Ah.....so this was actually a joke, then?  It's an interesting bit of humor, if so.  I can't really envision a skit on SNL where one character tells another that "I'll kill you!!!!!" with a knife -- while sounding serious about it: to the point where you don't know whether he's joking or not.  I don't watch SNL, or Mad TV for that matter.  But I've channel-surfed through them enough to know what goes on.

Plus the "old man" narrator at the end of the clip doesn't look like he thinks that it's funny.  But perceptions of humor are VERY different from one culture to another.

Quote - OT is the spice of life in the forums.

Yes, it is.  Without it, things would be the poorer.