No doubt there is a lot of bad English to be found in Japan. Even in Tokyo, where one would thing it would be easy to find a native English speaker, there are plenty of egregious “What the eff is that sign trying to say” signs and pamphlets. But even sneakier are the little weird English mistakes that creep into textbooks and entrance examinations. Some are obvious, like the frequent dropping of articles (a, an, the), but some look so close to correct that even I wonder if it’s a mistake or not. One of these cases happened today as I read the 9th grade textbook:
- There’re, a contraction of “there are”
I can understand how this ended up in the textbook; virtually every other pronoun + to be combination has a contraction (I’m, you’re, she’s). Still, I can say with reasonable confidence that I have never heard “there’re” uttered by anyone, native speaker or otherwise. Contractions are suppose to make something easier to say. How would I even say “there’re”? The closest I can figure is that it rhymes with “herre” of Nelly’s “Hot in Herre” fame. In katakana-ized English “ar” sounds turn into a Boston-style “ah” sound, so “there are” would be pronounced “zeh-ah ah”. You know how my student’s pronounced “there’re” today? “Zeh-ah’ah”. Yep, about the same. So not only did the textbook introduce a fake contraction, they introduced a fake contraction that doesn’t actually “contract” anything! Fortunately, this is the only time I’ve ever seen “there’re” in Japan, verses the dozens of times I’ve seen “let’s” combined with “~ing” (Let’s playing soccer!). Thus, I declare a low threat level of ”there’re” corrupting English in Japan.
I am a really lazy speaker and I say “therah”, that I suppose could be likened to “there’re”, in that I do not pause between the words, it is not as defined as “there are”. It is certainly not something I would ever use in written language, however!