Meanings
alternative Jinglish
- uncountableJapanese-influenced English, especially when nonstandard or ungrammatical.
2001, Nancy Brown Diggs, Looking Beyond the Mask: When American Women Marry Japanese Men She also thinks that “being so close to the culture has ruined my English. I have had to choose easier words, shorter sentences, ... We call it ‘Jinglish,’ Japanese-English.”
3 more examples
1997, James W. Rinehart, Christopher Huxley & David Robertson, Just Another Car Factory?: Lean Production and Its Discontents That this company is half Japanese-owned is obvious. Japanese words spelled out in English (what someone referred to as “Jenglish”) are used and posted throughout the plant.
1998, Robert Brenner & Gregory Capelo, VCR Troubleshooting & Repair Since many VCRs are designed and built in Japan, a mixture of Japanese-to-English writing style sometimes called “Japanenglish” or “Jenglish” is often found in much documentation. This makes some of the expressions difficult to understand.
What is Jenglish (pronounced jing-lish)? It's all of the funny English in Japan that you see on signs, books, T-shirts, vending machines... it's everywhere. ... it doesn't quite have that "native English speaker" nuance.
1999, Dan in Japan: jenglish (website)
Synonyms & antonyms
Origin
Blend of Japanese + English; compare Singlish, Yinglish, etc.
Full word history & related roots →Rhymes & wordplay
Rhymes with Jenglish
All rhymes →Cite this entry
Jenglish. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Jenglish
“Jenglish.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Jenglish. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “Jenglish,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Jenglish.
Source: Jenglish on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.