Poetry: Japanese vs. Old English

Japanese vs. Old English

A student at Mac was afflicted
Because her two courses conflicted.
Her ‘t’s became ‘が’s*,
And her ‘は’s** became ‘ða’s***.
Old Engrish was thusly いぇfreめd****.

* ‘ka’ (phonetic symbol in Japanese Hirigana)
** ‘ha’ (another phonetic symbol from the Japanese Hirigana writing system, often used as a topic marker after the subject of the sentence)
*** ‘tha’ (Old English for ‘the’, in this declension, it is ‘nominative’, that is, a subject marker, similar to the topic marker of the Japanese)
**** This is the a mixing of the two languages. Romanized, the word reads “iefremed” – which is the pronunciation of the Old English word “gefremed” – which means “performed”.

—–

This past school year, I made the mistake of taking Japanese and Old English at the same time. Some confusion started to happen in my lecture notes (especially when I got sleepy in the hot room of Old English). Nevertheless, this limerick began when the prof in Old English challenged us to write a quick limerick. This took me 2 days to iron out the details… but still, it’s a tricky little rhyme and takes a double reading to figure it out, I think…