

I noticed even in the Englished Dubbed version of One Piece many of the props
(flags, signs, etc) use Japanese symbols rather than alphabetical words, and
now, watching on the Subbed version, I notice some things are actually written
in English. For example an island entrance says "Punk Hazard" and "Danger" in
English, even though they're speaking Japanese.

I've noticed this kind of inconsistency elsewhere too, for example, even in
the Subbed version, you hear many English words and names, such as their
shipwright saying "Super!". I've nopticed more things like this throughout the
entire series, having watched many episodes in Dubbed and Subbed versions.

So, is there an explanation for why English and Japanese are intermingled so
heavily in One Piece? it seems odd for the text to be inconsistent. Maybe they
produced a few different versions with different text forms, but that would be
odd since it's not even an English dubbed version in some cases.

Was the writer bilingual? Or was it perhaps a strategy to please English and
Japanese viewers equally? Or some other reason?


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one-piece
Why is the written language inconsistent throughout One Piece?


Ashishgup mentioned general aspects of [English in Japanese
anime](https://anime.stackexchange.com/questions/835/why-do-some-anime-in-
japanese-contain-english) and
[conversely](https://anime.stackexchange.com/questions/14725/why-do-some-
english-dubs-leave-untranslated-japanese-text) in his comment.

Beside that, note that English is an obvious feature of One Piece. The name of
the manga itself is "One Piece" in Japanese, not ワンピース !

Looking at the Japanese version of the manga, you can quickly notice that shop
signs, some brands, city signs and even some fight moves are written in
English. All important characters are introduced with their name dubbed in
English in the background.

It seems then consistent that the anime keeps this feature (the anime being
derived from the manga and not the other way around).

As for why it is so: mixing languages is more than ever a trend in all
languages. Some mangaka will do it more than others. Eiichiro Oda does it
quite a lot.


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Culturally English seems to show up in anime and manga a lot. However, for One
Piece there is an additional reason. This story takes some inspiration for
characters from real-life pirates (and other individuals) which were primarily
English, Spanish, French, and Portuguese. The characters are generally not
Japanese.

Just focusing on Straw Hats:

Sanji, Robin, and Brook use french for their attacks. Robin also mixes in
Spanish while Brook mixes in German. Franky is obviously an American and keeps
speaking American English. Luffy, Usopp, Chopper, and Nami seem to be mostly
English speaking. Basically, Oda sometimes borrows words from the languages he
thinks are appropriate for that character whenever he wants to for emphasis.
Zoro is thoroughly Japanese despite not being from Wano. Instead of languages,
he names otherworldly imagery for emphasis.

Interestingly, this doesn't line up well with the nationalities in the SBS.
Otherwise, Robin would speak Russian, Luffy would speak Portuguese, Usopp
would speak an unspecified African language, and Nami would speak Swedish.

The Doflamingos use Spanish. The World Gov. uses English. This does not
explain all uses of English and it does not explain them at all in universe.


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I'd probably say it's because the language barrier between English and
Japanese is huge. Learning Japanese if you speak english or learning english
if your Japanese are both really tall tasks... in the older anime you'll see
tons of inconsistencies for when they try to throw in some english. They
didn't plan on messing up some of the translations. It just happened. It's the
same way for when Americans try to speak Japanese and aren't fluent. We sound
funny and make simple mistakes. They say english is the hardest language to
learn. Its definitely one of them.


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