At 11:52 AM 1/14/98 EST, you wrote:

I've been thinking about this matter myself, recently.  Ranma fanfic authors
have almost universally adopted the "Viz standard" for Shampoo's speech,

which

typically involves inability to use pronouns and to conjugate verbs

correctly.
>From what I understand of Shampoo's Japanese speech in the anime and
manga, it

is not nearly so ungrammatical.  Rather, she adopt comical stereotypes of
Chinese attempting to speak Japanese, while for the most part conforming to
standard grammatical rules.  It should be noted that Japanese grammar
sometimes allows for speakers to refer to themselves in the third person (it
is apparently "kawaii" to do so, but the practice does not seem to be
restricted to cute characters) and to refer to second-person addressees in

the

third person.

Actually, Shampoo's speech in Japanese is rather stilted.  Rather than saying
"Nani o shite iru no desu ka?" or some other, proper form, it's always "Nani
suru ka?" which, while understandable, is quite incorrect in terms of proper
grammar.  Typically, she tends to drop out the article "o" (aka "wo"), and
often uses the infinitive forms of verbs ("suru" as opposed to "shite" or some
other conjugation).  Again, acceptable, but typically associated with the way
children speak.  Viz did a pretty good job, actually, of conveying her
rather disjointed speech.  Compared to Cologne, who speaks very fluently, or
even Mousse, whose only real language quirk is his tendency to use "ora" as
a pronoun representing me/myself/I.

-Deuce