I can just imagine what will happen next...

It seems that I often see errors in Japanese-made English text where it says "Let's" followed by a noun that isn't also used as a verb. I guess the artist needs more English training! XD

HawkeyeNFO said:

It seems that I often see errors in Japanese-made English text where it says "Let's" followed by a noun that isn't also used as a verb. I guess the artist needs more English training! XD

Well, I mean, if you think about it, from the point of view of a non-native speaker the proper term of "let's have sex" makes no sense at all. "Sex" in this sense isn't a noun, you can't hold one in your hand. "Sex" does have a noun definition as a sort of synonym for parts of the body used in sex, but just about everybody already has those.

Let's have walk! Let's have game! Let's have party!

OOZ662 said:

Well, I mean, if you think about it, from the point of view of a non-native speaker the proper term of "let's have sex" makes no sense at all. "Sex" in this sense isn't a noun, you can't hold one in your hand. "Sex" does have a noun definition as a sort of synonym for parts of the body used in sex, but just about everybody already has those.

Let's have walk! Let's have game! Let's have party!

I'm not just talking about usage where the word "have" is missing. It often happens with other verbs. I've seen a lot of "Let's <name of game>" instead of "Let's play <name of game>". Again it reiterates my point that the people who do that haven't learned English enough to understand the funky idiosyncrasies of the language.

OOZ662 said:

Well, I mean, if you think about it, from the point of view of a non-native speaker the proper term of "let's have sex" makes no sense at all. "Sex" in this sense isn't a noun, you can't hold one in your hand. "Sex" does have a noun definition as a sort of synonym for parts of the body used in sex, but just about everybody already has those.

Let's have walk! Let's have game! Let's have party!

It functions as a noun here, that is, the act of sexual intercourse. Substitute "...have sex" with "...have sexual intercourse" and it all makes sense.

The difference is that, well, "sex" acts as an uncountable noun here, which is why it is not preceded by an article.

Compare with "let's have pizza", "let's have Chinese (food)", "let's have milk", etc.

Walk, game, and party are countable, which is why they require articles in front of them (the alternative would be to pluralize them, but that would sound weird in this context).

Also:

OOZ662 said:

"Sex" in this sense isn't a noun, you can't hold one in your hand.

Just because a noun isn't concrete doesn't mean it's not a noun. Patience, courage, intelligence, delight, etc. — you can't hold them in your hands either but they are still nouns. Abstract nouns. Some of them can even be worked in the above sentence:

"Let's have patience."

HawkeyeNFO said:

I'm not just talking about usage where the word "have" is missing. It often happens with other verbs. I've seen a lot of "Let's <name of game>" instead of "Let's play <name of game>". Again it reiterates my point that the people who do that haven't learned English enough to understand the funky idiosyncrasies of the language.

This is because Japanese permits the "Ｘ(を)する” construction to form new 'verbs' (meaning to do "X"). X in this case can even be a foreign loanword. This can be conjugated to the volitional form, "Ｘ（を）しましょう”, or ”Ｘ（を）しよう”, "Let's do X".

Unfortunately less fluent speakers tend to think in their native language before literally translating them into the other language, resulting in Engrish like this.

(In a related note, the opposite mistake seen in a lot of English speakers speaking/writing Japanese is excessive use of 'pronouns'.)

That's why that "from the point of view of a non-native speaker" bit was on there. Being a native speaker I understand that, but it's also easy to see someone not up on the tangled mess nuances of English to take "sex" as a simple verb and not understand why they should "have" it.

"Miss, this isn't Health class. That's next period."