The dangers of text based sarcasm
I just remembered this: my 300-level Japanese prof was the hardest hardass I’ve ever met. Just this ridiculously stern native speaker who communicated mostly in glares and passive aggression. We were all terrified of her in the second-year class before we ever met her. On the first day, I wasn’t thinking and I thanked her by simply saying, 「どうも。」
She never said anything about it, but I’m pretty sure I spent the whole rest of the schoolyear making amends for that.
At the end of the quarter, we had a term paper. I handwrote three pages of solid Japanese on that vertical paper with one box per character. I spent six weeks on this damn thing, and at the end, she wrote “90–95%, good try.” I remember that even though that was an A, all I could think about was how pissed off I was that she wrote, “Good try.” She was uncanny about getting under the skin like that.
All have to say about this post is:…
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どうも
No, seriously — nice story, thanks for sharing!
Reminds me of someone meaning to say お腹いっぱい after a meal, but of course they said お腹おっぱい and caused their Japanese friend to spit out their drink
Wanikani lists it as flattery, so glad to know there is a potentially negative connotation.
Just doing my kanji writing practice for the day and suddenly remembered another funny one. I was talking to my partner about 2 months ago when I first learned how to write the kanji for 獣 (beast)(けだもの)。By this point, my partner is well aware of where I am up to in my studies, and what kanji I should be writing (based on kanji year level at schools). Confidently I said ‘Hey, I learned the kanji forくだもの (vegetable) today!’ The look on her face was like ‘big whoop, are you like 8 years old?’. Took me a few seconds to work out why she was so unimpressed haha.
indeed, I am going to leave my mistake unedited. Brain fart at it’s finest.
Actually come to think of it, I say くだもの、as vegetable quite often. I wonder where that bad habit started.
I do love a joke within a joke hahaha
Yeah I think it’s very important for people to understand that the English word definitions in Japanese-English dictionaries usually do not have the exact same meaning or use-cases as the Japanese words, they are just rough approximations. A lot of the time, Japanese words have no exact English equivalent word. Even Japanese words that are taken from English often don’t have exactly the same meaning in Japanese. E.g. the word ‘Juice’ is used to refer to not only actual juice, but also most other sweet drinks like soft drinks and sweetened milk tea.
野菜物 right… I use this all the time… like 野菜物豆 (Natto), and 野菜物肉(Tofu)…
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There should be a name for all the common mashed up words second language learners seem to glom onto… (the above examples were just made for laughs, not that I’ve actually seen/heard them before…) ^,-
For a laugh i started using the incorrect counter word for kids, using 匹 instread of 人. I’m now at the point where I have to make a concerted effort not to refer to someone’s kids as literal animals when talking to them.
In conversation the other day, I used まぶし when I wanted to use まずし in reference to the food quality in US convenient stores. Maybe it depends how desperately hungry a person is so maybe not too funny…nonetheless, NOT what I wanted to say.
For a name how about mixing 間違い and 外来語 to make 間違い来語
Friend of mine had a rough time and failed several tests in his study.
I tried to say:
瑞樹さん、今回の試験時期色々悔しい所があるね
Mizuki, you sure have a lot of let downs this test period…
I said:
瑞樹さん、今回の試験時期色々詳しい所があるね
Mizuki, you sure know a lot this test period…
Mizuki was at least laughing, probably crying inside
Love it! Let’s hope no natives read our conversations and wonder what crazy foreign madness this is… ^,-
Given how if the Japanese themselves were to come up with a word it would be something boring like ミックスワード or something equally and ironically made-up sounding, I quite like 間違い来語.
Could also do something like 雑種語 (ざっしゅご - Hybrid speak), or ぐちゃぐちゃ語 (sloppy-ese)
Need help here — what’s the issue with Mango?
I love your innocence, but please google the meaning of the word マンコ
Yes. I heard from the podcast i am hearing the exact thing. The example he gave was テンション上がるwhich at first glance might sound like tension is rising. But it actually means energetic aka 元気