Cowabunga gozaimasu
One time my parents pressured me to say something in Japanese to a chef at a hibachi restaurant and he replied “Oh, was that Japanese? I’m from New York.” I wanted to die.
Restore honor through ritual sudoku it is.
Do it in front of parents in the living room to establish dominance.
“uhhhhhh I think that’s a 4… wait no there’s already a 4… FUCK”
Similar when I was in the UK at a Fish and Chip shop. Sikh man asking if I want Curry on my Chips, and then after paying and leaving he says “Ta Mate”
Seems normal to me.
Did you get curry on the chips?
Of course!
Don’t touch-y my moustache!
(I’d never actually heard that one untill a Japanese guy I met at a bar said it, and then explained it to me as a joke, after I attempted a tiny bit of actual Japanese with him).
Also, barely related, but kind of related:
A month before that, I’d gotten a tan hat in the style that Japanese soldiers hats were made in WW2, and was wearing some other clothes that vaguely had a somewhat similar style, but not the same colors, as the rest of the Japanese … summer/hot weather outfit during WW2.
So I’m a white dude, walking up a hill to a store one day, and a guy walking down the hill…
Is Japanese, but wearing basically a full getup of 80s/90s era US milsurp stuff, even a helmet (or at least the liner).
We got to each other, noticed each other at about the same time, fully stopped in our tracks, realized the absurdity of the situation, laughed for about 10 seconds, then went on our ways.
Peak Human experience. That’s an unnamed brother for life.
… Is there any kind of way to translate the uh, intent, of the phrase ‘brother from another mother’ into Japanese, without it being extremely literal, lol?
I doubt that the sing-songiness of the phrase can be kept in translation… but maybe that is possible?
Don’t touch-y my moustache
Okay my Japanese is not good enough to get the joke. Please explain?
It is a… comical approximation of:
どういたしまして
Dō-i-ta-shi-ma-shi-te
Roughly:
Dough Ee Tah She Ma She Tay
… but all said rapidly, together.
It means “You’re welcome”, but is maybe slightly more formal than it is casual.
The joke is that it is maybe what a native English speaker would hear, when a native Japanese speaker says “You’re welcome” in Japanese.
… It does not hardly make any sense in text alone, it makes a lot more sense if its actually spoken aloud.
The reverse of this kind of thing… is how a bunch of English terms /phrases have been oddly/poorly translated or transliterated into ‘Engrish’.
Most Japanese people I have met have a very good sense of humor about this kind of thing, they think its funny that, without a lot of practice speaking English, they suck at speaking English, and vice versa, native English speakers with no practice speaking Japanese, suck at speaking Japanese.
Like, uh, ‘Engrish’ itself as a term… is a thing, because in Japanese, they do not have such a distinct difference between ‘L’ and ‘R’.
They use a sound that is roughly in the middle, in between L and R, they usually never learn or use the two as distinct sounds, if they grow up speaking only Japanese.
(Though this could be changing somewhat due to modern internet culture / communications?)
So… they often struggle to learn these two distinct phonemes, sort of how a native English speaker would struggle to learn maybe some of the phonemes in other languages, that either are not present or are very rarely used in English.
You tend to learn phonemes, the building blocks of words, distinct mouth sounds… you learn them best when you are young, its much more difficult to get your brain and mouth to learn new phonemes when you are older.
Arigathanks
Grassyass
Don’t forget sayonara. It feels like it could be a Spanish word too.
And then if you speak Japanese in a Japanese restaurant, they ignore the fuck out of you.
Can’t really say it so clearly. Are you a Chinese exchange student who has been studying Japanese for a year and somewhat gets by? You’re fine. Are you a literal native speaker but your father is black and you’re a ハーフ?
ソリー！イングリッシュメニュー？アイラブアメリカ！
Edit: Sorry, sometimes it helps to click the link. I had that exact situation before. It looks like comedy but it’s the sad reality. Not always though.
Habla escargo? Heh… I’m bilateral!
I know people shit on this movie, but I love it.
When I meet some shoopkeepeers who look Chinese, I have the urge to say something that sounds kinda like “knee how” but I don’t because I don’t know what that means. Freaking Babel curse, man.
Ni hao means hello in Mandarin Chinese
Then they hit you with “I’m Vietnamese”
Or “gracias” to the local waiter after flying from Spain to Italy.
Great movie btw.
Lol I get accused of being a white savior when I advocate for Palestinian right to exist
Well, are you a white savior ?
nah. people were just pissed when they saw an american stand up for Palestinians.
Idk, sounds pretty white savior to me
Lol how?
Are you white?
I gave up on racial identifications a while back, but i did identify as white since my ancestors came from east England on the second boat to America from England
Do you think talking about Palistine online will assist the people of that country?
might have something to do with a white person using the terror and subjugation of brown people as a punchline and not so much with the just being white.
white people have the worst persecution fetish.
Who?
Says the green person 🤢
hulk mildly amused
i assumed at the time it was desperation, like im pointing out that innocent babies are being killed by Israel and zionist were calling me every name they knew and took them several minutes of name calling to get to white savior.
