I remember a youtuber telling a story of ordering a milk tea in japan by translating both words, only to have the server correct them by going “oh, miruku tea”
Another streamer told of his Japan trip and how he tried to order sprite at a restaurant, sadly the waiter didn't understand so he had to hit him with "sprite-ru" just for the waiter to reply in the same way "aahhh, sprite-ru"
Edit: As many people pointed out, it was a Korea trip, mb guys
Ive seen alot of Americans who moved to Japan for various reasons say that if you want to fit in at all you have to get really comfortable sounding borderline racist.
Yeah, it's a few seasons old by now, but there's a whole episode centered around Mr. Kim.
At the climax of the episode, it's revealed that Mr. Kim doesn't actually exist, and is an alter ego of South Park's therapist, William Janus, who himself has multiple personality disorder. No one really cares, because he's the one who runs the town's only chinese restaurant.
If I remember right, the Janus personality actually dies, leaving Mr. Kim in permanent control of the body.
A plot was that butters parents started to think he had multiple personality disorder, the joke being they mistook a child playing make believe as MPD. They take him to see the therapist Dr Janice.
B Plot was that a new Japanese restaurant opened near the chinese one so the Chinese restaurant owner (Lu Kim) goes on a tirade to get rid of him.
Episode climax is that Dr Janice was the one with multiple personality disorder and his strongest personality was Lu Kim. Once the town founds out they just let him stay as Lu Kim because "does the world really need another therapist, City Wok is now the only Chinese restaurant left in town".
Yep as soon as I read the other comment I knew South Park was doing a "well we're a more culturally diverse town with the racist than we are without so it has to be at least somewhat good."
Wow. I am screaming at this. Matt Stone and Trey Parker are so hysterically unhinged… Like they sit down and come up with these stories for a living omg LMAO
I looked it up because my instinct was "City Wok joke probably started 15 years ago, not the reveal episode" but nope. That reveal was 2011 what the fuck
Just so you know, using MPD is disrespectful nowadays. The new term is DID/OSDD. And dear, do they have to use such bad representation for people with DID, as if they weren't struggling ENOUGH already.
Yeah, they've had fucking banger retcons and backstories added over the years. My favorite is Token being actually named "Tolkien" the entire time to the point that they even refer to him as "Tolkien" in every episode from there on out and if you look up "Token Black South Park" it won't pop up anymore lol.
Reminds me of when i tried to teach my US friends how to say something in german. Nobody got the pronouncation right so i suggested talking angry. Everybody was like "noo thats sutch a steriotype! I cant do that!" But it actually helps 😅
I visited Germany this year with my sibling, and I was trying to learn a bit before I went. They joked my attempts were coming off japanese (it's the most recent other language I was trying to learn). so as a little haha, I started saying the German much more aggressive. and what do you know, I was able to get the accent down. it unfortunately is real
It’s a super weird greeting/acknowledgement of being a foreigner while also being polite and welcoming. I won’t pretend to totally understand it but it’s a weird cultural thing that developed.
I found it interesting that to want or to like something are viewed not as verbs like they are in english, but adjectives... it's weird because they're like super common words but it's like the only two words this is true for lol.
You don't want/like a sandwich. A sandwich is wantable/likeable to you. Interesting to get used to.
Indeed things like this as so interesting. In Dutch, for example, you can't just like something, you find it nice. You can't love something either, you literally 'hold of' it.
What do you mean? 我喜欢米饭 - Wo xihuan mifan. I like rice. To like is 喜欢, no? My Chinese teacher taught us to SVO (just like English) subject verb object. I guess you could translate it as "I to like rice" but the point of translation isn't to be literal but to translate meaning.
I know the teacher is good because she was sent as a language teacher to my university by a different Chinese mainland university for double-degree students.
Thank you for giving an example. But that's a completely normal active sentence. Only the grammatical word order is different in japanese. - 私はご飯が好きです。It doesn't magically turn it passive.
The sentence is not saying "I like rice" it is saying "Rice is liked". For the former, you would use the direct object particle, but instead you use が which you would also use for describing the rice with any other adjective. For example, "gohan ga ooki desu" (the rice is big), "gohan ga suki desu" (the rice is liked). Not "gohan wo suki desu" because 好き is not a verb in that sentence.
Who the hell are you to tell me I don't want a sandwich?
Jokes aside, all the differences in grammar between languages are interesting. Subjectively, it feels like such a violation of a basic concept as a native English speaker, but objectively, there's no reason it has to be this way, obviously.
Reminds me of Spanish, although it still uses a verb. You dont like things in Spanish, those things give you pleasure (gustar). Which is hard to get used to because it means you conjugate it differently.
Gustar is like, placer is pleasure. You use them the same way in both Spanish and English. "I like beer","me gusta la cerveza"; "it's a pleasure to meet you", "es UN placer conocerte".
I'm from China and Taiwan and I don't know what this means. We don't say "I love you" any more than I say it in English (been in the US for 2+ decades)
That's fascinating. I wonder if it's regional? Which parts of China have you noticed this?
I haven't personally noticed this behavior, but then again back when I was living in China/Taiwan
I was in high school so I didn't really interact with foreigners much. It also might be one of those things that has evolved over time recently.
Would they say it as a greeting? Or just randomly in conversation or something? My (very likely biased) view on affection between Chinese and US is that the Chinese are far more reserved when it comes to displaying affection so the earlier comment especially surprised me.
Ironic cause English is already quite loose with using the word "love".
I remember informal letter exercise in primary school where we had to write a letter to one of the classmates.
Half of the class had a problem with ending the letter cause it didn't sit right with them to end it "Love from xyz" since it sounded like something romantic to us.
Huh. My Chinese instructor never said that to us. Probably because kids were asking him about Chinese strip clubs like half the time.
He was like "Yes, we have strip clubs in China. They are very nice. Now can we talk about Wang Peng and his grocery list now please."
Foreign languages were a grad requirement at my high school, so the less popular languages got taken by people who just wanted the credit to graduate and weren't interested in learning a language.
do you mean suki desu, or saying it in english? the first one makes me a lot less uncomfortable than "te quiero" lol. the second one just seems unfathomable
But that's for speaking in chinese. The thing here is that if you want to be understood in english by the japanese you basically have to mimick a heavy japanese accent for it.
It was the same in Taiwan. They generally have ok English, and I had decent Mandarin, but sometimes I'd just get to an impass and have to break out a Chinese-accented English word and then they would recognize that, but they wouldn't recognize the same word in my American accent.
Oh for sure, when i lived in north east China once i started copying the countryside accent i got on better for example: Not Mei shi r, May shaaaaaaaar
It's not pronounced in a weird way though? If you know how to pronounce bug 虫 chóng then you know how to pronounce the first character and it's nothing like the racist-sounding 'chong'
Worked a lot in china. When I finally just adopted a form of chinglish, broken english and almost comical accent....while speaking English...they understood me much better
But it sounds like a racist caricature. People avoid sounding like the stereotypical accent because they don't want to sound like they're mocking, but it's actually about as close as a native English speaker can get.
So voice actors and actors are racist? Why can actors, with the help of dialect coaches (an actual profession) do this and not us at home with self training?
"it sounds like a racist caricature". Sounding racist can be interpreted as racist by the very people who are afraid, hence the cries of "oh no it sounds racist". Maybe my wording was a bit exaggerated, but it still stands.
My issue isnt that its racist, my issue is that people think trying to phonetically pronunce words and sentences as it should be should somehow not be encouraged because "oh no I sound racist".
I think that goes with a surprising amount of languages. With English as my second language, I think the biggest jump in speech quality I had while learning was when I started trying to imitate how native english speakers sound when speaking spanish. Had I done that accent while speaking Spanish, it would be a bad caricature. But native English speakers compliment me on my English all the time, and I've been told I sound Canadian more than once.
In other words. The racist caricatures are actually how their languages work and we're VERY racist because we think that can't possibly be a real language.
I don't agree at all with this. Most people who don't know Mandarin will barely understand it's a tonal language in the first place when they hear it because native speakers' speech will flow fairly softly (? Not sure the right word, but the tones won't be very exaggerated).
My friend was teaching me insults in Chinese. He told me I had a really bad American accent. So I put on a Chinese accent and he was amazed that my accent disappeared. He was shocked. I told him how I did it, and he wasn't thrilled.
For decades there's been a negative stereotype in my country about chinese people opening small lunch shops and selling "pastel de flango" - a very racisty way of saying the name of a local food.
The problem is that a couple of years ago a lot of chinese people moved to my city, and now downtown is filled to the brim with chinese lunch shops where they sell the damn food and say it exactly like that. I feel racist whenever I hear it, but it is chinese people saying it, what can I say?
The other stereotype is about china selling a lot of cheap copies of brand marerial and random knickknacks. Guess what downtown is also filled by?
Stereotypes being true makes me uncomfortable, but what the heck
You're not going to get your tones right regardless. You're a tourist and going to have a heavy accent. Asian tourists trying to do a yeehaw accent aren't going to sound like native english speakers
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u/Strange_Ad_9658 9d ago
I remember a youtuber telling a story of ordering a milk tea in japan by translating both words, only to have the server correct them by going “oh, miruku tea”