There has to be. There’s loads of people on the internet that never recognize it even when it’s incredibly obvious or has an /s.
Is there a culture/country that doesn't have sarcasm in its language?
Submitted 1 day ago by ZiggyTheZygote@lemmy.ca to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
Comments
Kolanaki@pawb.social 6 hours ago
ZiggyTheZygote@lemmy.ca 5 hours ago
Goddamnit you’re right, another fact that i missed, besides being misunderstood IRL with English speakers too. They’re everywhere!
Yaky@slrpnk.net 1 day ago
(Not first-hand knowledge) I read somewhere that tonal languages such as Chinese make it difficult to express sarcasm the same way Indo-European languages do, with accent and inflection.
HatchetHaro@pawb.social 6 hours ago
First-hand knowledge (I’m Cantonese), we have sarcasm.
I find it hard to believe that sarcasm can’t exist in some languages, honestly; just say something in an exaggerated tone while you mean the opposite.
DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 15 hours ago
Not true.
First hand knowledge, I’m Chinese American. My mom is from Taishan and I grew up in Guangzhou for the first 8 years before immigrating to the US. My mom uses scarcasm a lot. We speak Cantonese at home.
Example:
“我想去睇橋” (“I wanna go see the bridge”; a euphemism for I want to go to the nearest bridge and jump off to kms, and my mom knows the meaning of this btw)
Mom: “喂，使唔使載埋你去啊？” (“Hey, do you want us to drive you there?”; said in a very unusally happy and uplifting tone, as if she’d be glad to see me die (I mean… not really, I don’t think she really wants to see me die, I hope not, she’s just playing mindgames to “stop me from ‘attention seeking’”, she doesn’t understand what depression is.)
Or sometimes I get mad and refused to eat and mom was like: “哇，係唔係想練神仙啊？亦好呀，慳返啲食嘅。” (“Wow, are you trying to become an immortal being? That’s great, we can save some food”; again, with that weird “fake happy” voice.
And I instictively knew these were sarcasm.
ZiggyTheZygote@lemmy.ca 5 hours ago
That’s funny! Hopefully the sarcasm isn’t causing psychological damage.
cattywampas@lemmy.world 1 day ago
This made me think, and I realized that non-tonal languages actually do have a tonal aspect to them.
Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe 1 day ago
Non-tonal simply means the denotation isn’t carried by tone.
John McWhorter has a few courses in The Great Courses catalog about language - its pretty fascinating stuff. He covers things like tonal languages, and how even for a linguist like himself, they’re tough to learn.
ZiggyTheZygote@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
True, otherwise it would be monotone, though some people speak in a monotone voice that can put you to sleep.
lemming@anarchist.nexus 1 day ago
They absolutely do. Even within the same language, regional accents have different prosodies.
I recall reading a Nature article about how neonatal babies have different prosodies based on their parents spoken language that they pick up prenatally! How nuts is that!? Brains are cool.lol_idk@piefed.social 1 day ago
Huh
ZiggyTheZygote@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
I just did a quick research on tonal languages, it’s quite tricky for a beginner to grasp these subtle expressions. Imagine a life without sarcasm. Brutal. I wonder if they have their own way of conveying it.
bilb@lemmy.ml 6 hours ago
Even in English, sarcasm can be delivered very dryly in a way that would be undetectable without knowing context. It doesn’t need to be spoken with exaggerated tones.
lividweasel@lemmy.world 1 day ago
They just carry around a card that has “/s” written on it and flash it as necessary
lemming@anarchist.nexus 1 day ago
Sarcasm can be conveyed non-verbally. Through facial expressions, gestures or situational incongruity for example. The core concept is not bound to specific languages, I’d say.
GreenBeard@lemmy.ca 16 hours ago
Oh, they do. Depending on the context, there’s a whole host of ways to imply sarcasm without depending on intonation. Body language, context, double entendre, formality shifts, etc.
Vesiiiii@nord.pub 1 day ago
true! and makes Sense.
Lumidaub@feddit.org 1 day ago
It’s sometimes said that Japanese people don’t know and don’t understand sarcasm but really they just have different ways to make you feel stupid that don’t (necessarily) register as sarcasm to Westerners, like being overly polite.
zlatiah@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I guess Japanese really doesn’t have in-your-face sarcasm now that I think about it…
Now that you mentioned it, Japanese also has a rather interesting quirk of not having what most people would consider as “swear words”. Read it somewhere that Japanese does have swear words, but they tend to be quite tame, and the words themselves aren’t “taboo” (as compared to just about any swear word in English)
Lumidaub@feddit.org 1 day ago
Yep, certain words for example really just mean “you” if taken very literally but have taken on rude undertones (temee, kisama) to convey what Western languages would use taboo words for.
ZiggyTheZygote@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
I didn’t know that they used politeness that way. Interesting. Crazy enough I have not yet interacted with a Japanese person in my life.
TomMasz@piefed.social 1 day ago
Like the Southern expression “Bless your heart.”
goober@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
I lived in Oklahoma for 3 years and it took me ages to find a group of friends who understood sarcasm. I mean, even the drag queen server at my regular bar seemed baffled by sarcasm.
goober@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
I think it was mostly the very religious people who had trouble and there are a LOT of very religious people in Oklahoma.
ZiggyTheZygote@lemmy.ca 5 hours ago
You know what, you’re right about that. There are plenty of times my sarcasm wasn’t caught by north Americans. That slipped my mind. Interesting 🤔.
HubertManne@piefed.social 1 day ago
Oh SURE. That makes so much sense that a culture would lack “sarcasm”. I can TOTALLY see that being a thing.
samus12345@sh.itjust.works 21 hours ago
ZiggyTheZygote@lemmy.ca 23 hours ago
Hehehe
BillyClark@piefed.social 1 day ago
I’ve done a little bit of language studying and one thing I heard about repeatedly is that people tend to mistakenly believe in their own exceptionalism.
Like, their own native language has idioms, and they just assumed that other languages didn’t have idioms.
But we are all humans and languages are all going to exist in support of human communication. Therefore, you should assume that all languages have all major features of expression, including idioms and sarcasm.
Similarly, cultures are made from humans and to facilitate human interaction, so you should expect that things like sarcasm will exist in every culture.
bilb@lemmy.ml 6 hours ago
Reminds me of a funny memory from the far distant past when a friend of mine, in a middle school Spanish class, expressed surprise that Spanish speakers use rhymes.
ZiggyTheZygote@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
So sarcasm would exist but not the way we understand it, does it mean that sarcasm is an intrinsic part of human nature?
dariusj18@lemmy.world 1 day ago
A basic building block to humor is a subversion of expectations. Sarcasm is just stating things as the opposite of the intended meaning. Sarcasm is, in essence, the base level that most humor is built upon, and because of that is looked down on because it is “easy mode.”
Embargo@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
Nooooo, not at allll. /s
Toes@ani.social 21 hours ago
There is a constructed language that I suspect is free from sarcasm. (At least if it’s used formally)
Lojban, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lojban
unknown@piefed.social 7 hours ago
It’d be really hard to do sarcasm in Toki Pona too as there are so few words that it just wouldn’t register unless there was a very clear subtextual understanding of intent between the people conversing.
ZiggyTheZygote@lemmy.ca 18 hours ago
Wow this is interesting, I never heard of this. I’m going to have to spend some time learning about it.
Prime@lemmy.sdf.org 1 day ago
In Vietnam sarcasm is limited. Particularly in the countryside.
ComradeMiao@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Definitely China and maybe Japan. In American culture I feel sarcasm is fun banter but coming to China and in Chinese it just makes one look like a jerk. I’m less proficient in Japanese so I cannot fully tell how my sarcasm was taken but I’m assuming a similar reception.
Look at the translations for sarcasm: 讽刺，反话.
Looking up the definition of sarcasm in Japanese I have no idea what this kanji is supposed to mean lmao 皮肉
bilb@lemmy.ml 6 hours ago
Sarcasm can be used to be inclusive to someone (I’m saying this thing we both know to be untrue, imagine thinking otherwise!) or derisive (I’m saying this stupid thing you’d probably think is true because you’re an idiot and I want to make sure you know it.) I know friendly people who do the former a lot and nasty people who exclusively do the latter. I wonder if the former is more difficult to achieve among a foreign culture with a second language.
samus12345@sh.itjust.works 21 hours ago
Japan definitely has sarcasm, but it tends to be extra hidden behind politeness.
Codpiece@feddit.uk 1 day ago
American.
Aeao@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I heard a story from Japan where an American business man was sarcastic and the meeting got quiet. He was like “it’s a joke because-“
“We got it. We just thought it was inappropriate “