6
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 “
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.
I think it was mostly the very religious people who had trouble and there are a LOT of very religious people in Oklahoma.
Edit: I stand corrected, see replies
~~(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.~~
(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.
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.
This made me think, and I realized that non-tonal languages actually do have a tonal aspect to them.
True, otherwise it would be monotone, though some people speak in a monotone voice that can put you to sleep.
Me as a native finnish speaker making every english speaker in a meeting unsure of my meanig
Can you explain please?
Finnish people are stereotyped to sound monotone, enunciate clearly, speak directly, and tersely. This makes them seem unfriendly.
And then they expect you to stay 3 m away from them at all times, which intensifies their seeming unfriendliness.
At least these are the memes.
Knew there was a reason I liked Finns...
When we go to a hotel, we prefer the Finnish level of service: make everything work and otherwise leave us alone.
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.
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)
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.
Oh suuuure!
this post was submitted on 12 Feb 2026
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