• OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
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    3 days ago

    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.

  • DagwoodIII@piefed.social
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    3 days ago

    I live in New York City.

    We have a lot Mexican restaurants run by Chinese people.

    A few pizza parlors run by Mexicans.

    • jaybone@lemmy.zip
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      3 days ago

      In the Bay Area we have lots of pizza places run by Indian people.

      Some of them will offer Indian style toppings, like paneer, which is actually pretty good.

      • DagwoodIII@piefed.social
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        2 days ago

        Slightly off topic.

        https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32544343

        tl, dr = Hollywood star had a refugee do her nails. Realized that there were a lot of similar ladies who needed a way to make money.

        I’m guessing that there was someone who showed one Indian how to open a pizza place and they inspired/aided others.

      • Cort@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        Yeah them too. The fondue restaurants are not run by the Swiss, but the Italians.

        • Logi@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          Which would make sense if those Italians were from the Aosta Valley, since food and other culture doesn’t stop hard at the border. But I’m betting they’re not.

            • Logi@lemmy.world
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              2 days ago

              As someone who moved downhill from there, yes, I’d agree. But things weren’t always like this, and when Americans say “Italian”, they really mean “someone whose great grand parents may have been Italian. At least some of them.”

  • MithranArkanere@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    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.

  • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    3 days ago

    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.

    • tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip
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      2 days ago

      Don’t touch-y my moustache

      Also “Eat a duck I must,” which at least carries a similar thematic meaning of eating as the original phrase.

      In your story are you sure you didn’t meet Rawhide Kobayashi?

      • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        2 days ago

        Oh my god, ‘Eat a duck I must’, I’m using mouthwash atm and that almost made me do a spit take, that’s amazing lol!

        Unfortunately I cannot see the image, ita not loading/displaying right for me, and I’ve also not heard of Rawhide Kobayashi.

          • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            2 days ago

            Ah that works!

            Yes a… reverse weeaboo, hahah!

            I mean the guy I met had different facial hair, was maybe 10 to 20 ish years older than this person, but … maybe?

            Maybe there are more ‘Ameriboos’ than we realize.

            EDIT:

            I should probably clarify that the guy I met in the bar, and the guy I met on the hill were totally different people.

            Don’t know much about hill-sama, but bar-kun was… well lets just say most of our conversation was about karate, he claimed he was a fifth dan black belt… i am a first dan black belt, a novice in comparison… and he demonstrated his credentials rather convincingly.

            He also said was exiled/former yakuza. Had a busted knuckle, told me that he’d fucked something up, and that his boss, instead of taking the finger, hit him with the blunt side of the… presumably a wakizashi… and then basically exiled him from Japan.

            My nickname for him was ‘yokai’, which he found very amusing.

            Seattle is wild place if you just walk around everywhere.

      • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        2 days ago

        … 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?

      • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        2 days ago

        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.

  • BCsven@lemmy.ca
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    3 days ago

    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”

    • NannerBanner@literature.cafe
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      2 days ago

      It was weird learning how many of the random words I had in my vocabulary were actual foreign words, not even loan words but just had been used by neighbors who had likely had immigrant parents or were immigrants themselves. Ciao, sayonara, adios, ohayo (which I seriously thought was just, “Oh! Hi! Oh!” as if it was an exaggerated ahoy)…

      • InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        ohayo (which I seriously thought was just, “Oh! Hi! Oh!” as if it was an exaggerated ahoy)…

        Thats hella Ohio bruhhh

    • jeffep@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      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.