Comment on Is there a culture/country that doesn't have sarcasm in its language?

Yaky@slrpnk.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

• cattywampas@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  This made me think, and I realized that non-tonal languages actually do have a tonal aspect to them.

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  • Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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.

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  • ZiggyTheZygote@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    True, otherwise it would be monotone, though some people speak in a monotone voice that can put you to sleep.

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    • DKKHGGGj@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Me as a native finnish speaker making every english speaker in a meeting unsure of my meanig

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      • ZiggyTheZygote@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Can you explain please?

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  • lemming@anarchist.nexus ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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.

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    • Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Wow. Off to searching for articles in Nature! Hello rabbit hole…

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  • lol_idk@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Huh

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• DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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.

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  • ZiggyTheZygote@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    That’s funny! Hopefully the sarcasm isn’t causing psychological damage.

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• ZiggyTheZygote@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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.

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  • lividweasel@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    They just carry around a card that has “/s” written on it and flash it as necessary

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  • lemming@anarchist.nexus ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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.

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    • SlurpingPus@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      As someone who will live and die by snark in my online comments, I agree. However, annoyingly, I’ve had a noticeably higher proportion of replies on Lemmy from people who don’t know how sarcasm works, than on Reddit.

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      • lemming@anarchist.nexus ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Sounds like Reddit is a better fit for you then.

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  • bilb@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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.

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    • ZiggyTheZygote@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Someone commented that his sarcasm was lost with, mostly, religious folks in Oklahoma, and I realized that yes it happened to me too plenty of times (but not in Oklahoma). So yeah, even in English it can be elusive to some people.

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    • Tuuktuuk@nord.pub ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      Yeah.

      Impossible conveying a message of sarcasm if people cannot hear my voice.
      That’s why there’s no sarcasm in the Internet.

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  • GreenBeard@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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.

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• HatchetHaro@pawb.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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.

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• Vesiiiii@nord.pub ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  true! and makes Sense.

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