(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.
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.
I wouldn’t say so. Finns might feel like the little brother and feel unease about that. In practice there are lots of personal and commersial ties. Many have family in Sweden, me included.
We don’t expect Sweden to send troops if Russia tries to invade, planes and ships, maybe the odd submarine but no troops. At least that seems to be the sentiment
They absolutely do. Even within the same language, regional accents can have very different prosodies.
I recall reading a Nature article iirc about how neonatal cry melody can reflect prenatal exposure to parental language! How nuts is that!? Brains are cool.
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.
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.
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.
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.
As someone who will live and die by snark in my online comments, I confirm. 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.
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.
(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 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.
That’s funny! Hopefully the sarcasm isn’t causing psychological damage.
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.
This made me think, and I realized that non-tonal languages actually do have a tonal aspect to them.
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.
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.
Sounds pretty similar to US stereotypes towards Eastern Europeans, who are “always grumpy” and “rude”.
How Eastern Europeans see USians:
😁°º︎○︎( please help )
As others explained, finnish is pretty flat and that carries to the other languages I speak. To english mostly, I refuse to speak swedish
From what I’ve learned from memes is that there is “enmity” between Swedes and Finns, am I correct?
I wouldn’t say so. Finns might feel like the little brother and feel unease about that. In practice there are lots of personal and commersial ties. Many have family in Sweden, me included.
We don’t expect Sweden to send troops if Russia tries to invade, planes and ships, maybe the odd submarine but no troops. At least that seems to be the sentiment
It’s a complicated relationship, I can relate with the relationship between US people and Canadians.
They absolutely do. Even within the same language, regional accents can have very different prosodies.
I recall reading a Nature article iirc about how neonatal cry melody can reflect prenatal exposure to parental language! How nuts is that!? Brains are cool.
Wow. Off to searching for articles in Nature! Hello rabbit hole…
Huh
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.
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.
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.
They just carry around a card that has “/s” written on it and flash it as necessary
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.
As someone who will live and die by snark in my online comments, I confirm. 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.
Sounds like Reddit is a better fit for you then.
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.
true! and makes Sense.