Why are there so many misunderstandings in anime? Is this a common problem in Japanese society?

Why are there so many misunderstandings in anime? Is this a common problem in Japanese society?

They have like 40 phonemes so every word has like 2-3 meanings

Those bentos are way too small.

they are indirect as fuck about everything

...

It's the easiest way to write conflict into romance or SoL.

>Why are there so many misunderstandings in anime? Is this a common problem in Japanese society?

when your language has no direct word who's lone meaning is "no" then you know you have a language which takes obfuscation, implication and indirect confrontation to the limits of possibilities.

their language is insanely context based, and contains types of "voice" which completely changes the meanings of the words. So yes, it's possible to have a lot of misunderstandings in japanese since no one says anything halfway as directly as is typically translated.

that said often these misunderstandings are something only a 8yo or 30yo socially maladjusted virgin neet would care about

Now that you mention it, there's a lot of weird shit in that frame. Look at Nao's fork.

Cute mannerisms to make a character seem more believable.

Yeah, when your language contains a lot of words just to confuse the shit out of you, it mostly results into misunderstandings.

J.C Staff

Every string of "words" they say can mean 8 different things. Context matters far too much.

Kuusi palaa

Kylläpä nauratti

Hihihii
Minua hihittää

Look at Nao's left hand, she has 6 fingers.

Am I being trolled, or are you actually unable to count?

Did you look? Sorry, I was kidding.

Reee

Being direct in Japanese is considered rude, hence the misunderstandings.

You act as if misunderstandings aren't a massive part of comedy writing, even in English.

Doesn't really work when it doesn't translate to none-native speakers the same way.

That's the nature of the Japanese language, friendo. You're just gonna have to learn to deal with it, or learn Japanese yourself.

What's wrong with Makoto's right hand pinky? Did she slam it in the doorway as a kid?

She might be a witch. Throw her in the water to confirm it.

>Tfw season 2 never ever

Kill yourself.

People complaining about misunderstandings are same as retards complaining about fanservice in anime.

As School Rumble, as best comedy anime of all times shows - Misunderstandings are great.

O-okay...

What did he mean by this?

...

Just look at the grammar.
Normal people : I love you (S-V-O)
Japanese people : I you love (S-O-V)
What if the sentence ends up at "you", then what does he really try to say? he loves her? he hates her? or he wants to fuck her?

>complaining about a trope in a medium that is comprised of nothing but tropes

Dat Sony

Even native finns can't remember all of that, much less ever use them.

Should just drop the dead language and pick some useful one, like Russian for example.

Ryssät vittuun täältä

why so angry? go take your meds kiddo

like others said, being too direct is considered rather rude, and the way their language works naturally lends itself to misunderstandings, given how context-sensitive they are - being able to "read the air" (instead of always having things literally spelled out for you) and being attuned to the overall group-harmony (instead of causing trouble for others by deviation) is a prized virtue.

Also in some instances of the more exaggerated misunderstanding-jokes, the japanese are actually rather poking fun at themselves and their own cultural hang-ups, ie it can become a source of amusement for the audience because it's one of those things that everyone has also experienced sometimes themselves. It's also an easy (therefore cheap and lazy) way to inject some drama into a situation, without having any party actually doing something bad (after all a harmless misunderstanding needs two people to work, and nobody really is at "fault")

It's what makes Handa-kun a great show.

Cobaka

paska vitsi, ei noit käytä kukaan

a.k.a. 80% of japan's population

The fact is, most Finnish do know a second language.

Hence, "E-Em Cee-kun... I.. I.."

>when your language has no direct word who's lone meaning is "no"
Then what does iie/iia mean?

Could be anything
あ～あ～あたしはMCくんが共焦点レーザ走査型顕微鏡する

Saying Japanese is hard because it's too "context based" is a bit of exaggeration, desu. Context is a problem of every language and you can't do a proper translation without proper context from any language to any language.

I'd say Russian is much much more complicated language, for example, замок and замок are two completely different words.

>共焦点レーザ走査型顕微鏡
>confocal laser scanning biological microscope


What

It's a chuuni harem sort of thing

Pretty sure they know two of them.

Because having good writing in a show is hard. It's easier to have dumb misunderstandings drive conflict rather than something substantive driving conflict.

Swedish doesn't count anymore.

no, but among autists

Context

yeah now it's arabic

NANO

Why are there actual weeaboos in here justifying this by acting like Japanese is some deep and complex language that not even the Japanese people can understand?

Misunderstandings are an easy way to make drama, that's all it is.

This is pretty much it. It's an easy way to create conflict, especially if you don't want anyone to actually do anything bad.

>when your language has no direct word who's lone meaning is "no" then you know you have a language which takes obfuscation, implication and indirect confrontation to the limits of possibilities.

not only is this false but it also espouses a strong version of sapir-whorfism which is more or less pure quackery

>misunderstandings
It is in every fucking dramas ever so plot can moves forward. Stop asking.

it means "no"

Latin and Ancient Greek did not have words for "yes". Does this make them languages spoken by societies which are incapable of internalizing the idea of affirming something? And if so, how did all the languages that have evolved from or been influenced by them acquire words that specifically mean "yes"?

Suomi mainittu jne

Not really true.. there are totally clear ways to say both yes and know... not to mention japanese people don't even think about that the way we don't think about "tear" or "tear" when use they may seem confusing to a foreigner but not when you have been using those inflections your whole life. I would say these misunderstanding are just a common form of japanese humor where the situation just gets worse and worse but then everyone figures it out and it's all good again. It's may also be because japanese people are polite and often lt someone do soemthing even if they may personally object and whenever they start may be too shy to fully interject.

Nice false implied dichotomy using loaded questions fag, guess it's 2deep4u that different languages have different nuances and that this effects culture.

it's a common problem in society in general, mate.

>Dropping the language of the heirs to the Holy Roman Empire
Please.

>You act as if misunderstandings aren't a massive part of comedy writing, even in English.
Bad writing yes.

For all this talk of "vernacular language affecting culture" I've never actually heard someone give me a concrete example of this which clearly demonstrates that the way we speak influences the way we view the world
>we don't think about "tear" or "tear"
Because they're pronounced differently, an actual example of true polysemy would be the word "back", which can be used as a noun, verb, adjective or adverb with separate meanings for each category.

...

How do ESLs deal with the word "Set"? It has like 20 different meanings.

>She might be a witch. Throw her in the water to confirm it.
That would be messy, you could just see if she weighs as much as a duck.

>misunderstandings thread
>finfags invade and derail it

"Like" is even worse.

Too shay.

>everything I don't like is bad writing
Okay then. Always funny seeing people posturing for more realistic characters in anime and then bitching about when the realistic awkwardness of day-to-day life and basic human interaction crop up as bad writing (in an anime about day-to-day life no less). But then again I don't expect much from college kids with a bad case of dunning kruger who take their "I'm 20 and my taste is fucking superior" /lit/ starter pack to Sup Forums and then try to act like they know what they're talking about.

You're welcome, I humored you at least, more than you deserve for that thoughtless shitpost of yours. Feel honored to have been bested by your betters, and learn from it. Or stay stupid as you are now, either way.

Sorry, horrible example but you understand what I mean. I'm just comparing it to reading an English word and understanding it's context. If you speak two different languages it becomes obviosuly apparent that your brain takes on a different persona of thinking. just try it. Also the vocabulary itself just has slightly different meaning and the way the words are used trains your brain to develop such. In my opinion it is less so with Latin languages and ones very similar to english. It just has to do with you forming new neural connections and learning a new way to think.

That's just brushing up on your vocabulary. The real ESL-killers are the proper orders of adjectives and adverbs in noun/verb phrases and syntax in general - good luck teaching someone from some SEA or Latino shithole how to properly reduce subordinate clauses (i.e. removing the word 'that') or the nuances of properly placing 'really' in a sentence.

But that's just a sentiment, you can't build a real science on gut feeling. Linguistic relativism is inherently neither provable for falsifiable so any arguments about it inevitably devolve into dumb debates about Chomsky, Everett and Piraha or retreading ground covered by 19th century philosophers.

I sure love talking about anime.

You eventually adapt. At worst I had to ask what "set upon" meant and the answer was "It means beating someone up"

>there will never be an anime about cute linguists doing cute things

There was a cunning lingquist anime. It's literally in the ED.

...

Because easily avoided misunderstandings are a bad writer's lazy way of creating drama. Unless it's done for humor, the easier it is to avoid, the worse the writing gets.

>so plot can moves forward
I think you mean "so talentless writers can drag out the plot and not have to progress it."

It's not difficult.

All japanese are fucking retard

>girl walks in on guy changing.
>girl and boy get all embarrassed.


>guy walks in on girl.
>punches him in the face.


God damn it Japan.

only in a certain context

Not that hard, senpai

>girl walks in on guy changing
>girl STILL punches him in the face

I will never understand this.

Misunderstandings are the easiest way to bring character conflict into a show when you don't want to introduce real flaws to people

The culture isn't as direct as the west. There's a lot of expectation to read between the lines, and people probably misinterpret things more often because of that. Someone who's unable to read the atmosphere is called KY ("kuuki yomenai," or "can't read the atmosphere").

It's a little annoying, but honestly, this sort of thing happens everywhere. A lot of conflicts are just a result of a lack of understanding and assumptions that people make about others or whatever the situation is. Plenty of Ameriburgers get upset over stupid shit because they make assumptions about someone's character or motives.

Moonspeak has very low information content (the lowest of all major languages, I think) so they literally don't convey as much info as we do when talking.

>Russian
>useful
Have you seen their economy lately? And they're losing more than 200k people every year due to brain drain, so the world has plenty of Russian speakers anyway.

>Then what does iie/iia mean?
several things from an expression of surprise to no, to not at this time, to maybe later. depends on the tone of voice. as i said, Japanese has no word with a SINGLE meaning "no" like english does. it depends how it's said for it to mean no.

Which is why they borrow english words a lot?

>"Ayy gurl, want sum fugg?"
>"Maybe later"
>"How about now?"
>*Expression of surprise*
>"Bite the pillow, I'm going in dry"
>[Surprise intensifies]

In any given spoken sentence, they'll omit 50-90% of the words you'd need formally to save space, relying on context to fill in the blanks.