Did anyone else notice the example sentences in A dictionary of basic / intermediate / advanced Japanese grammar sometimes being incredibly dark?

4 comments

1. In my kanji study app I once got the sentence

   人間の肉を食べる。

   I was a little concerned.

2. I mean… this is the country that has a successful text on how to learn English (successful as in it sells) by using only sentences including shit.

3. It does seem to be a bit of a thing. There’s a well-known dictionary 神明解国語辞典 (shin meikai) which is kind of infamous for its gallows humour. Like the definition for Zoo (動物園) translates more or less as “A place where enslaved animals are separated from nature and put on public display as moving specimens.” There was a blog that featured these but I can’t remember where to find it now.

   Or another favourite from a J-E dictionary for the definition of 様：

   彼は眠ってる様だったか本当は死んでいた

   “It looked like he was sleeping, but he was actually dead.”

4. Man, back in the day Eijiro (the alc dictionary) had some of the BEST example sentences/convos! I used it all the time back in one of my old translation jobs, and came across the most ridiculous stuff on there, I started taking screenshots to memorialize some of the best ones hahaha.

   https://imgur.com/a/kwBfCtE

   It’s gotten so much more boring lately…