I am about N4-N3 level, can write 2-300 kanji, and recognize about 500.
I (Highschool student, American, living in Japan) jokingly called my friend 詰まらない人 after they responded to the question “貴方に何が最も重要な物ですか?” With “寝る.” They looked slightly shocked, their cheeks reddened a bit, and they pulled out their keitai. After a short google translate kerfaful, I basically understood that I had called them a curse word.
Has anyone come across this before? How bad is it? Does it have any other nuance besides “you’re boring”? How expensive should the apology flowers be, and should I wait for the yen to drop again before buying them?
Thanks!
Edit: Due to multiple comments, figured I should probably add, when I say their cheeks reddened, I didn’t mean they were upset, they were embarrassed, and were laughing about my mistake shortly after. (This happened walking home from school, and we kept talking uneventfully until we got to the train station.)
Also, y’all expect me to know how to spell cerfühfull, a word basically only used in a spoken context? Have lower standards my friends. (I jest, I’m actually glad to have learned I’ve been spelling it wrong.)
26 comments
つまらない means boring, uninteresting, trivial, worthless so you’ve insulted them lol
Isn’t calling someone boring pretty rude in itself ? Can’t find anything about it being a particular swear word
Among the honorable Yamato race, 睡眠大御神 ranks as their highest of deities and they will never forgive a blasphemy against her name.
*** えええ?! バッド評価、こんなに?! 睡眠大御神さま、助けて! ***
There’s nothing anyone here can tell you that this person hasn’t already. Insults are not jokes for everyone, and that may be cultural or it may be personal, but this person was very clear either way, maybe both.
You might meet someone else who jokes with insults, but you’re generally best off sticking to the positive. That goes for America too.
The Japanese term for bombing a joke is called American joke for a reason.
Sarcastic jokes always fail unless you’re very high level and can read the situation, the nuance and the other person well enough to understand what’s appropriate. You fucked up and should learn from it. Also people cut ties hard here when things are a bit off so don’t expect everything to be water under the bridge either. At your level it’s probably good to be polite, respectful and friendly to the point of being paranoid of insulting people around you.
Don’t hate the player, hate the game.
You need to spend more time listening to Japanese people talking, and seeing how they write things, and less time learning how to write Anata in Kanji, just as an aside.
While there are technically no curse words in Japanese, there are the same number of ways to end friendships in a sentence in Japanese, that there are in every language.
In general, someone willing to put up with the assault on their ears that a beginner’s Japanese is, should not be just plain insulted to see if they can put up with that too.
kerfuffle*
Damn dude, these comments are harsh on you for no reason. Probably just sarcasm not getting across, as is the usual culprit. I find people respond more with “positive” hyperbole than the typical western deprecating/fatalistic sarcasm. 価値観に間違いないよね for example.
It’s not a curse, per se, as far as I know. But it is pretty rude to call someone that. I’d apologize while putting myself down (“I was too stupid to realize it was an insult”). That may sound extreme from an American perspective, but unless one understands a culture perfect it’s better to lean towards being polite.
First time I’ve seem someone actually spell out the kanji in あなた lol
>kerfaful
Well that’s one way to write that.
つまらない人 can have the same impact as “a waste of space/oxygen,” so definitely don’t use it to describe someone you actually want to get along with.
Just as a side note, being able to read kanji is nice, but some words are better to use the hiragana form. つまらない for example is not really written in it’s kanji form in this context. 詰まらない should be used for the negative of 詰まる.
You asked a question in a very serious fashion, that’s basically an interview type question… Then called him boring upon answering it so he’s taking that seriously too and it’s just like ???
If it was a friend and you wanted to execute that kinda joke you might wanna leave out the word 人 cause it makes it too personal.
(Assuming you didn’t start off with that over formal interview style speech) you could follow up with つまんなっ / つまんねー / つまらない . If done properly and you have a good and friendly relationship already it could be taken well.
Tone of voice matters too. You could put on a jokey voice and get away with slightly more rudeness lol
Humour in a foreign language is pretty hard tbh, be careful I guess.
Honestly, even literally translating the entire context of this, it’d be pretty offensive to call someone boring in English as well. And this is coming from someone who actively thinks that about most people and hates engaging in small talk.
You said you two commonly poke fun at each other in one of your other replies which can obviously change things so its ultimately up to your discretion, but yeah, personally, I still wouldn’t say that to a lot of people I’ve already established a pal-ing around rapport with
Sorry, but contrary to what most people are saying here, calling your friend boring is not offensive in English. It would almost always be seen as playful.
Learn your lesson, only be funny and outgoing with other foreigns. With Japanese be as formal as you can, they are very delicate creatures and not use to fun, irony, friendly insults, and so on…
You have to understand that even though つまらない most closely corresponds to ‘boring’ in English, that doesn’t mean the meaning, nuance and cultural aspect maps 1:1 between them. Trying to pull off sarcastic humor in a foreign language without really understanding the cultural nuances, or really closely knowing this friend, is going to always be pretty dangerous. Also, your question to the friend is super formal and textbook-y, so going from that to “you’re boring!” kind of creates a funny contrast.
All that said, everyone makes hilarious and embarrassing mistakes in foreign languages. I know I have several times. You’ll learn from it and it’ll be funny to you in a while.
Huh. I don’t have any advice, only that you’ve made me realize something. I had two semi-high level Japanese high school students I was teaching English to a few years ago. One was an overachiever with tons of hobbies and extra curricular activities and whose English was definitely approaching fluent. The other was Very Good by Japanese high school student levels, and if she hadn’t had the other girl in the class it wouldn’t have been as obvious, but she just didn’t have a personality (or she refused to share it). She had no hobbies she’d divulge, no subjects she liked, no movies she enjoyed, no sports, no music group, etc. Getting her to answer questions was like pulling teeth. It wasn’t that she couldn’t answer (like many of my students) or that she was being a brat (like many of my students). She just seemed to have no interesting aspects of her life. No future goals. Compared to the other girl she was super boring, and after another frustrating class of trying to pry information out of her and get her to speak, one day I said as much. (I can’t remember if I said “you’re boring” or “tsumaranai”, but probably the former since I almost never spoke Japanese with my students.)
Still, a few days later I had to have a meeting with the head teacher and the student apologize. I thought she was being way over the top and basically didn’t understand what was happening or why she was so offended… but this post makes me think that she took it to mean the same way I did. I agree that “boring” is insulting, but she was *way* offended. I *didn’t* mean “you’re a waste of space/oxygen” or “you should kill yourself because you’re useless.” Just more like you probably meant, a sort of playful, sort of ribbing “god you’re so boring, *do something* so we can talk!” way. I’m not saying it wasn’t offensive, but it was a borderline death threat like she seemed to take it.
So anyway, obviously that word (in Japanese or English) definitely has a much stronger connotation in Japanese than it does in English. (Which makes sense; a lot of words in Japanese are way more offensive in Japanese than they are in English. “No” for example lol)
Is the kanji usage forあなたcommon? Not exactly relevant but I noticed it used here.
I’m not a native speaker, but I’ve been in Japan for close to 7 years now. I would say “詰まらないな！” if my friend said something like that, but I wouldn’t say 詰まらない人, it’s kind of alienating a person and like saying that person is completely uninteresting I think. I would probably say 話の詰まらない人 (which is what 詰まらないな implies) but not 詰まらない人 at least with that person listening lol
My friend who did a Japan high school exchange year the same time as me did a big one.
Surrounded by his new classmates, he was “being questioned” on all the things you get asked about as a foreigner in Japan (more than 20 years ago, mind you).
So when getting the question of what Japanese stuff he liked to eat, he wanted to say あんこ, as in the red bean stuff in their cookies.
Instead, he said he really loved eating マンコ…
Interactions in Japan are very formulaic and boring, you know. Passing judgment on other people is considered taboo.
Omg I thought a keitai was a knife. Felt relieved when I looked up the actual meaning.
Kruhfawfel.
I think maybe 寝る can mean to have sexy time in some contexts.
Also, watch out for the 抱く だく, because ‘hugging a woman’ is an euphemism for sex as well.