前書き・Preface:
I don’t normally want to post things related to content I’m watching, but I ran across something that I personally found so fascinating from a language perspective that I felt the need to share it.
To give some context, I was watch a lot of Vtuber content and on YouTube’s Live Streaming service you have the ability to send messages with a donation called a “Super Chat”. The Super Chat can denote where the country of origin is by labeling the currency donated, and it colors based on the amount donated with red being the highest. Often times the streamer will read out the Super Chats as a courtesy and fun part of the streaming experience.
The donator in question had donated with a message and was from Taiwan (台湾) and wrote a message that at first blush appeared to be Chinese (中国語). However after a closer inspection it became clear it was a message written entirely with kanji used in Japanese and perfectly comprehensible reading it as Japanese.
I don’t have the best internal kanji database, but it just so happened that the message happened to fit mostly within my vocabulary and kanji knowledge space and the word boundaries, hidden particles, and familiar grammatical patterns really sprang forth when I actually looked at it. I thought this was a super clever application of language and also very amusing of usage of commonalities between languages to create something original. Knowing the backstory helps a lot in figuring out some of the written text.
Further context:
1) The streamer is affectionately called お嬢 (some people probably know or watch her) and one of her catchphrases is 「カワ余！」, a play off of 可愛い (かわいい).
2) It uses some 当て字 to make up for lack of hiragana for sounds (had to look up a number of kanji to figure this out).
3) It does use Chinese phrase, “wo ai ni” but using all kanji used in Japanese.
4) There’s private members-only streams for streamers
5) 助かる is used a lot in online culture with the meaning of being grateful
エセ中国語の文章：
我等大好御嬢、谷保一！今日漢字勉強苦労、御嬢漢字上手！我、御嬢真面目様子見、大御喜！我愛尓！近日日本語授業大変、進歩未見！先生怒我、今日一日一生懸命勉強、御嬢激励願。另、嬢限定音声本当可愛。何回聞、心臓爆発済、救急不可能、本当助！御嬢仕事頑張下、無理不可、体調第一！嗚呼、可愛余、今後応援続！我愛尓！
I initially had ignored it entirely as I thought it wasn’t a message I could not read, but turns out it was perfectly comprehensible reading it as Japanese. If anyone wants to write a proper Japanese version, I’ll add it as a spoiler underneath it. I wanted to rewrite it but I’m being lazy about it.
1 comment
There’s not much of a divide between “Japanese-based kanji” and “Chinese characters.” It’s all Chinese characters, and the fact that the message uses the simplifications that (less than a century ago) became standard in Japan doesn’t make the message “just Japanese in the end”–it’s still in Chinese, though it does indeed seem to have been written from a more Japanese-minded perspective.
By the way, did you maybe mean ニセ rather than エセ？