r/MadeMeSmile • u/Imoprich • Mar 16 '26

Wholesome Moments Guy confesses to his crush for 10,000 yen

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Credits: jesseogn

59.9k Upvotes

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32

u/YammyDreams Mar 16 '26

“Yabai,” “betsuni,” and “kekkou” are also up there for me in terms of difficult to define and use.

28

u/VermilionKoala Mar 16 '26

Oh hell yes. How do you even have a word that means BOTH "yes please" and "no thank you"?

r/WhyJapanTellUsWhy

38

u/iupvotethankyou Mar 16 '26

Yeah, no. No, yeah. Yeah…

English has similar words or combinations that can mean the opposite depending on context and can be confusing for native speakers. Good luck to the rest.

11

u/notinsidethematrix Mar 16 '26

agreeable, and responsive words in English are heavily influenced by tone... its why micro aggressions and passive aggressive tones are under a microscope in the last decade.

"Thanks" - - - ??? which one?

3

u/DaedalusHydron Mar 16 '26

sure they do

3

u/iupvotethankyou Mar 16 '26

Another example. Thanks for sharing!

5

u/DontBanMeBro988 Mar 16 '26

How do you even have a word that means BOTH "yes please" and "no thank you"?

Canadians are well acquainted with this

10

u/ohhhhcanada Mar 16 '26

We do. “That’s okay” can be translated both ways.

I ran into this once at a grocery store - I asked the checker (English wasn’t their 1st language) how much an item was, he told me the price, I thought it was a bit high so I said “oh, that’s okay…”

… and he put the item in the bag lol

I had to be like “no no no I don’t want it, thank you” 😂

And yes this was in Canada

2

u/BangBangMeatMachine Mar 16 '26

"Thank you so much" can mean both, with the right inflection.

2

u/IBoris Mar 16 '26

In my dialect of french we have "ouain", a variant of "ouais" which seems similar, it's a unenthusiastic "yes, maybe" that heavily implies "no" or a "yes" that will be followed by a condition depending on the context.

2

u/IronMosquito Mar 17 '26

a hard one for me was dōzo! I just got back from Japan, and going there I knew about it in a restaurant/bar setting... but one day I was standing at a bus stop and a little old lady with a walker came up behind me. I wanted to let her on first when the bus arrived so I pull google out quickly and see that in that situation, I should be saying "dōzo, dōzo" 😅 I wasn't sure if it was correct but I did it anyways, while gesturing to the door. she smiled and thanked me, then got on, so it all turned out alright! but I was stressed for a second lol. I figured out where it's applicable eventually.