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What is your favorite insult in your native language that doesn't exist or cant be directly translated in English? (lemmy.ml)
submitted 3 years ago by to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml
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Ill start:

"Me cago en tus muertos" - ill shit all over your dead relatives. Spanish.

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[–] 23 points 3 years ago (2 children)

Is it Japanese i am think of that has an exclusionary “we” form? Almost as in “We(all of US but not YOU) were invited to the party.”

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  • [–] 28 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    That's correct, you can insult someone accidentally while complimenting them in a similar way. The particles は (as in wa) and が (ga) have different connotations that can simply different things.

    So saying メリーさんの顔はきれい (Mary-san no kao wa kirei, "Mary has a beautiful face") causes an implication that Mary has a beautiful face, (... But nothing else about her is beautiful). Changing the は for が makes the statement come across as intended.

    Without going into detail on the whole wa vs ga thing, wa is more like "as for x..." which can imply a "but..." at the end, whether stated or not, which causes this effect.

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