I heard a story from Japan where an American business man was sarcastic and the meeting got quiet. He was like “it’s a joke because-“
“We got it. We just thought it was inappropriate “
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Edit: I stand corrected, see replies
(Not first-hand knowledge) I read somewhere that tonal languages such as Chinese make it difficult to express sarcasm the same way Indo-European languages do, with accent and inflection.
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Nooooo, not at allll. /s
Oh SURE. That makes so much sense that a culture would lack "sarcasm". I can TOTALLY see that being a thing.
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I've done a little bit of language studying and one thing I heard about repeatedly is that people tend to mistakenly believe in their own exceptionalism.
Like, their own native language has idioms, and they just assumed that other languages didn't have idioms.
But we are all humans and languages are all going to exist in support of human communication. Therefore, you should assume that all languages have all major features of expression, including idioms and sarcasm.
Similarly, cultures are made from humans and to facilitate human interaction, so you should expect that things like sarcasm will exist in every culture.
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In Vietnam sarcasm is limited. Particularly in the countryside.
There has to be. There's loads of people on the internet that never recognize it even when it's incredibly obvious or has an /s.
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I lived in Oklahoma for 3 years and it took me ages to find a group of friends who understood sarcasm. I mean, even the drag queen server at my regular bar seemed baffled by sarcasm.
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There is a constructed language that I suspect is free from sarcasm. (At least if it's used formally)
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Definitely China and maybe Japan. In American culture I feel sarcasm is fun banter but coming to China and in Chinese it just makes one look like a jerk. I’m less proficient in Japanese so I cannot fully tell how my sarcasm was taken but I’m assuming a similar reception.
Look at the translations for sarcasm: 讽刺，反话.
Looking up the definition of sarcasm in Japanese I have no idea what this kanji is supposed to mean lmao 皮肉
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Some ahole from my old cult claimed Spanish doesn't have sarcasm, but that can't be true. Every Spanish speaker I've ever met has been more sarcastic than an American teenager.
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Oh suuuure!
I once heard about a tribe in South America. Say a man had four wives. If he was asked how many wives he had, and in that moment he only could see two of them, he had to answer "I have two wifes". I wonder if in this culture sarcasm would be a thing.
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American.
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