4 thoughts on “WTF? – ?????? ??????

  1. Please to decipher this. Are they speaking legitimate Japanese? If yes, is their pronunciation any good (I watched this on super-low volume, so I didn’t hear it very well)? Is the script in natural Japanese? If not… what the hey is going on, here? Is there some aspect of Russo-Japanese history that might help decode the humor?

    1. About ten percent of it is recognizable as Japanese. Another 30 percent is probably supposed to be Japanese, but is unrecognizable. Since I don’t understand Russian, it’s hard to know if what is being said is attempted Japanese (with a Russian accent), actual Russian, or just gibberish (with a Russian accent). But I have some Japanese friends who speak Russian, so maybe they can chime in.

      I found the attempts at Japanese that sounded kinda like Japanese, but not really to be really funny. As for historical background, I’d like to point out (with a reference to The Princess Bride) that the Japanese actually won a land (and sea) war with Russia, but that probably doesn’t have anything to do with this video.

      1. I just ran the vid title, “??????? ???????. “?????? ??????” ??-???????,” through Google Translate, and got: Big difference. “Irony of Fate” in Japanese.

        Now I’m wondering whether “Irony of Fate” is the same as the Sino-Korean expression “sae ong ji ma,” which comes from the hanja “poor + old man + ‘s + horse,” per the old Chinese story (????, see here). While the story itself refers to the way in which one’s fortunes can flip-flop, Koreans often (mis)use the proverb as a synonym for “irony.”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.