Thora Wrote:If by normal you mean as a twisted way of showing appreciation, then, yeah, that's seems pretty normal to me, too. But it does seem dickheadish if you actually mean it.

I think the beer request was meant to be funny, but he did actually want me to get him a beer. (?) I suppose I didn't really get his humour.

You definitely hear that one a lot as a joke in Australia, usually when husbands say their wives jokingly but also being serious.

Jarvik7 Wrote:A real Aussie would be outside having a BBQ or wrestling crocs, not watching DVDs...

That reminds me, I need to go and tie up my pet kangaroo otherwise I won't be getting to work in the morning.

daaan Wrote:

alizarine Wrote:

Hinode Wrote:It wouldn't. ._.
(...)

Ah ok. I've lived in Germany for a few years, and if you put it that way, I agree. You can see this very clearly during the carnival shows:

Comedian: Sorry I'm late, but I had to come by train...
Spectators: <silent>
Band: Pa-paa pa-paa (tune indicating a joke)
Spectators: <laughing>

The Dutch are more like the British, and from that background we just consider the Germans to be the most unfunny people in the world, because they need those clues.

Carnival shows, that's the clue. Germany is culturally divided into a carnival South and non-carnival North. In the North, people use sarcasm very much like the Dutch, and carnival is seen as cringeworthy and embarrassingly unfunny.

It just so happens that the carnival regions are close to the Netherlands. If you went to Northern Frisia, unsurprisingly, people would get your Dutch humor. Except maybe the part about stealing bicycles...

That aside, many Canadians don't get deadpan Australian sarcasm at all, while Brits do, so it's really a cultural rather than a language thing.

zigmonty Wrote:

Thora Wrote:Aha! I had some communication glitches with a former boyfriend from Australia.

I don't know... he might have just been a dickhead.

Lots of people pretend they're being sarcastic and rely on you assuming they are. But really they're just being a dick. Everything before the asking for a beer is pretty normal though.

Actually that could be true. I think it's a part of australian culture that you can kind of be an dickhead to people you know reasonably well. This may be the reason why Americans can sometimes seem overly sensitive to Australians. We're not used to the same level of political correctness.

edit: I originally wrote ar*ehole instead of dickhead, but it got censored to tadpole...

nadiatims Wrote:Actually that could be true. I think it's a part of australian culture that you can kind of be an dickhead to people you know reasonably well. This may be the reason why Americans can sometimes seem overly sensitive to Australians. We're not used to the same level of political correctness.

Ha, yeah, some mates and i were temporarily borrowing the workshop of an american uni while we were over there for a uni project. At one point i say "oy dickhead, hand me that spanner", and my mate hands over the spanner without comment. An american nearby says "dude... did he just call you a dickhead?!" in shock. "Umm yeah, and?"

Thora Wrote:I think the beer request was meant to be funny, but he did actually want me to get him a beer. (?) I suppose I didn't really get his humour.

Just because he wanted a beer and asked for a beer doesn't mean he actually expected you to get him a beer. It sounds like he expected you to be as comfortable telling him to go get his own damn beer as he was asking you to get it. I'd see that as just being friendly.

zigmonty Wrote:

nadiatims Wrote:Actually that could be true. I think it's a part of australian culture that you can kind of be an dickhead to people you know reasonably well. This may be the reason why Americans can sometimes seem overly sensitive to Australians. We're not used to the same level of political correctness.

Ha, yeah, some mates and i were temporarily borrowing the workshop of an american uni while we were over there for a uni project. At one point i say "oy dickhead, hand me that spanner", and my mate hands over the spanner without comment. An american nearby says "dude... did he just call you a dickhead?!" in shock. "Umm yeah, and?"

Lol, I never knew Americans were so precious.

Seriously though, I think this varies within countries as much as it does between them. I still find it wierd how polite the county youth orchestra is.

This is a really interesting thread. Does anyone know if there are certain ways of showing sarcasm in Japanese on the internet? Usually in English I would end a sarcastic sentence with something like [/sarcasm] or ;-) to show that I'm not being serious, but I haven't figured out what Japanese people do yet...

Irixmark Wrote:

daaan Wrote:

alizarine Wrote:

Ah ok. I've lived in Germany for a few years, and if you put it that way, I agree. You can see this very clearly during the carnival shows:

Comedian: Sorry I'm late, but I had to come by train...
Spectators: <silent>
Band: Pa-paa pa-paa (tune indicating a joke)
Spectators: <laughing>

The Dutch are more like the British, and from that background we just consider the Germans to be the most unfunny people in the world, because they need those clues.

Carnival shows, that's the clue. Germany is culturally divided into a carnival South and non-carnival North. In the North, people use sarcasm very much like the Dutch, and carnival is seen as cringeworthy and embarrassingly unfunny.

It just so happens that the carnival regions are close to the Netherlands. If you went to Northern Frisia, unsurprisingly, people would get your Dutch humor. Except maybe the part about stealing bicycles...

That aside, many Canadians don't get deadpan Australian sarcasm at all, while Brits do, so it's really a cultural rather than a language thing.

I'll subscribe to any theory that paints carnival shows as the scourge of German (and Austrian) humour.

The main difference seems to be that in Britain, humour pervades everything and people in general don't seem to take themselves that seriously, while in Germany there's generally more of a distinction between "serious time" and "funny time" - and when it comes to carnival shows (and quite a few German comedians), it becomes apparent that they can be quite serious about their "funny time", too ("Laugh already, you idiots! It's *funny*! Don't you see us acting like clowns up there? Do you need a fanfare or what? Well, if that's what it takes...")

(I've not been with *many* Northern Germans for any extended length of time, by the way, but the three Northern German flatmates I had all needed a bit of a "sarcasm voice" to clue them in, too).

Austria (where I live) seems to fall somewhere in between - Austrians are perfectly capable of doing the unspeakable carnival shows; but they also seem to be better at dry wit and pervasive non-seriousness, even if they still don't hold a candle to the Brits when it comes to completely deadpan delivery.

That said, I think many of the communication hitches concerning irony and sarcasm between people of different countries arise from language problems. If you don't speak the foreign language absolutely fluently, you're going to miss a lot that is communicated through slightly different word choices or intonation.
The German sarcasm voice isn't always the equivalent of the carnival show fanfare (though it can be, especially in a "funny time" context). In everyday conversations among friends it can be quite subtle - just a small difference in your intonation, a half-smile, a raised eyebrow.
It's just that the default assumption in Germany (and, to a slightly lesser extent, Austria) is that you're being serious - therefore, you generally need to indicate when you're not.

Being ironic or sarcastic with people you don't know moderately well is a bit tricky in many places around here anyway - it can easily come off as somewhat rude, and isn't always appreciated.

(And just because it needs to be said: There are plenty of people in absolutely *every* part of the German-speaking world who would agree that carnival shows are excruciatingly horrible. )

Bokusenou Wrote:This is a really interesting thread. Does anyone know if there are certain ways of showing sarcasm in Japanese on the internet? Usually in English I would end a sarcastic sentence with something like [/sarcasm] or ;-) to show that I'm not being serious, but I haven't figured out what Japanese people do yet...

i usually see （笑） at the end of a sentence after sarcastic or other jokey statements that might be taken seriously online. ｗｗ (not specifically 2 ｗ's, it varies) at the end of the sentence is used as well.

i suppose there's probably some smilies that are used as well, but they have so many and varied ones that i don't know them...

なんでやねん