Oh suuuure!
this post was submitted on 12 Feb 2026
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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.
It seems that people in this culture can only talk about what they see. Or the guy lacks object permanence.
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.
Irony is almost a national sport here in Spain. And yes sarcasm is widely used, but mostly in closed circles.
I'm curious, what was your old cult?
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.
Goddamnit you're right, another fact that i missed, besides being misunderstood IRL with English speakers too. They're everywhere!
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 “
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.
I think it was mostly the very religious people who had trouble and there are a LOT of very religious people in Oklahoma.
You know what, you're right about that. There are plenty of times my sarcasm wasn't caught by north Americans. That slipped my mind. Interesting 🤔.
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.~~
First-hand knowledge (I'm Cantonese), we have sarcasm.
I find it hard to believe that sarcasm can't exist in some languages, honestly; just say something in an exaggerated tone while you mean the opposite.
(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.
First hand knowledge, I'm Chinese American. My mom is from Taishan and I grew up in Guangzhou for the first 8 years before immigrating to the US. My mom uses scarcasm a lot. We speak Cantonese at home.
Example:
"我想去睇橋" ("I wanna go see the bridge"; a euphemism for I want to go to the nearest bridge and jump off to kms, and my mom knows the meaning of this btw)
Mom: "喂，使唔使載埋你去啊？" ("Hey, do you want us to drive you there?"; said in a very unusally happy and uplifting tone, as if she'd be glad to see me die (I mean... not really, I don't think she really wants to see me die, I hope not, she's just playing mindgames to "stop me from 'attention seeking'", she doesn't understand what depression is.)
Or sometimes I get mad and refused to eat and mom was like: "哇，係唔係想練神仙啊？亦好呀，慳返啲食嘅。" ("Wow, are you trying to become an immortal being? That's great, we can save some food"; again, with that weird "fake happy" voice.
And I instictively knew these were sarcasm.
That's funny! Hopefully the sarcasm isn't causing psychological damage.
This made me think, and I realized that non-tonal languages actually do have a tonal aspect to them.
Non-tonal simply means the denotation isn't carried by tone, not that users of the language don't use tone. It's an interesting distinction.
John McWhorter has a few courses in The Great Courses catalog about language - its pretty fascinating stuff. He covers things like tonal languages, and how even for a linguist like himself, they're tough to learn.
True, otherwise it would be monotone, though some people speak in a monotone voice that can put you to sleep.
Me as a native finnish speaker making every english speaker in a meeting unsure of my meanig
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I just did a quick research on tonal languages, it's quite tricky for a beginner to grasp these subtle expressions. Imagine a life without sarcasm. Brutal. I wonder if they have their own way of conveying it.
They just carry around a card that has “/s” written on it and flash it as necessary
Oh, they do. Depending on the context, there's a whole host of ways to imply sarcasm without depending on intonation. Body language, context, double entendre, formality shifts, etc.
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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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It's sometimes said that Japanese people don't know and don't understand sarcasm but really they just have different ways to make you feel stupid that don't (necessarily) register as sarcasm to Westerners, like being overly polite.
Oh noooo, don't be polite to me
I'll do worse - I'll TIP you!
I guess Japanese really doesn't have in-your-face sarcasm now that I think about it...
Now that you mentioned it, Japanese also has a rather interesting quirk of not having what most people would consider as "swear words". Read it somewhere that Japanese does have swear words, but they tend to be quite tame, and the words themselves aren't "taboo" (as compared to just about any swear word in English)
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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.
Oh I would certainly think it's the norm but I do wonder if there's some culture somewhere that really is just that literal. Like shit we don't know what the sentinelese (but they definitely give a dark sense of humor vibe).
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There is a constructed language that I suspect is free from sarcasm. (At least if it's used formally)
It'd be really hard to do sarcasm in Toki Pona too as there are so few words that it just wouldn't register unless there was a prior understanding of sarcastic intent between the people conversing.
Pona mention!
pona o tawa sina :)
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Nooooo, not at allll. /s
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