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Amusingly there's a pun here on "Zero-sum Era". This because "rei" is a common way to read the numeral zero, and "zero-wa" (using the same "wa" from the new era
by fenomas 8y ago
Amusingly there's a pun here on "Zero-sum Era". This because "rei" is a common way to read the numeral zero, and "zero-wa" (using the same "wa" from the new era name) is the Japanese term for "zero-sum".
- w00kie 8y ago平成 (Heisei) commonly translated to "Achieving Peace" as stated in the article, can also be read as "Flat Growth" which is more indicative of the past two decades here :)
- ekianjo 8y agoNo, because nobody cares about the sound. The kanji matters. Soundwise there are tons of kanji with the exact same pronounciation so there is no pun to be found.
- jpatokal 8y agoThe joke is blowing up on Japanese Twitter, so yes, people do get the joke: https://twitter.com/groebner_basis/status/1112547757082832897?s=17 https://twitter.com/groebner_basis/status/111254775708283289...
- asutekku 8y agoMost of japanese puns literally lean on the fact some words sound the same or really similar.
- wodenokoto 8y agoYou are right that there are many homonyms in Japanese, but you are wrong in thinking that that results in nobody caring about them. Japan has a proud tradition of phonetic based puns, called dajare. Wikipedia has a surprisingly long list, which includes explanations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dajare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dajare
- Kurtz79 8y ago"ウランは売らん (uran wa uran) Translation: I never sell uranium. Explanation: ウラン (uran) means uranium, and the second 売らん (uran) means "never sell"." While in the West we have Uranus puns.