勘弁してちゃぶ台 Cut me some slack

See, the explanation makes sense. What doesn’t make so much sense is why you’d use a pun which requires a five-paragraph explanation as an example sentence. You even just said yourself that it’s untranslatable.

Think having the example sentences actually be translatable is half the point.

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I read it and I while I think I understand the individual parts of the explanation, as a whole, it doesn’t make sense to me. I’m with @Belthazar on this one.

I think even Japanese people will need this long explanation and I thought I might ask a few other Japanese people what they think of this sentence but have decided that my time best served elsewhere. I’m moving on.

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I liked the pun/oyaji gag, maybe because last week by accident I’ve encountered a ちゃぶ台返し game in an arcade (in the Netherlands, wth), but I agree it’s not really fit for an example sentence.

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I don’t think so. Just knowing it’s an oyajigyagu made me understand 95% of that (just didn’t know about the classical Japanese part, but that’s not really required to understand). My main problem with the sentence was that I didn’t expect a pun… and as said above by everyone including me, that’s a bit weird as an example sentence on a Japanese learning website (I would understand if it was for a lesson on oyajigyagu, but that’s not the case)

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Yeah, my girlfriend understood that it was an oyajigyagu right away, but of course didn’t have any other comment on it, since she’s not really familiar with the site beyond the fact that she knows I use it.

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My survey of exactly one person is admittedly not very scientific.

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Just so you guys know that we are planning to add two more sentences to 勘弁, and those would be more practical. (Though we don’t know when yet.) So, we’ll keep the current one as is as a fun/pun portion (especially because we are WANIKANI, not an ordinary boring textbook). :stuck_out_tongue:

Also, keep in mind that as you learn Japanese you would come across many different types of puns, so learning/getting used to them will be worth your time.

Cheers! :slight_smile:

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