"D'oh!" in Japanese?

That sounds like a different pitch and vowel length how you usually hear women (stereotypically) say it in the blunder context, so not sure I’d really classify it as the same.

Well yes, あら is not funny, and it’s not going to be a Simpsons reference, agreed, but it’s an expression that conveys to other people that you are annoyed at the mistake you made or are surprised at the thing you are looking at. And in the end if that meaning is conveyed to your listener, then it is a useful word that does its job.

But yes I agree, the OP is asking for something more. As to whether it’s possible to translate catchphrases from a TV show from one language into another…I am dubious. Surely the humour with ‘D’oh’ is that it calls to mind the stupidity of the personality of Homer Simpson, and the actual joke is that he cannot even say ‘Oh’ right. Good luck finding that expression in Japanese, when Japanese don’t even know who the Simpsons are.

I think you overestimate how connected d’oh is to Homer Simpson. As a teen (so about a decade and a half ago) I learned d’oh, meaning exactly what the OP described it as, and I never knew it was related to the Simpsons. D’oh is part of internet/teenage slang, maybe it isn’t current slang anymore, but it certainly had moved past its origins even 15 years ago.

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Also, Dan Castellaneta’s invention of the term in the early days of the Simpsons was heavily inspired by Scottish actor Jimmy Finlayson, who’d been using a similar exclamation (albeit as a drawn-out d’ooooh) since 1929.

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That’s so interesting. Ain’t nothing new under the sun :slight_smile:

They seem to understand “d’oh!”

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