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Ive seen that screenshot make the rounds at least half a dozen times, and there’s usually been someone claiming that the Japanese pun thing isn’t really true and that this is just one of those “internet sharing interesting sounding but made up stories” moments, but as I don’t know Japanese I cant verify that.
I don’t think I know enough Japanese to get the pun (if there actually is such a pun), but I might be able to give some information.
The Japanese onomatopoeia for stomach rumbling is “ぐうぐう” or “グウグウ” transliterated to an English alphabet as “guuguu” (pronounced like the English-language onomatopoeia for baby babble “goo goo”).
The number 8 might be written “8” or “八” and has a couple of different pronunciations transliterated “hachi” and “yattsu”. It sounds weird that Japanese would have two different pronunciations for 8 until you realize that English has “one”, “two”, “three” as well as “first”, “second”, “third” which are completely different ways to pronounce roughly the same concept. The Japanese “a” vowel sound is pronounced more like the “a” in “Han Solo”. And sometimes the “i” on the end of “hachi” is more-or-less silent, so “hachi” could be pronounced something like “hahtch” or “hahtchi”. “Yattsu” is pronounced about like you’d expect given the “ah” pronunciation of the “a” sound. Technically the doubled “t” makes a bit of difference to pronunciation, but probably one that an English speaker would find very hard to even hear.
There are other numbers that sound a little more like “guu”. 9 sounds like the name of the letter “Q” (or the name of the omnipotent species in Star Trek). 10 sounds like “jew”. But I’m not aware of any ways to pronounce 8 that sound anything like “guu”.
So, if you’re wrong and there is a wordplay there somehow, it’s beyond my ability to catch the pun.
There is a pun here. Just not the onomatopoeia story. I’ve done some digging.
In Japanese it is called Marunomi no hi, 丸呑みの日. Swallowing whole day.
Maru 丸 means circle.
Nomi 呑み means drink.
But Nomi written as のみ. means only.
So 丸のみ. Could be read as “only circle”
Japan uses western numbers particularly for dates.
So the pun is that the day can be interrupted as Only Circles. And falls on a date made only of circles.
And also probably the ate-ate pun. I don’t think it’s a particularly big stretch to assume someone in Japan would have either heard the pun or came up with it themselves.
Numbers are a basic thing to learn when doing languages. Ate, is a basic word that would be taught to someone. The Japanese love their puns and wordplay.
The Japanese love their puns and wordplay.
This is so true. As bad as we are at actually speaking English, I love Japanese rap like Rip Slyme because they make such incredibly clever puns, rhymes, and double entendres with Japanese and English.
I don’t really buy it regardless because 88 (and 8 alone) is considered a lucky number in and of itself.
There is, however, some commentary about the shapes of the kanji and such which strikes me as something that might actually be true or congruent.
