• OtakuAltair@lemm.eeEnglish
    102·
    1 year ago

    For those who don’t get it, the japanese community shortens ‘Lee gu macchi’ (league match) to ‘Li gu ma’ (ligma)

    • sheepyowl@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      18·
      1 year ago

      It’s less about weeb shit and more about the sounds of the words. They abbreviate it as Ligma (balls hehe got’em!)

      • Stilicho@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        I meant weeb shit as in it being an English tweet with Japanese in it. It’s as if it’s such a normal thing to read Japanese nowadays or sumtin. The joke is fine though, but you have to both be familiar with league and with Japanese which is some S-tier weeb shit.

        • tonarinokanasan@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
          4·
          1 year ago

          I wouldn’t say you need to know anything about Splatoon/league in order to understand this, because 100% of the necessary context is in the tweet itself.

          But yes, it’s surprising to see so many upvotes for a joke that requires the ability to read some Japanese in a mostly English community. But to be fair, it’s funny as hell.

        • OtakuAltair@lemm.eeEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          It being fully in katakana, which anyone just looking into the language would take like 30 minutes to learn, helps.

          • stebo@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            2·
            1 year ago

            it’s definitely not hard but telling them all apart without googling it takes a bit longer than 30 minutes

  • Laticauda@lemmy.worldEnglish
    14·
    1 year ago

    Here’s a detailed explanation for anyone who’s still confused:

    リグマ is pronounced “riguma”. Japanese らりるれろ/ラリルレロ (ra ri ru re ro) sounds do not have a direct equivalent in English, but English R and L sounds are the closest, and we tend to defaut to r for any Japanese words or romanization (aka writing Japanese words with the Latin alphabet, which is referred to as romaji). But their "R"s can also be interpreted as L for loan words or words from another language depending on the word. Riguma would be spelled the same as ligma would in romaji, and when spoken would be pronounced the same. Ligma is a joke disease people claim to have so that when someone asks them what it is they can reply with “ligma balls”, which sounds like “lick my balls.” リグマ ボールス would be romanized as “riguma bōruzu”. Bōruzu is how they’d write the English word for balls, so “riguma bōruzu” sounds like “Ligma balls” and is how you would say/write it in katakana.