Yeah, it's a few seasons old by now, but there's a whole episode centered around Mr. Kim.
At the climax of the episode, it's revealed that Mr. Kim doesn't actually exist, and is an alter ego of South Park's therapist, William Janus, who himself has multiple personality disorder. No one really cares, because he's the one who runs the town's only chinese restaurant.
If I remember right, the Janus personality actually dies, leaving Mr. Kim in permanent control of the body.
A plot was that butters parents started to think he had multiple personality disorder, the joke being they mistook a child playing make believe as MPD. They take him to see the therapist Dr Janice.
B Plot was that a new Japanese restaurant opened near the chinese one so the Chinese restaurant owner (Lu Kim) goes on a tirade to get rid of him.
Episode climax is that Dr Janice was the one with multiple personality disorder and his strongest personality was Lu Kim. Once the town founds out they just let him stay as Lu Kim because "does the world really need another therapist, City Wok is now the only Chinese restaurant left in town".
Wow. I am screaming at this. Matt Stone and Trey Parker are so hysterically unhinged… Like they sit down and come up with these stories for a living omg LMAO
Yeah, they've had fucking banger retcons and backstories added over the years. My favorite is Token being actually named "Tolkien" the entire time to the point that they even refer to him as "Tolkien" in every episode from there on out and if you look up "Token Black South Park" it won't pop up anymore lol.
It’s a super weird greeting/acknowledgement of being a foreigner while also being polite and welcoming. I won’t pretend to totally understand it but it’s a weird cultural thing that developed.
I found it interesting that to want or to like something are viewed not as verbs like they are in english, but adjectives... it's weird because they're like super common words but it's like the only two words this is true for lol.
You don't want/like a sandwich. A sandwich is wantable/likeable to you. Interesting to get used to.
Who the hell are you to tell me I don't want a sandwich?
Jokes aside, all the differences in grammar between languages are interesting. Subjectively, it feels like such a violation of a basic concept as a native English speaker, but objectively, there's no reason it has to be this way, obviously.
Reminds me of Spanish, although it still uses a verb. You dont like things in Spanish, those things give you pleasure (gustar). Which is hard to get used to because it means you conjugate it differently.
Indeed things like this as so interesting. In Dutch, for example, you can't just like something, you find it nice. You can't love something either, you literally 'hold of' it.
Reminds me of when i tried to teach my US friends how to say something in german. Nobody got the pronouncation right so i suggested talking angry. Everybody was like "noo thats sutch a steriotype! I cant do that!" But it actually helps 😅
But that's for speaking in chinese. The thing here is that if you want to be understood in english by the japanese you basically have to mimick a heavy japanese accent for it.
Oh for sure, when i lived in north east China once i started copying the countryside accent i got on better for example: Not Mei shi r, May shaaaaaaaar
You're not going to get your tones right regardless. You're a tourist and going to have a heavy accent. Asian tourists trying to do a yeehaw accent aren't going to sound like native english speakers
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u/Zzamumo 5h ago
Same with chinese. If you don't sound like a racist caricature you won't get your tones right