Take the tour ×  It's a topic of debate to what extent Japanese
has sarcasm and irony. In any case, Japanese speakers seem to
use a whole lot less of it than English speakers.  My question
is: whether or not Japanese speakers use it themselves, do they
typically recognize what is—to Americans at least—very blatant
verbal irony? Or will they commonly assume the sarcastic party
has gone suddenly insane?   A:
どうしてサハラ砂漠になんて行きたいんですか？ハイキングでもしたいの？  B: いや、泳ぎに行こうと思ってます。  Would a
super-fluent speaker be able to sell this kind of irony? Would a
なんてね at the end of sentence B make it work?  share|improve this
question add comment  2 Answers  up vote 25 down vote accepted
Quick related side story: Recently I was with my friend who is
much better at Japanese than me. So much so that I won't try in
this story to emulate the Japanese he used, because I'd just
mess it up.  It was a cold day and we were in a liquor store to
buy some ice. We couldn't find as much as we needed, so we asked
if there was more in back. The older wo