Saturday, May 4, 2019

nuances - On the grammar of みんな見るメロ


At the end of an anime the next episode is advertised with a recurring joke where the character メロ says:



みんな見るメロ




It's supposed to translate as 'Everybody watch Mero.'. But surely it actually translates to the incomplete sentence 'Mero who everybody watches...'. Wouldn't 'Everyone watch Mero' actually be



みんなメロを見て下さい



or something similar, which, admittedly, is less cute. So my question is, does the original sentence actually translate to 'everyone watch Mero' and if so, why? Or is it funny because it's a word for word translation of how an English person who didn't know Japanese would say it. Or is there a big hole in my understanding of Japanese grammar?



Answer



Adding a peculiar "sound" at the end of almost every sentence is an idiosyncrasy of many characters in Japanese anime/manga/games.


Most of these sounds are simply omitted after being translated into English, but there are a few exceptions. For example even in the English version of Final Fantasy, moogles speak like "How are you, kupo!", and this kupo means nothing.


This typically happens for childish, mascot-like characters. In your example, みんな見るメロ is repeatedly said by a girl who jokingly plays an imaginary infantile character who likes to always add メロ at the end. Semantically, it just means みんな見てね.



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