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Is this comedy, or cross-cultural miscommunication? "I'm afraid," leaves half the thought unexpressed. It relies on a cultural understanding of being afraid of the shame of saying, "no," to someone.
Can't it be both? The miscommunication is the comedy.
It's comedy, but it's not comedy heaven.
In order to be comedy heaven it has to be a victim of comedy homicide. There is no homicide here, just a naturally funny situation.
It's a funny post but in the wrong place.
If there's one thing I learned on reddit, it's that every community becomes homogenous once "close enough" posts are allowed so I completely approve of your criticism
It's one sentence, I'm afraid
Don't be scared.
Grammatically it's a full sentence, but part of the information intended to be conveyed is missing from that sentence. The person is not just stating, "I'm afraid." Something about being unable to fulfill a request is making them afraid.
Do you always disect jokes to the point where there's no humor left in it?
I guess that's not surprising for someone who's name means a dangerous, predatory person that kidnaps women while high.
I mean,I think regardless of which it is,this is a pretty funny interaction.
i think it's because the "i'm afraid" got on the next line due to line wrapping which makes it seem like a separate phrase
"me temo que no hago envios a 🇪🇸" is a perfectly valid sentence in Spanish
Sadly, no. Spanish has this exact expression, "Me temo que no" means literally "I'm afraid not."
I mean, it's definitely a thing a Spanish speaker could easily get wrong. It could also be just a meme.
Well, in spanish you can say "Me temo que no hago envíos internacionales." Wich traslates as "I'm afraid that I don't do international shipping."
So this is 100% for comedy purposeI think the premise is that the person would be confused by ending the sentence with "I'm afraid", especially since it's on a second line by itself. It's not that you can't do it in Spanish, it's just less natural and you'd really want to throw a comma in there.
But now I'm overexplaining the joke meme.
Not if you take this due to the line break as two different sentences.
I don't do international shipping[.] I'm afraid [of international shipping].
You could interpret that as them being unfamiliar with international shipping or being scared of getting scammed across countries.
I'm still learning Spanish, I don't think you'd ever use "I'm afraid" in this way in Spanish. If someone said "tengo miedo" (literally, "I have fear") in Spanish it would only really mean they're afraid of something.
Just a linguistic difference.