Today I want to be the instigator of you learning something. Let me teach you a little about pronunciation and puns using Japanese and English words.
First object is the game, In.
Ib is the name of the game and the character you play as. Now, that's an unusual name, yes? Especially when you compare it to the names of other characters in the game, Garry and Mary. That's because the name Ib is supposed to be Eve and we get Ib because of how Japanese pronunciation and writing works. I's become e's and vice versa because of pronunciation. But a v becomes a b because of writing, they don't have a character for the v sound so they use the character for the b sound in it's place.
So this name change came about because the original game was fan translated (then again, we're no strangers to official translations doing this kind of thing) but a mistake has turned into the actual name as fans refer to the game and character as Ib despite being aware of this mistranslation and now even the official translation of the remaster on Steam calls the game Ib.
Now we get to the fun part! What if someone takes the weird quirks that come about from Japanese and English translating between each other and uses them deliberately? You get things like the song 'Love?' or alternatively 'Frilled Shark'.
(Why won't the site let me post the video here?
The Japanese word for a frilled shark is 'rabuka', the Japanese written language uses the same character for an 'L' and 'R' sound, when they pronounce something with an 'oh' sound it'll often come out with an 'ah' sound, once again 'v' and 'b' use the same character, often times a 'u' sound ends up added to the end of words because of the exhalation of breath that comes after ending a sound (most commonly seen in 'desu' which is supposed to be 'des'), and these quirks combine into the "labu labu" meme, then we finally have 'ka' which makes a statement a question when put at the end of a sentence.
Combine all this together and you get the word play of "Love?" also being "Frilled Shark"! And as a bonus you can hear the singer switch between "lavu ka" and "lavu ga" in the song, 'ga' being put at the end of a sentence gives it emphasis, so the song can switch between them for different purposes throughout the song since they sound similar.
Isn't that just amazing!?
www.bbc.com
