43458


In Nichijou there is a scene where a random character says,

> The coffee isn't very coffee coffee

Is this a pun? What's the meaning of these sentences? Even her friend asks
too.

[![This coffee isn't very coffee
coffee](https://i.stack.imgur.com/hTLOum.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/hTLOu.jpg)
[![What does not coffee coffee even
mean?](https://i.stack.imgur.com/4Q0y8m.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/4Q0y8.png)
[![It's not coffee
coffee!](https://i.stack.imgur.com/OK4DTm.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/OK4DTm.png)

Relevant video on [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIfigZMdwuQ)


CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-11-21T13:54:59.530
43455
2017-11-22T00:00:39.703
2017-11-21T20:28:57.107
1908
35019
question
nichijou
What's the meaning of "The coffee isn't coffee coffee"?


There's no pun. She is using "coffee-coffee" as a made-up adjective to
describe that the coffee she is drinking doesn't have properties of coffee,
and as you can tell from her friend's response, it's not standard Japanese
(she could've just said something like "This doesn't taste like coffee."). The
subtitle uses the phrase as-is, but something more English could be something
like "This isn't very coffee."

The gag of this skit is that Girl B drinks and agrees with the fictional word,
despite no description of what it means. I feel this isn't supposed to be
funny, but more closer to something the viewers can agree to, like when eating
out with friends and trying to describe what you just ate/drank, but cannot
find the right words for it (thus just saying something like "coffee-coffee").


CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-11-21T18:26:11.667
43458
2017-11-21T18:26:11.667
23565
43455
answer


Jimmy's answer is good, but I want to offer one clarification.

To an English speaker, "coffee-coffee" sounds an awful lot like [contrastive
focus
reduplication](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contrastive_focus_reduplication).
"this is coffee, but it's not COFFEE-coffee" might mean "this beverage has
some but not all of the essential properties of coffee". However: Japanese
doesn't _have_ contrastive focus reduplication! That's not what's actually
being said here.

Reduplication in Japanese is used primarily for mimetics (onomatopoeia,
basically). Unlike with English's contrastive focus reduplication, you can't
really apply "mimetic reduplication" to arbitrary Japanese nouns, so " _kōhī-
kōhī_ " (which is sort of a weird adjective-ified form of "coffee") sounds
stranger to the Japanese ear than "COFFEE-coffee" sounds to the English ear.
If I were to attempt an analogy, this might be somewhat like forming a strange
derived adjective from coffee, as in "this coffee isn't very coffile".


CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-11-21T20:27:44.030
43459
2017-11-22T00:00:39.703
2017-11-22T00:00:39.703
1908
1908
43455
answer