[glandium]

Something I like about the whole "verb at the end of the sentence" thing is that you can totally flip over the meaning of what you're saying, right at the end. In English, you can achieve the same effect with awkward forms (like "not" at the end of the sentence), but in Japanese, it's just the natural form.

Try to imagine the kind of snarks you could do if you could put things like "I don't reckon" on hold until the end of the sentence.

Sadly (ironically?), that tends not to be the kind of language subtlety/humor the Japanese go for.

[Razengan]

> Try to imagine the kind of snarks you could do if you could put things like "I don't reckon" on hold until the end of the sentence. Sadly (ironically?), that tends not to be the kind of language subtlety/humor the Japanese go for.

If that's true, I think it might be more that such kind of humor is seen as too basic, or childish, and not particularly subtle for adults. Akin to simple puns or "ghost jokes" and the like in English (What do ghosts like for dessert? I Scream!) that kids — or foreigners — may enjoy, but native speakers don't really count as witty.

You can still see what you're talking about in some of their comedy skits, though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nW4jhqPbd0

[fiddlerwoaroof]

As much as people claim to despise puns, the major English authors show very little reluctance to use them: they are everywhere in Shakespeare, for example, and you can also find them in more recent authors like TS Eliot (for example, in Ash Wednesday, he puns on dissembled/disassembled)

[yawaramin]

I was just thinking about negation by adding the suffix. We have it in Bangla too. In fact, we share the same word, 'nai', for 'is not there'.

[vram22]

I think many Indian languages have it too.

And in fact the Japanese negation at the end - negation suffix ("nai"→"naka") - from whym's comment in this thread - sounds like the Marathi one - same sound (naka or nako).