“Why Do Japanese Use Circle = Correct & Tick = Incorrect?”
- Categories: Anime, News
- Date: Jun 5, 2011 01:00 JST
- Tags: 2ch, Comparison, Otaku, Teachers, Translation, USA
The question of why the Japanese perversely mark correct answers with a circle rather than a tick, as any sane person would do, and then insist on compounding their deviance by using ticks to indicate incorrect answers, has lately been the subject of much attention on 2ch.
The initial exchange (translated from the original English into Japanese, and subsequently presented to 2ch):
“Tell me this – one of the things about Seto I don’t get is this picture. Putting a tick by the correct answer is the world standard, isn’t it?”
“It’s called a ‘check’ you moron.”
“Typical fucking yank who thinks that’s the only name it’s called?”
“In Japan the correct answer gets the circle and the check or x is for wrong answers.”
“The circle is for wrong answers. I think this is the same everywhere.”
“Why is Japanese culture so backwards? The check is for correct answers, the cross or circle for incorrect ones, everyone knows this.”
“What do you expect from a country which insists porno puts mosaics on genitals alone? I’ll never accept anything they do as logical.”
“It depends on your teacher, idiots.”
“In my country you get circles on your mistakes and nothing on the correct ones.”
“In Japan a circle is a correct answer and a tick is an incorrect answer. What part of this do you people not understand?”
2ch is incensed about barbarians daring to comment on Yamato culture:
“Well, you wouldn’t expect a bunch of hairy foreigners to understand something like this.”
“Japan is so backwards! We should match the world standard!”
“What? Since when did incorrect answers get a check mark? Japanese put an ‘x’ by incorrect answers.”
“Yes yes, everything our white masters say is true and correct!”
“Those foreigners don’t know what they are talking about…”
“How nice it is to see how understanding these people are of other cultures.”
“Japan is on a OX system, fucking foreign scum.”
“Foreign games have x for OK and circle for cancel – that’s even stranger.”
“They are just watching pirated anime anyway.”
“I don’t want to be told my culture is backwards by a bunch of people who are busy pirating it.”
“Dumb whities, just because Japan is different doesn’t mean it’s a global standard.”
“‘What do you expect from a country which insists porno puts mosaics on genitals alone?’ – GRRR.”
“They think they are always right!”
“Japan should change. I don’t get why a tick means incorrect.”
“They are just too stupid to understand cultural differences.”
“Foreigners are like frogs in a well [ignorant of the ways of the world]. Foreigners need to adopt a more global perspective.”
“Ah, this lot are just like you guys. I bet they don’t want to be told how their culture should be by you lot either. You hate them because they’re the same as you.”
“I don’t want to be told this stuff by people who insist on using Fahrenheit, yards, pounds or whatever other Galapagos standards it is they use.”
“The mosaic stuff in porn is based on the notion that because you can’t see their genitals they are not actually having sex. It’s retarded. The Motion Picture Code of Ethics Committee needs to be abolished.”
“I’ll admit the mosaic stuff is messed up. Doesn’t matter how perverse it is, as long as it has the mosaic it’s not obscene? Abolish it.”
“Foreigners are always trying to push their culture on others. Japan hasn’t done that since the war.”
“I first became aware of this difference when I took a simple overseas training test. At first I was like ‘yay, I got them all right!’…”
| 
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“What do you expect from a country which insists porno puts mosaics on genitals alone? I’ll never accept anything they do as logical.”
“‘What do you expect from a country which insists porno puts mosaics on genitals alone?’ – GRRR.”
lol
“I first became aware of this difference when I took a simple overseas training test. At first I was like ‘yay, I got them all right!’…”
made me lol
Comment of the thread imo
Best comment ever!
Actually I liked
“Ah, this lot are just like you guys. I bet they don’t want to be told how their culture should be by you lot either. You hate them because they’re the same as you.”
better... You could call them tsundere, without the "dere" part xD
ROFLMAO
i lol'd too
That actually happened to me during my mock exams! Every so often I was like 'what was he trying to circle? I'm pretty sure that's right' and 'wow! lucky guesses or what!'
And then I found out and was sad. =(
I'm not sure about you, but I thought there WAS no standard for this. My College Physics teacher in high school used check marks for wrong answers and my Religions professor used circles and X's for right and wrong answers.
If you ask me, there is no standard, nor does there have to be. It's just whatever is normal to the person who marks the paper...
Yeah, I had never even thought about this before. When I correct papers, I put a check on incorrect answers, and don't do anything at all with correct ones (marking both seems unnecessary).
There's a joke in there about science v. religion, probably. Heh.
“Foreign games have x for OK and circle for cancel – that’s even stranger.”
Well said.
I might be wrong, but isn't that because of the PlayStation with their x,o,y,[]?
For Japanese games on playstation, Os are for confirm and Xs are for cancel. But when some games are translated to English, X becomes confirm and O becomes cancel.
Yeah, but this is less a matter of symbols and more a matter of positioning. On an Xbox 360 controller, X is A and O is B.
Apparently, we foreigners prefer to use the lowest face button as the "Confirm" button and the one to the right for "Cancel". I mean, who even looks at the legends on the controller while they're playing, anyway?
Try to alternate between playing games with the Japanese style and the Western style like me when I was playing Dissidia Final Fantasy and FFVIII pretty much at the same time.
Gosh. In the former, I was always canceling stuff when I wanted to confirm it. In the latter, I was always confirming it instead of canceling. At least until I got used to the change.
To be fair, that's not why American game systems do that. They only use the bottom button for convenience and that stuck. The O's and X's of Playstation came well after that trend. I don't even follow games that fanatically and I know this..
when I first used a playstation this confused the shit out of me
Lol pwned. XD
Hero Comment of the thread ^^
“I don’t want to be told my culture is backwards by a bunch of people who are busy pirating it.” I respect this gentleman's point of view.
I don't. He is a douchebag who is pissed that he has to pay a ridiculous premium on stuff other countries get at a fraction of the price. I live in japan and laugh at the mad blu-ray prices.
I think most western people pirate mostly western things. Only a few of us really even care for Japanese things. And who says Japanese don't pirate?
+1 to you if you actually pay for things tho'.
Why do some people think THEIR cultures are the standart for the world?
Yeah, especially when all other cultures see things differently. It's like the dude driving against the traffic on motorways who thinks all others are wrong.
:-)
You mean in Japan they don't weigh in stone and measure in hands? Outrageous! ;-)
In my country, we weigh in balls and measure in cocks, and intellect by the girth of our peckers.
^im guessing you're an american, lol
Actually, no one in the U.S. uses stone or hands anymore... though, curiously, I sometimes hear this from Brits.
measure in hands? you mean like in anime? you know, girls groping each other in order to measure bust sizes?
hence me calling you Dickhead.
A person that grew up at one place in the world will think that their place is the standard for the world because they lived at that place in the world since birth and have not experienced other places around the world.
Hope that helps.
Nah, it's because people think everyone should use one standard, like the metric system for example. A lot of people in the world will use a circle to denote a wrong answer, not just "the whites."
I'm curious as to how China and South Korea practice it, however.
South Korea uses the same system- circles for right answers and ticks for wrong ones.
Hey this is the first place that ticks get a mention.
We were always marked ticks for correct answers and crosses for wrong (in Oz).
The only time zero's (circles) turned up was when marks were being allocated (so I suppose zero was the equivalent of no marks or completely wrong).
Just for fun another "standard/no standard" is nodding the head for "yes" and shaking the head fo "no".
Exactly. In my place we have a proverb, translated to English it goes along the line- "Even just go outside one day, you gonna learn a whole lot of things". Ignorance is bliss, but for others it's a pain in the ass. But for those who act like a bunch of shut-in, i don't think others opinion will matter, especially from the so-called white people (i'm asian btw)
I don't want to sound like a self-righteous smug (if i indeed sounded like that, i'm sorry, but that's the way it come out), but there another idiom "It takes just a few years of our childhood to learn to talk, but it takes our whole life just to learn one simpler thing: to shut up"
the same reasons jews became the scapegoat of hitler's regime.
i love hitler
kill jews!!!!
fuck off faggot
where was Hitler from anyway, Germany or Austria; not that I was fond of the likes of him or anything, just wanna make sure, I mean, if he was from Austria, wouldn't that have made him a foreigner in Germany too?
Hitler was from Austria. His mother had him out of wedlock & now no one knows who the daddy was. To top it off, it is believed that "Hitler" might not be the correct spelling of his name.
Nostradamus predicted him as Hister....=_= And anyway he's just a misunderstood omnicidal maniac. And dead, did I mention he's dead?
Hitler was Austrian. Before they merged, that town was in Austria and it's still in Austria.
its kinda like saying how people from the US, even though they have never been outside the US, they insist that the US is the best place in the world. Patriotism only goes so far, then it just makes people retarded.
Essentially, its the same as US using Inch and feet where everywhere in world uses metric...even the British doesn't use that anymore.
It's more of convention than convenience
Exactly. Fucking feets and inches and yards an Farhenheit, wtf is US culture thinking!!
Ever taken a higher division math or science in the US, or had a job that required such skills? They actually DO use the International System of Units (SI).
You guys are so smart.
Derp, imperial system is used widely by the public. Herp derp.
They wanted to change that in the 70s, you know, start using Celsius and meters and all that stuff. Then they noticed:
"Well shit, that's gonna be expensive making new books and street signs and all. Let's drop that."
I always say, "There are only three countries in the world who officially use the Imperial measurement system, and they're all third world countries: Liberia, Myanmar and the USA."
LOL
I HAVE! PHYSICS MAJOR FTW! learning upper division quantum mechanics! but honestly, the fact that upper division math and science classes in the US use metric systems doesn't change the fact that most Americans use feet or inches :D And over here we are talking about in general, no? Talking about different things here.
You know what the funniest part is? A lot of people have been outside the US, and they still have their patriotism/nationalism/whatever you want to call it.
Fascism makes people retarded, but the one mentioned above can be a good thing. Learn the difference.
You probably have no idea what fascism is besides from your communist propaganda education. If you don't know what you are talking about then kindly STFU.
Patriotism has to be one of the most stupid things created by the human being.
I live in Mexico. I once saw on tv a commercial or whatever it was with a kid saying "Mexico is the best country of the world!".
I was like "lol no".
Makes you realize that the only reason most people who love their country so much do so and think it's the best is BECAUSE THEY WERE BORN IN IT.
Meaning that if they had been born somewhere else that would be the "best country". Or thinking in a different manner: if you had been born in another country, would this one still be the best in your opinion? Saying yes makes no sense. That other country you live in would be.
I'm sorry for a bit of long comment but I just think it's very dumb that the motive to love a country is a mere random chance of where you could have been born.
And of course I am merely talking about those who love their countries just because "we are this".
Same as you.
2ch:Why do some gaijin people think THEIR cultures are the standard for the world?