LLearn Japanese

Confused myself reading this for a second

  • February 9, 2025

At first I thought they spelled it wrong in hiragana すべる. Then I thought they spelled it right but with a mix of hiragana and katakana すバる

by jonnycross10

34 comments

  5. すべる or 滑る means to slip or slide, so I think the car being a Subaru is just a coincidence and doesn’t have anything to do with what they were trying to say.

  10. Looks like it actually used to be すべるbut someone stuck a patch of snow in to make it バ

  11. I feel like the angle of the photo plus the lump of snow on the brand logo could give that illusion due to how close those two kana look visually. And anyone who can write kana would/should know.

    That being said – if you can’t spell and plug that into a translate app I can also see how we got this result.

    Or it could be an inside joke. Either way, good post.

  14. I think using katakana adds emphasis in this case, so it would be read something like suBAru – which makes me think of Oozora Subaru from Hololive haha

  15. I immediately thought it was
    すべる since it’s snowing. Is that what they meant? I wonder.

  21. There’s a warning label that’s supposed to say ‘すべる’ (‘Slippery’), but the letter ‘へ’ ended up on this bulge in the car part. With snow piling up on it, the text turned into some strange word. If it looks like ‘スバル’ (Subaru), that’s the name of a star cluster, so it loses the intended meaning entirely!

  22. I was having such a difficult time believing I forgot hiragana because I kept going “…that’s suberu and not Subaru?”

  27. ハの字 is what the car community called cars with cambered out wheels. Maybe the use of katakana here is referencing that? Altho the car doesn’t look very cambered.

  28. It DOES say すべる。 The snow has just fallen down on the top of べ. It’s punny.

  33. Just as I finished learning Katakana I spotted my friend in a t-shirt with Mario and some text in Katakana. My proficiency was nonexistent at this point, but I am trying my best to read the text. マ-リ-オ, ma – ri – o. Mario. Sometimes learning is unrewarding.

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