Differentiating "funny" and "interesting"

Question

When speaking, I tend to use the word 「面白い」to mean both funny things and interesting things, but there is often a need to distinguish between these two meanings, and I sort of struggle with that. After all, "It's funny." and "This is interesting." convey very different feelings in English, and sometimes one or the other might not be appropriate.

I hope it's okay to ask a couple of very closely related questions on this topic, so as to avoid duplication:

(1) What is a natural way to say unambiguously that something is just funny, as in a really good joke?

(2) If a native speaker hears a sentence in a vacuum (without context) such as 「その本は面白い」, what kind of image comes to mind? Is it interesting, funny, or a kind of combination of both?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

(1) What is a natural way to say unambiguously that something is just funny, as in a really good joke?

You can say:

• ウケる: This is grammatically a verb, but it's commonly used semantically like an adjective, similarly to how English speakers say "It sucks" or "It rocks". This is also common as a response to a good joke.
• 笑える: "laughable"
• おもろい: This is a Kansai-ben version of 面白い, but it has a strong tendency to mean "funny", especially when used intentionally by a non-Kansai speaker.

Nevertheless, you should not underestimate 面白い. In my opinion, avoiding 面白い simply because it's technically ambiguous is almost like avoiding the English word "hot" altogether just because it's ambiguous between spicy and high temperature. The chance of misunderstanding is very small in reality.

(2) If a native speaker hears a sentence in a vacuum (without context) such as 「その本は面白い」, what kind of image comes to mind?

It'll be like "worth reading". Pleaee see this question: 日本人は「面白い」と聞いて何を感じますか？