Is that an Obama Bobble Head figurine I see? Why yes, it is! Some plucky employee has scrawled a message below it talking about black people. Do you know your grammar well enough to decipher it?
黒人が全員歌がウマイ訳ではないよ。
こくじんが ぜんいん うたが ウマイ わけでは ないよ。
First up then, ‘all black people’ – 黒人が全員. Following that: 歌がウマイ – good at singing (literally ‘good songs’). Note here that ウマイ is used in katakana, but it can also be written in hirgana and kanji as so: 美味い (for taste) and 上手い (for being good at something). Generally then, うまい can be loosely translated to ‘good’, in a casual sense.
Then the particular grammar for this post: 訳ではない. This usually translates to ‘not necessarily’, ‘is not the case’ or ‘is not true that’. It can help to think of it as leading onto something else much of the time. For example ‘it’s not necessarily the case that X, but…’ or ‘it’s not that, but…’.
So in the example above, we might translate it as:
Not all black people are good at singing.
‘(Some are actually not good at singing!)’ Is implied from the use of わけではない. Obviously the sales employee was joking around. They evidently associate black people with singing!
Some more examples:
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