"I can't eat this garbage!"

[nagaoh]

Refer to Youtube video, partial link:

youtube.com/watch?v=4lmctt7QRNI

At 4:04, Ninety-Nine is trying to teach the foreigners "Yamato Damashi" by showing them how to receive a Japanese meal served to them. In order to be cool, they say, you need to flip the table over and exclaim,

「こんなもん食えるか！」

Which I think you could loosely translate to "I can't eat this garbage!"
I'm trying to understand the expression a little more though, because it seems to literally read "Can I eat this sort of thing?" -- asking if it's edible instead of declaring that it's inedible -- 「こんなもん食えない！」　　Can anyone clarify what's going on? Would you ever say 食えない　or would it always be 食えるか?

Thanks!

[nice gaijin]

I don't have Japanese input here at work, but I wouldn't normally use that verb for "eat," unless if i'm talking to friends. There's nothing wrong with using the negative potential form, but I would think that the implication in the original statement was more along the lines of "You expect me to eat this!?" Obviously not a direct translation.

Back to your question, it's a common structure to use a question in the form to imply a negative meaning. Sort of like by asking "Is this edible!?" one is saying "This is inedible!"

[Bucko]

くう is a pretty crass word for 'eat'. I remember being at a restaurant with Japanese family and they're son used this word, who positively got a quick snap behind the ears and told to speak properly.

The 'potential' form of a verb has two meanings. If the "object" is the subject (i.e. marked by は), then it has been judged to have (or not have) a certain quality. このコンピュータは使えない means "this computer is useless"/"this computer is unusable". It most certainly doesn't mean "I can't use this computer". That would be このコンピューターを使えない.

So although there's no particle in こんなもん食えるか, I'm assuming that こんなもん is the subject (i.e. marked by は）. So the meaning would be something like, "is this stuff edible?!", but remembering that もん and くう are pretty crude words.

[Bucko]

I just watched that show in full. Damn that's some funny stuff. "Unko chin chin!"

[FrustratedDave]

くう is a pretty crass word for 'eat'. I remember being at a restaurant with Japanese family and they're son used this word, who positively got a quick snap behind the ears and told to speak properly.

The 'potential' form of a verb has two meanings. If the "object" is the subject (i.e. marked by は), then it has been judged to have (or not have) a certain quality. このコンピュータは使えない means "this computer is useless"/"this computer is unusable". It most certainly doesn't mean "I can't use this computer". That would be このコンピューターを使えない.

So although there's no particle in こんなもん食えるか, I'm assuming that こんなもん is the subject (i.e. marked by は）. So the meaning would be something like, "is this stuff edible?!", but remembering that もん and くう are pretty crude words.
食う is fine to use。　めし食いに行こら？　大阪住んでらよな？　こんな言葉はよう使うで

[nagaoh]

Thanks for the great answers. Bucko I think the video is hilarious too, and the various gaijin were all very good sports. Except for the British guy who appeared to get offended when Takashi called him a 「フーリガン」.　Personally, I wouldn't really get so bent out of shape being called a "hooligan", but maybe this carries some connotation in Japanese I don't understand.

助けてありがとう。