Japanese language question

Factual Questions
21

Suffixes are relatively easy, -san is basically the default, -chan and -kun are either pet names (i.e. if you know them really, really well) or for children, and the rest are basically titles (like “professor” or “boss”). -sensei is teacher, for instance. Another semi-common sufffix is “-shi” which is used in the news to denote a person the writer has never met (but “-san” is just as acceptable here).

There are a couple others, like -dono and -sama, but -dono basically doesn’t exist outside of fiction anymore (it can mean “lord” or “equal”) and -sama is super-respectful. A sales representative might use -sama to a customer, but if you’re not in a service position, you’ll likely never get a chance to use it for no reason other than usually there’s a more specific title like “saishou” (i.e. if you were talking to the Prime Minister) that you should be using instead.

Edit: I think it CAN get a bit complicated. I think there are special rules if you’re talking to your boss’ boss about your boss, for instance. At least I know that talking to your boss’ boss about your boss causes you to refer to your boss as if he’s in your “in-group” (using humble language) as opposed to when you’re talking to your in-group or a lesser-group, in which case you use respectful language. I’m not sure if this affects suffixes and honorifics too. Of course, this is the really in-depth stuff, this is the kind of stuff that even Japanese young adults have trouble learning.

22

I’ll elaborate on this one. Generally speaking, young children under about 13 are usually addressed with -chan for girls and -kun for boys. Generally -chan is never used for boys, but -kun can be used for girls (albeit somewhat rarely). At about middle school age, -chan is changed to -san for almost all girls, while -kun stays relatively strong for boys – SOMETIMES girls around 16 or 17 will be addressed as -kun for a couple years (usually at work). By about 20 (the age of majority in Japan), pretty much everyone is san, but you still have the odd guy here and there that is called -kun by everyone.

There are scenarios where -kun is still used well into adulthood, I hear that female secretaries (or OLs) are often called -kun for some reason. I hear in some dojos everyone except the head or founder of the dojo is officially “-kun” because they’re “below the master” (though in practice all the students would likely say -sensei anyway).

However, despite these subtleties, you’re more or less safe referring to everyone you meet outside a business setting as <name>-san. And most of all do NOT use no honorific (yobi-sute) unless they’re your bestest friend ever, because that will get you slapped (okay… maybe not if you’re a gaijin).

23

Chan is used for baby boys also, along with kun. Which one you use is a matter of personal preference. Chan is also used for men in extremely informal situations, typically with a nickname or a contraction of the given name. Do not use unless you are good pals in a relaxed setting.

Kun usage continues well into adulthood. It is used to address people who are below you, or equal in rank. These relationships are rather static, a teacher will usually refer to former pupils as kun, even if they’re now 60 year-old judges. Context is important, though, he wouldn’t use kun is said judge was presiding his trial!

Sensei has a broader meaning than just teacher, although by itself that’s what it means. Any person in a profession that is seen to require learning is also a sensei: teachers, doctors and lawyers. Additionally, artists, musicians and craftsmen of a certain stature are also frequently called sensei.

Sama is the honorific form of san. It is used to address customers, gods, as well as when the social setting calls for a great deal of decorum. If you go to Karuizawa, which is where the upper crust of society relaxes, you can hear schoolchildren calling their parents okaa-sama and otoo-sama, instead of okaa-san and otoo-san. This is now rare and archaic, and harkens to the days when children were to honour their parents. Sama can also be used sarcastically, to infer that someone is spoiled, or has an air of nobility.

There is also shi which is an honorific that is only used in writing. You will see it used frequently in the newspaper, where sama often would not fit with the neutral style of writing.

It’s important to note, though, that in many formal situations, people will be addressed by their title or profession. (Think “President Obama.”) For instance, you get Ichiro-senshu (athlete), Hirata-yougisha (suspect), or Toyoda-shachou (company president).

24

I wonder whether that applies to people whose first language is Spanish or Catalan, too, since it is very rare to use a pronoun as a subject (any subject for which English would use a pronoun, we ellide) and starting a sentence with yo/jo is directly considered uncouth (there’s a few exceptions where the presence of the pronoun changes the meaning - “no sé” means “I don’t know”; “yo no sé” would be more like “don’t look at me, I have no idea”). For us, getting used to sticking “I” in front of any sentence where you speak about yourself is one of the hardest parts of English.

25

I should have been more exact – a good way to tell a non-native English-first language speaker is that. Obviously there are probably characteristic flaws Spanish speakers (or German, or Russian) speakers make.

Edit: Jovan – thanks for the correction. I’m intermediate in Japanese and since I’ve never lived there, I only know as much as I’m told by native speakers, and I have to infer and read up on some stuff that’s not always accurate (or at least not accurate in the modern day).

26

Speaking as someone who speaks both Spanish and Japanese, I would say that the situation is analogous but not entirely the same.

They are analogous because both yo no sé and watashi wa shiranai translate in English as “Me I don’t know”, rather than just “I don’t know.”

They are different because in Spanish, the issue is that the subject is included in the verb and can (usually) be inferred from the conjugation. In Japanese, however, there are two issues. The first is that native speakers will drop elements if they are obvious from context, and by default, sentences are assumed to refer to the speaker. So whereas no sé maps very nicely to shiranai, there is no such equivalent with no sabes. Here, you would have to specify the subject.

The other issue is that in Japanese, the subject is not particularly important. Japanese sentences follow the structure theme - attributes - verb. The subject is one of several possible attributes. In the sentence watashi wa shiranai, watashi is not the subject, it is the theme. The difference is subtle but fundamental. When translating to English, the theme may become a subject, but it can also be an object (sushi wa tabenai -> “Sushi, I don’t eat”), and often the nuance of the original sentence will be lost in translation.

That being said, both in Japanese and Spanish it sound like the speaker is going “me, me, me, me, me, me…”

27

Yeah, I’ve heard that there’s not quite any such thing as the wa/ga distinction ingrained into any language other than Japanese.

You can have two translationally equivalent sentences:

sushi wa tabemasu
sushi ga tabemasu,

Both meaning “I eat sushi,” and yet they’re very different. It’s essentially the difference between answering the questions “who eats sushi?” and “what do I eat?” respectively. The Japanese don’t simply answer the question “what is the actor in this sentence” but also must answer “what is this sentence ABOUT? What are we focusing on?” There have been entire native speaker produced Doctoral Theses written on the wa/ga distinction. So yeah, if you want to gotcha practically any non-native speaker regardless of language, watch their wa’s and ga’s. I probably don’t even get it right half of the time after a few years of speaking Japanese.

28

I’m sorry Jragon, sushi ga tabemasu is just wrong. Unless, you’re talking about carnivorous mutant sushi. The correct particle is wo, sushi here is a direct object. (Versus the theme in the first sentence.)

29

Ehr… “me, I don’t know”? Although it sure looks strange to see our subject translated as a direct object.

Thanks for the explanation, gotta love the Dope!

30

The best way I found of expressing Japanese themes in English is by replacing the wa particle with “you know.” You get sentences like: “me, you know, I don’t know,” and “me, you know, I don’t eat sushi” versus “sushi, you know, I don’t eat that.”

In French, we translate “no sé” as je ne sais pas and “yo no sé” as moi je ne sais pas, which is where I got that phrasing.

31

Ah, double translation: the joy of translation, squared. You translated the Spanish emphatic structure to a French emphatic structure, then the French structure to English but not as a whole: word for word. I’d translated it directly and as a whole. I think your English version needs that comma; I think my French teacher would have stuck one in as well but hey, he was Spanish.

32

Actually, the lack of colon in my English sentence was a typo. In French, it’s optional, depending on whether you want to add a pause to further stress the moi.

33

I think more emphasis on syntax is needed for foreign language students. I remember this problem well in spanish. You can’t just say “machete teeth”, for instance, it is “teeth of machete.” But you don’t translate it as “teeth of machete” or “machete’s teeth,” it is just “machete teeth.” I noticed this a lot with translation of lyrics from Spanish to English. If the lyrics are straightforward it isn’t a problem, but if the lyricist waxes poetical in the slightest bit, a lot of people are suddenly thrown off. You can see that here.

I don’t know Japanese but this thread sure reads like it has a similar “problem.”

34

Or on the TV news. “Romney-shi” and “Santorum-shi” were mentioned on this evening’s 7 o’clock news.

35

One more addition: don’t use a suffix after your own name. My Japanese teacher would always get the giggles when we accidentally did that; she said, “It sounds funny,” although she was never able to explain to explain it to us better than that. Anyway, it’s just not done.

36

And what is machete teeth? The only hit I get which seems like it may actually be about something called “machete teeth” is from youtube, is that song what you’re referring to? I’ve never seen a machete with teeth, so I’m a bit confused here about whether there are places where machetes have teeth. I seem to be having a confused day in general.

In my absolutely un-humble opinion, English students of their own language or others do need a lot more emphasis on grammar in general and syntax specifically. It’s a lot easier to make heads and tails of your teachers’ explanations when the teacher understands such complex terms as “passive voice” and “direct object”. Not every language teacher I’ve had had this problem (there was a German one who had it too), but every EFL language teacher I’ve had did have it (that includes two who were teaching French, one of whom taught French grammar in a university - she was a full professor in the Linguistics Department…).

37

To a certain extent, that’s true in English as well. You would not say, “I’m Mr John Smith” – you’d just say “I’m John Smith.”

However, a lot of the niceties of Japanese honorifics don’t translate well into English, so that typically translators of manga and Japanese light novels leave the honorifics untranslated in the English text.

38

Yeah :smack:. Can I put it down to being tired? It’s been a year since I’ve really spoken, but it’s still a really stupid error. FWIW, I meant “sushi wa tabemasu/<watashi ga> sushi wo tabemasu”.

I’ll go away forever now.

39

As an aside, I started understanding my native English a lot better (as in, understanding how it works, not making sense of things communicated in it) once I started taking Latin, simply because of the explicit recognition of grammatical issues.

40

Or insulting. I can tell you that no one is going to take kindly to being hailed with “Sumimasen, ojiisan!”

This reminds me of guys hanging outside 109, trying to get the attention of girls with “Neesan, Neesan, Neesan!” as they walk briskly by.