![]() Yamaguchi-san wa hima desu ka? 山口さんは暇ですか?Īre you (Yamaguchi-san) free (right now)?. ![]() ![]() The most common and most preferred way to say "you" in Japanese is not using an actual word which is a pronoun, but, instead, using the person's name with an honorific like san さん or even his title.įor example, if you were talking to a guy called Yamaguchi 山口: The choice of pronouns in fiction, media, anime and manga are governed by a completely different set of rules than real life. So anything that looks like it's Japan and Japanese in anime is not really. If that wasn't enough, anime Japanese is a cartoon version of real life Japanese. In sum: it's way too fucking different and weird. This happens because in English "you" is purely a grammar necessity, while in Japanese "you" is associated more with a person, and anything associated with talking to or about a person in Japanese carries ranking, status, respect and politeness connotations. We don't have weird nuances attached to such a simple word. That's totally different from how "you" works in English. In most cases this translates to how rude you are being to the person you're talking to. This means that which "you" word you use shows what you think you are and what you think the person you are talking to is. Because a lot of referring to other people in the language is associated with the difference of status between the guy who's saying "you" and who "you" is in the context. Origin of kisama & Why kisama has sama Honorificīefore anything else, a warning about Japanese, anime, and English pronouns.īasically, the way pronouns work in Japanese is culturally and linguistically different from how they work in English.But since these are the most popular in anime and manga, I'll only talk about them. Just like watashi, ore and boku all mean "I" in Japanese, anata, omae, teme, kimi and kisama can mean "you" in Japanese, that is, they are all "second person pronouns," ni-ninshou daimeishi 二人称代名詞.Īnd that's not even all of them. Is this even possible?! Are there differences between the meanings of these words? And if you have watched anime enough, you may have figured out that they all mean "you" in Japanese. If you have watched anime once in your life, you may have heard one of these words: anata 貴方, omae お前, temee 手前, kimi 君 and kisama 貴様.
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