R-E-S-P-E-C-T - it's all in da lingo

[Steve Bildermann]

..I was going to call this item 'know your ho's from your ko's' but GG would have email Chisato and I'd be radioactive dust on the kitchen floor so I thought better of it......

Manifestations of Gender Distinction in the Japanese Language (it reads a lot better than it sounds)

http://www.coolest.com/jpfm.htm

Present day Japanese has evolved very differently from European languages. One relatively unique aspect of Japanese is the diversity of its gender specific constructs and their usage. In the current state of Japanese and its many dialects, speaker gender plays an important role in word choice, sentence structure, tone of voice and more generally the ways in which a person can present him/herself with the language. The importance of roles in Japanese society makes the speaker obligated to conform to language stereotypes whereas in English, the language of self-proclaimed individualists, social forces have been pushing to neutralize the inherent biases of the language. Even though there are ancient stereotypes still embodied in the Japanese language and culture, we are beginning to see these break down as well.

A look at the "hip" youth walking the streets of Harajuku or Shinjuku shows us visually just how seriously doomed the 60s to 80s stereotypes of the Japanese are. With the relative financial stability of most Japanese families comes a generation of children who suddenly have free time and money to spend. Looking overseas and absorbing most of popular American media the Japanese for the first time had a flood of strong female role models.

[Charles]

Garbage. Festering rubbish. This essay would have gotten a D from my professors, it's a sloppy repackaging of tidbits cobbled together from other sources, with the author's special misinterpretation added in. I especially laughed at his lame analysis of the etymology of womens' names. I spent a semester studying with a professor who wrote a weighty tome about the etymology of names, it was the most boring, sleep-inducing crap I ever studied, but it was immaculately researched and basically taught me that as soon as you think you've deciphered all the deepest levels of a subject in Japanese literature or language, you are completely mistaken and you've barely scratched the surface.

And besides, there's a special place in hell reserved exclusively for gaijin who use kunreishiki.

[Andocrates]

That was an interesting read, a lot of very interesting language points in there.

[Taro Toporific]

... besides, there's a special place in hell reserved exclusively for gaijin who use kunreishiki.

Ohhhh, don't get me started Charles about the "official"
Kunreishiki system for representing the sounds in Roomaji AKA Roman letters.

However, my favorite observation that I often muse out loud is that, " When speaking Japanese it's impossible to say anything with out being sexist, ageist or racist and often all three while being vague." Demo, ware ware nihonjin...

[Charles]

That was an interesting read, a lot of very interesting language points in there.

It might seem like it, the actual language is correct but I vehemently disagree with his interpretations. You'd be better off to learn keigo and gender-distinct language from a textbook, minus all the vague guesswork about WHY it's that way.

If you want a REALLY good book on this subject, go read "Minimum Essential Politeness" by Agnes Niyekawa. Alas it was out of print last time I checked, but Kodansha is gradually repackaging and republishing its language instruction books, so it might be back in print. It's worth locating this book, it's the best single Japanese language book I ever read.

BTW, I had to special order this book, the clerk at my local US bookseller handed me the book and did a double-take at the title. He declared it to be the best book title he'd ever seen, and said, "it's like a whole philosophy of life, in just three words!" Oh if only he knew...

[Charles]

However, my favorite observation that I often muse out loud is that, " When speaking Japanese it's impossible to say anything with out being sexist, ageist or racist and often all three while being vague." Demo, ware ware nihonjin...

There's a linguistics book I'll have to recommend to you once it resurfaces in my library, I can't remember the title. But anyway..

The author (a bilingual nihonjin who grew up in London and Tokyo, currently a prof of linguistics at Oxford) studied expat nihonjin. She said that most nihonjin who go abroad and speak English say they feel liberated from the straightjacket of Japanese. They no longer have to continually evaluate their relationship to the person they speak and their relationship to the world at every single moment, they no longer need to conform their language according to their place in the pecking order. However, some expats can't handle the lack of formal structure and develop mental illnesses. I have personally witnessed this happen, I knew an exchange student who was shipped home after being locked up in a mental ward and diagnosed with schizophrenia. He just couldn't handle the sloppiness of American relationships, he needed a more rigid structure.

Oe Kenzaburo says all Japanese are schizophrenic. This condition may only be visible once a nihonjin leaves Japan. Does a fish understand water?