First of all, the blurb under Meaning is the first time I’ve seen both a deliberate typo to emphasize a word and which feels strangely juvenile, and the blurb also uses “males” instead of saying “men”.
This is he but plural. The “ra” makes it plural, making it “they” or “them.” While this gennnnnnerally refers to a group of males, it can include ladies too.
Does this sound weirdly off in tone from other lessons to anyone else?
Another thing I noticed is that despite the meaning indicating this plural is meant to lean towards masculine use, none of the examples under Context imply gender.
彼らは学生
they are students
彼らはカナダ人
they are Canadians
彼らはおもしろい
they are funny
彼らはみんな、カナダ人なんですよ。
They are all Canadians.
これから、彼らとホッケーをしに行くところなんです。
I am about to go play hockey with them.
彼らとは、メープルファームで出会いました。
I met them at a maple farm.
彼らは仲の良い友達です。
They are good friends.
So what’s the correct usage of this word? Is it neutral as the context sentences imply, or meant to be mostly masculine?
Well… you kinda don’t, really. Japanese, on the whole, doesn’t use second- or third-person pronouns with great frequency. Certainly not anywhere close to how much they show up in English. Oh, certainly they exist, and you’ll definitely see them popping up in media, but you should try to break the English habit of every sentence being he did this, she went there, they were French and so forth.
The feminine equivalent is 彼女ら, but I can count on the toes of one hand how many times I’ve actually seen that in use. More casual and/or derogatory versions include 奴ら and あいつら.
Eh, I think the lessons are not weird compared to the other lessons. Wanikani descriptions have always been deliberately rather unique.
I believe “males” here refer to a broad category of all male humans, i.e. boys and men. If it says just “men” it would imply an adult male and exclude boys. Males are more general.
Also, I don’t understand what do you mean for “masculine use”? The word 彼ら already implies that it’s a group of guys (that can include a few women). However, English does lack a gendered plural form because there’s only 1 default plural that is “They”. In some contexts, “Karera” can be translated as “those guys”. Which is also can be neutral in English, but still have some underlying “maleness.”
Another thing to note that ‘-ra’ is a casual, not very polite way of denoting something is plural. Imo the “correct” usage is probably to use it in casual conversation towards a group of people who are mostly male or a mix of genders. Using kare-ra to refer to a group of women (with no men at all) sounds weird.
I think it might seems weird if English is your first language. In German for example it works the same when you have words with the „masculine“ article. Put in plural (Student —> Studenten) it can also mean a mixed group. For purely female groups it would sound weird. For me I have the feeling 彼ら works the same way. Therefore, the example sentences and due to the lack of gender in English words, cannot show the gender of the people. Think about it as maybe purely male or mixed group (eg the ones with the Canadians).
Maybe worth pointing out that, while you probably should not casually use these words yourself, they appear everywhere all the time in manga and similar media (alongside お前, てめえ, 奴ら etc…). So well worth knowing anyway.
That’s because of English mainly, your “they” isn’t gendered. Also 彼ら can also sometimes refer to mixed gender as well (but not a fully feminine group):
Is this a thing? For some reason I feel like 彼女たち is fairly common, but I don’t think I have ever seen 彼女ら. The other way around I feel like 彼ら is much more common than 彼たち. Are there any good ways to gauge relative frequency of words like this in practical use?
The only thing that bothers me about this is the use of “ gennnnnnerally” because this makes it unnecessarily harder for those users who may not speak English fluently - and there are plenty of them who use WK since a similar service may not exist in their native language.
Otherwise it’s fine. The examples don’t imply that the “they/them” are men because that’s how English works, we typically would provide that through context. (Ex: if you’re watching a sports game for a male division and you’re talking about the players and say “they”, you probably wouldn’t bother to point out the gender.)
I guess it would be nice to have one example that uses “those guys”, since that could be a natural translation for some sentences too.
I can see this argument. But I think you’ll really struggle with WaniKani in general if your English isn’t pretty good already. In that context making the blurbs a bit more ‘alive’ and memorable is completely fine I’d say.
Your explanation helped me, thank you. I did not realise it was attempting to explain “kare-ra” was for mixed-gender groups, and only sounds weird when used to refer to women-only groups.
Though, again, weird as hell seeing people use male/female when they mean genders and not sex.
I agree that 彼ら is much more like “guys”. It can encompass a group that contains females as well. I’ve even seen women refer to a group of women as guys before, though admittedly that happens much less often, it isn’t non-zero. Usually workspace related when I think about it.
Manager at the end of a staff meeting: “Ok, guys, let’s get to work!”
Boss talking to employees: “Thank you, guys, for an excellent quarter.”
etc.
Neither of those examples indicate the group being spoken to are strictly male. I’m sure you can probably find some non-work examples as well.
You’re totally right. I must’ve gotten all jumbled in the head
Edit: Ah, now that I’m actually awake and looked over it again, I think my intention was just to point out that it’s similar in usage in terms of mainly meaning males but being able to encompass both as well.
