Yeah, I’ve had multiple Japanese teachers bring up that term when learning how to talk about family members and told the class to avoid using it. So, yeah, it’s a bit odd for them to spin it as a Westerner thing as they were all Japanese. 
4 Likes
Yeah, 家内 is now considered “old-fashioned” because of the connotation… But how could that have happened? That would require young people in Japan to have stopped using it for some reason… But we learned they don’t even really have a concept of taking offense to this kind of thing, so it’s quite mysterious indeed.
5 Likes
家内 is old-fashioned. it is not, however, rude. that’s a distinction to be made here, especially since this thread is all about this topic.
or were you trying to say anything else, @Leebo?
You implied that Japanese people have no issue with it. It’s old-fashioned for a reason.
2 Likes
You need to learn to read instead of assuming.
What’s going on there anyway, you pissed off about something? I rarely see you that aggressive.
What incorrect assumption am I making?
You said
Then 家内 was pointed out, and you said
In other words, westerners thinking that Japanese people would be upset about the word 家内 is unreasonable.
The word has fallen out of disuse precisely because of the implications of the kanji used to make it.
4 Likes
家内 is widely used. maybe not in your “woke” circles though I assume?
The obvious conclusion to be drawn here is that Hyogo Prefecture is a more enlightened place than Chiba Prefecture. 
1 Like
seems like there’s an enlightenment going on in the inaka. maybe it’ll reach tokyo some day, lol.
Okay, it’s widely used. Everyone go ahead and use it without reservation.
all right, first of all:
and then, you use 家内 when referencing your own wife, and you’ll be hard pressed finding anyone acting all shocked and offended by this.
a) japanese people are not that confrontational to begin with, and
b) this wouldn’t be of their business anyway, and japanese people don’t stick their nose where it doesn’t belong.
i call my wife 連れ合い by the way. there’s lots of other terms you can use, かみさん for example, and not one of these has the connotations you’re talking about.
at least not here in the tokyo area.
That’s definitely not the feeling I’ve gotten from multiple Japanese women. And they hardly qualify as being part of any “woke” crowd. The fact that they even went out of their way to point out the word as being something to avoid using signaled well more than it just being simply old-fashioned.
9 Likes
I bet insensitive words in English won’t get any google results.
Did you take my “use it without reservation” thing to mean I thought you could use it to refer to someone else’s wife? That’s not even on the table, we’re talking about what women would want to be referred to as. That’s obvious since it’s the category of word we’re dealing with.
2 Likes
i asked some of my female friends if they mind the term, and one of them said it’s an intimate word, of course they won’t. she’s in her 50s, go figure. it is old-fashioned, but it’s not rude, and people do use it here. i mean i hear it in daily life when people talk about their spouses.
you can now stand on your head and kick in the air and scream at me, but that just won’t change reality, you know.
and that’s a recurring theme through all of the language and exactly what i wrote about above. how you speak, what you use, depends on who you talk with, what you talk about, situation, setting and many more factors.
coming here and telling me “no, that’s rude” just made me laugh. i thought you’re a bit more knowledgeable, but you seem to have your head stuck in your kanji books.
I get 95 million results for アナルセックス. So I guess by your metric that means it’s perfectly okay to just throw around in conversations? Otherwise, not sure what Google search hits is supposed to signify.
1 Like
dude, i know about 50 people i can use the word with anytime.
1 Like
I do, too. Still doesn’t change the fact that most people would consider that rude to just throw around. Google hits notwithstanding. Using google hits to prove something is not rude is absurd.
if you would calm your tits, scroll up and read again what i wrote, you would see that i described exactly that you can use some part of the language with one person, but not with another, or with one person under these circumstances, but not under others. it’s kinda exhausting to repeat myself, especially if you could just scroll up and read again.
Except the entire premise of this was some false notion that only Westerners think certain Japanese words are rude. Then you keep shifting the goalposts when anyone points to evidence to the contrary. But what do I know, I just get my cues from natives who clearly don’t know anything…
6 Likes