I’ve heard this reason before and it makes sense. But I don’t remember where I heard it from or if it was a reputable source.
Its definitely not considered as strange in Japanese to refer to oneself in third person;
when I tutored Japanese people in the US one of my students was a thirty year old business woman who was very advanced in English. I had to explain to her how in English its just not a thing people say unironically. She said that she really only used third person when she was with her family.
Even one of the mothers of one of my students refered to herself as -mama- sometimes instead of -watashi-, but now that I think about it was only when we were speaking with/around her child…
YES! This is actually a very true Japanese lesson. When a woman is speaking to a male counterpart, she can use ぼく or おれ to mean “you,” referring to the other person. It’s derived from context that she isn’t speaking about herself and instead to the man in the conversation. Yes, this is a little bit clashy with western ideas about non-binary gender, but it’s another culture.
It also shows that pronouns in Japanese aren’t as fixed as they are in English.
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