What I meant, as @Leebo replied, is that personal (in this case, 1st person) pronouns are a matter of personal (self-determined) choice.
I work at an elementary school and there is something unbelievably precious about 6 year-old boys referring to themselves as 俺. I imagine other teachers feel kind of in a similar way, so it probably doesn’t get called out too much even if it is a rule, except for in especially formal settings or schools. Also, I find that my elementary kids speak way more in local dialect than my junior high students, so it might just be that they’re copying what they hear adults speaking around them.
If Watercolor by Shibasaki isn’t too old to use it, then neither are you! ![]()
I also saw a GDC talk by Atsushi Inaba from platinum games where he used 僕.
(I always use 私, personally… but I really like how 僕 sounds!)
i’m 俺 when i’m with friends/wife, else 私
Yeah, me too. Saying 僕 or 俺 just doesn’t come naturally for me. It’s always 私.
Then again, using the ます form also requires effort from me. I always tend to slip into する and した forms even with new acquaintances, which is not polite. But I find it hard to use any other first pronoun than 私, which is polite.
I wonder if this combination is weird. ![]()
This is probably very true. In Tohoku there is a specific and a little odd intonation (I’d like to say intonation as I can’t see how else to describe it). I noticed my BIL trying to use the same intonation in English which is what brought my attention to it (my Japanese is definitely not good enough yet to differentiate between dialects and intonation differences). I thought at first it was just that he spoke a bit weirdly (as his English is very basic, even more so than my Japanese) but then a while later my son also started speaking English with this weird intonation and as Japanese is probably his stronger language now, I had to make sure he didn’t carry on speaking like that as he is obviously still learning English. Anyway I was getting repeatedly annoyed until my husband said it was mimicking the way people in Tohoku speak (as opposed to hkm just copying his uncle) so I let it slide and its cured itself in his English but I suppose he still does it in Japanese!
(Sorry that was a right ramble ![]()
you can tell I don’t get out much…)
Discussion about first person pronouns usually is just about 私/僕/俺, while pronouns besides わたし that are used by girls/women aren’t discussed very much at all. Basically any girl/woman that’s been studying Japanese for a while understands the nuances with わたし/僕/俺, even though 僕 and 俺 aren’t really options for us (I guess for 僕 it depends, but I’m not really interested in using it) but it isn’t as easy to understand うち or あたし.
According to this excellent Tofugu article うち is popular among young women and is associated with Kansai region and it’s comedy culture as well as gyaru culture. The article also has an entry for あたし and many other pronouns.
Oh and one more thing:
I can never imagine myself saying 俺, not even when I’m old. But I can imagine myself saying わし. Funny how different these words feel.
If that’s their perspective, that’s not wrong per se. I was just curious. As with anything like this, Japanese people are not a hive mind so there will be differing views. It’s just a curious contrast to, for example, Kanae’s statements and what I’ve heard in non-scripted, non-fiction shows I’ve watched where I’ve heard men use it.
The Tofugu staff is great, but as with anything cultural involving 10s of millions of people, it’s always good to get other perspectives so you don’t pigeonhole your views.
This has been a very interesting discussion, thanks OP for bringing it up!
In some anime I’ve heard characters using このtheir name when referring to themselves, is that just an anime thing? If not, how does it feel in a normal conversation?
This post was interesting and what is discussed seems related to your question.
I mean for shows and movies its a bit different, anime for example has a relatively rural sound to it. It’s just street style Japanese while, some shows are also overly polite or in business you also wouldn’t use ore when you are talking to your boss
I’ve heard something like that too. Some think it makes you sound a bit feminine as well; especially in Kansai from my experience.
I was told once by a girl I was fairly close with that using “anata” sounded a bit rude when talking to her and that I should use their first name instead. For example, あなたも行く?vs けいこも行く?
Also, one use of uchi that I haven’t seen mentioned in this thread.
It’s the to-go pronoun japanese artists use exceptionally to refer to their original characters, at least on twitter and pixiv.
Most of the times “uchi no ko”, used equally by males or females.
One of them explained to me it was a way to kinda detach one’s very self from their artistic endeavor, as if instead of referring to themselves as a mere human being, you use uchi to give a vibe of small publishing house.
That’s technically a different usage of うち if they use it that way, not the 1st person feminine pronoun. It can just mean “we” or “our” to talk about families, and that’s what that sounds like.
Sure, but in the end it’s still a mean to refer to oneself and one that puzzled me at first.
I wasn’t talking about movies or anime. Of course those are different. That’s why I specifically said “non-scripted, non-fiction” in my post.
Oh i don’t know about that, i only know that drama, tv shows and anime are pretty hard to understand.
I heard that anata sounds rude in a video by a youtuber, I think her name is Misa? I thought anata was the polite way so I thought “will I ever be able to sound polite???” When I thought about it, I don’t think either of my tutors ever used anata with me–they always said Hannahさん. Same goes for people I “know” via social media. One guy calls me 娘 and I understand that Japanese people use family role names for people they aren’t related to, but I never understood if being called 娘 by someone who is basically a stranger is condescending or not.
Anata is the polite way of saying you but in Japanese you don’t say you because it means that you forgot their name/they are unimportant to you. If you are under friends/classmates/etc, i usually say ねぇねぇ or 君