The final 女の子 / 女子 / 少女 / and all words for "girls" thread

Japanese Language
#3

Are you… 神様? :durtle_love:

Really appreciate this mate (:

10 Likes
#4

That is exactly what i need :grin: :durtle_love:

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#5

I think for completeness this needs 女性、幼女、女 too.

#6

I will add 幼女, but the others don’t really cause any confusion on the “girl” front, as far as I’m aware. It’s true that girls are included in 女性 and 女, but “girl” wouldn’t be used as a gloss for them, absent of some other context.

#7

I think 女性 is a good mention to include because its a safe default for any female and is pretty much expected most of the time.
It also rounds out the age thing you have going on nicely.

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#8

I suppose. Just trying to avoid a situation where we have every possible word for females on here, since the goal was originally just to cover the 3 that cause the most topics on WK.

Edit: Added

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#9

Does 女性 have a colder, more scientific nuance to it like “female” does in English?

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#10

Great thread, thanks! :relaxed:

Started wondering about ギャル. Never heard of it (probably because I am an ignorant person), but is there any equivalent in English for this? Who uses this? Why? I know it may be an insult, but I’m just curious.

#11

In the sense of it as a の adjective, I’d say it seems just as normal as female as an adjective in English.

女性の教師
female teacher

And I don’t get the impression that it’s odd to say 女性 as a noun, the way it would be to say female, just by itself, in English.

女性がいた
there was a female

Yeah, sounds odd in English, but I don’t think it’s odd in Japanese.

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#12

Good to know, thanks!

#13

Agree. In my experience, my female Japanese friends default to 女性 a lot of times. I actually do too because then you don’t get into the mess of “should I call someone 20yo+ a girl” kinda of thing. They correct my Japanese every time and never had any correction with 女性. So I’d say it’s pretty safe.

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#14

Its basically the default because it doesn’t assume anything other than what it says.

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#15

Though one of the definitions is “woman.” So I still think it’s more normal to use it for adults, when it’s a noun.

When it’s a の adjective, that’s different.

3 Likes
#16

This is the great! I’ve bookmarked it.

#17

I think a good equivalent would be “girly girl” based on what I’ve read. Feel free to correct me or add something onto it.

Also here’s a good article from Tofugu: https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/gyaru-go/

#18

Oh wow, this is great and it saved either spending a while googling all this or posting here and looking like a dumbass!

Is there something similar but for the “woman” synonyms? Or other synonyms WK introduces for example?

So far it gets kinda confusing when there’s a couple vocab for “few” or “very”, as I wouldn’t know in what context to apply each vocab over the other.

#19

I might try to do others as well. But we get this question a few times a month, I’d say, so it was a priority.

2 Likes
#20

Anki’d all of this. Many thanks for the great write-up :smiley:

#21

お嬢さん
お姉さん
both used in the context of addressing a girl of appropriate age whose name you don’t know.

But maybe these are different than the kinds of words you are trying to collect.

edit: politely* addressing

#22

I see how they could be ones people would have questions about in this sense.