Talk:Japanese/Lessons/Personal pronouns

anata-gata
I once read about anata-gata which was translated as "you (honorific)". Which one is more polite, anata-sama or anata-gata? Is anata-gata archaic? Agro1986 14:39, 31 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Hi. Anata-gata(あなた方) is plural, whereas anata-sama(あなた様) is singular. And in fact anata-gata is not exactly honorific I guess. In this page, it is labeled as "formal", and I think it's appropriate. Anata-gata is not archaic. You can use it but as described in the article, calling by name is preferred (e.g. 鈴木さんたち). I feel anata-sama is a bit archaic or stagy. Rather, just anata is used maybe... Or, in business situation, okyaku-sama(お客様) or sochira-sama(そちら様) is used. Tomos also points out "sensei". - Marsian / talk 03:56:07, 2005-09-01 (UTC)

Kimi?
This article implies this is the typical casual second-person pronoun boys (using boku) use, but this isn't exactly the idea I've gotten from my experience. (Although I am not a very reliable source, having the dubious experience of about 40 total episodes of subtitled anime and a brief friendship with an exchange student.) The main usage I've seen is as (A) affectionate, often used towards a girlfriend/wife and (B) condescending, used to basically anyone you call -kun because they are lower than you. The du-jour pronoun that boys use among other boys appears to be omae (and this is the part I can verify from that exchange student). I can imagine the humorous misunderstandings now...

ケント：君が本当馬鹿だなぁ

太郎：おい’おかまじゃないぜ

-173.66.219.87 (talk) 21:14, 13 July 2010 (UTC)