We'll start by examining the two ends of the stereotypical gendered speech style spectrum - 女言葉 (women's language) and 男言葉 (men's language). Still, understanding the first perspective is also important, since stereotypical gendered speech styles influence speakers as they make choices in their language use. Our main focus in this article is to see how real people with diverse gender identities use Japanese, so we'll mostly concern ourselves with this second perspective - real life, practical language use. There are two different ways that we can approach this question - from the perspective of stereotype and ideology, and from the perspective of practical language use. Setting out to define gendered language is a more complicated task than you would expect.
If you haven't already, we also recommend installing a text translator plug-in for your browser, such as Rikaikun or Safarikai to help you read the kanji in this article. If you need to brush up, have a look at our Ultimate Hiragana Guide and Ultimate Katakana Guide.
Prerequisites: This article assumes you already know hiragana and katakana. My hope is that this article leaves you with a more thorough understanding of gendered language options in Japanese, and empowers you to make the choices that best suit your unique identity and communicative purposes. We'll also discuss オネエ言葉, another stereotypical gendered language style that originated in the gay bar scene, and is now highly visible in Japanese media. We'll take a look at the stereotypical gendered language speech styles known as 女言葉 ("women's language") and 男言葉 ("men's language"), and then dive deeper into how speakers deviate from these linguistic gender norms in real life. This article aims to give a more queer-inclusive overview of gendered Japanese language use. If you don't identify that way, it's even more difficult to figure out! Even if you identify as cisgender (a person whose gender identity and birth sex are the same), the traditional "girls use this, boys use that" explanation for gendered Japanese can be hard to wrap your mind around. As great as this is, the array of gendered language choices can be hard to navigate, and many language learners receive overly-simplified or contradictory advice about gendered language use. In English, we rely on others to call us by our preferred pronouns, such as "he," "she," or "they," but in Japanese, the power to express your gender through language often rests in your hands.
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Over time, I came to understand that Japanese is full of different language features that communicate your gender identity. It made me wonder what other aspects of my language use were communicating information I wasn't aware of. This answer only confused me further, because I had definitely heard men more masculine than I stick 〜わ to the end of their sentences too. I wasn't yet aware of any other features of gendered language in Japanese, so I assumed it had something to do with my intonation - usually a dead giveaway that I'm gay when speaking English. His statement caught me off guard, because I knew I'd been using the "male" pronoun 僕. I was an assistant junior high school teacher, and was outside helping the PE teacher set up for the upcoming sports festival. Enjoy the ride down one of the dirtier stretches of memory lane.I still remember the first (of many times) that someone told me, All of the nudity in these cases was planned before execution - although in at least one case, everybody got a bit more than they bargained for.
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This list - 10 instances of nudity on pro wrestling TV - contains no wardrobe malfunctions, nor does it contain any overzealous schoolboy roll ups. From Sable to Jacqueline to Mae Young to Willam Regal, WWE (and its imitators) sought to get people talking by breaking the last taboo of pro wrestling. More than just raunchy angles filled with innuendo that appealed to a demographic of high school boys, WWE broadcast actual nudity on its programming (which really appealed to high school boys). Beginning in the late 1990s, WWE was a haven for the sensational and the smutty - there was more violence, more salty language, and of course, more sex. Though today, WWE proudly operates under a TV-PG banner - declaring itself family entertainment appropriate for all ages - longtime fans know that's a more recent development.