3 ms·

You should -san the outgroup (including when speaking about them in the 3rd person); you should not -san the ingroup. Whether someone is outgroup or ingroup dep

You should -san the outgroup (including when speaking about them in the 3rd person); you should not -san the ingroup. Whether someone is outgroup or ingroup depends on who you're talking to and can change. There are other options as well. In general, Americans who are rubbing up against Japanese people in a not-specifically-Japanese context get lots of leeway on this question. (One has to be good if one works as a full-time employee of a traditionally managed Japanese corporation; if one is entertaining a delegation from Japan at a US event, one gets a lot of kudos for trying.) Note also that there are some people with preferences here, including some preferences which aren't necessarily socially normative.

pndy 7y ago
> you should not -san the ingroup I'm not sure but in that case it would be Abe-tachi?
- patio11 7y ago
  No, -tachi is plural rather than an honorific. If I’m talking to you, who does not work at Stripe with me, and I promise a call from a named coworker, I would call them by their last name with no honorific. This is because my coworker is an ingroup when speaking to anyone outside the company in a business context (the outgroup). If I were talking about that coworker with a member of my team, in most plausible cases the 3rd party coworker is the outgroup in that discussion, and I would refer to them as $NAME-san.