9 ms·
I have an Australian friend whose wife is Japanese. He learned speaking Japanese from her. When they lived in Japan for a while he was frequently the subject o
by virtualritz 5y ago
I have an Australian friend whose wife is Japanese.
He learned speaking Japanese from her.
When they lived in Japan for a while he was frequently the subject of jokes about how "he speaks like a woman" among male Japanese native speakers.
See https://bondlingo.tv/blog/male-and-female-japanese-how-males-and-females-speak-differently-in-japanese/ https://bondlingo.tv/blog/male-and-female-japanese-how-males...
- rgrieselhuber 5y agoThis is very common in Japan, it is honestly very cringe-inducing to see Western males coming off this way, it seems needy and submissive more than anything.
- Muromec 5y ago>it seems needy and submissive more than anything. Never before did the idea of being reborn as a woman in Japan in a next life sound that bad.
- rgrieselhuber 5y agoThe funny thing is, Japanese women don't really come off that way, it's just how they talk and they are quite adept at achieving their goals with their "feminine" language. One gets the impression that many of the Western men who learn Japanese from their wives and girlfriends are actually trying to emulate this ability to manipulate their world through softer / more social language and achieve similar levels of success, but it doesn't really work for them and seems sociopathic instead. Hence, the cringe.
- teawrecks 5y agoInteresting. Would "simping" be a better term than sociopathic? Obviously that's not necessarily what's going on, but Japanese is already so contextual, I imagine it's difficult to separate/rationalize how someone speaks the way they do from the why.
- rgrieselhuber 5y agoThat’s not a bad way to describe it.
- QuadmasterXLII 5y agoEnglish actually has different languages for 12 year olds and adults. Vocabulary like “cringe” is fine for kids, but makes you come off as judgmental and unpleasant when used in a more formal context.
- lamontcg 5y agoI keep hoping that word will eventually eat itself.
- teawrecks 5y agoThe only way that will happen is if adults start using it. Next time you meet a 12 year old who says something is "cringe", tell them they are "cringe" for using the word "cringe".
- egypturnash 5y agoI wonder if this will continue to be a generational thing, I still have a smattering of eighties Valley-speak because that was pretty popular in my teen years. Maybe people who are in their early teens now will be as likely to call something they don't like "cringe" in their fifties as I am to call something "bogus".
- rgrieselhuber 5y agoFind a better word for that feeling you get when you hear fingernails on chalkboards and we can use that instead on this formal Hacker News setting.
- 0xdeadb00f 5y ago> Find a better word for that feeling you get when you hear fingernails on chalkboards Aroused?
- bckr 5y agoIt's fine to use the word "cringe", but it might be cringe to use the phrase "it's cringe".
- akyoan 5y agoI feel this in my own life, as an European grown up mostly around my mother, sister, and younger female cousins. My father lived abroad for long periods of time. Women nowadays keep assuming I'm gay due to my mannerisms.
- canadianfella 5y agoA European not “an”.
- eesmith 5y agohttps://notalwaysright.com/a-gender-fluid-household/157967/ https://notalwaysright.com/a-gender-fluid-household/157967/ . Short version: 11 year old living only with women picked up practices about how to wear at towel, what to shave, wearing mascara, etc. that his mother's boyfriend both supports and gently points out they are typically gendered.
- dahfizz 5y agoThis strikes me as very strange... How did the mom not realize that her kid was shaving his legs and wearing mascara? I guess it would be one thing if the kid was doing it with intention, but he clearly wasn't. How did she never talk to her son about that?
- eesmith 5y agoDon't forget bias error. The linked-to site gets contributions from around the world. There's 45 million mothers in the US, so source population of about 100 million mothers. If 0.1% of families have no other male presence that's 100K families. If 0.01% of these mothers don't notice [1], that's still 10 families. And it's the unusual which make it to sites like these. ("When dog bites man, it's not news. But when man bites dog, now that is news!") [1] Or it could be the mother didn't know how to bring it up, or thought she was being supportive of her son's choices.
- anotherman554 5y ago
- protomyth 5y agoIt happens in some of the plains tribal languages. One of my female bosses at a grant program learned to speak her native language from her uncles. Her female relatives tease her about speaking like a man.
- w0mbat 5y agoThe same thing happened to a friend of my dad. A long time ago, the friend was a British diplomat living somewhere like Singapore and he made friends with the two Japanese sisters in the next apartment. They used to have tea and chat and he helped them practice their English. Being good with languages he soon picked up a lot of Japanese from them. One day he got invited to an event at the Japanese Embassy and was excited to be able to show off his secret language skills. However, any Japanese man he spoke to would react strangely and it looked like they were trying hard not to laugh. He eventually got someone to explain that he was using “women’s words”, and the effect of a dignified English gentleman in a tuxedo talking like that was hilarious to them.
- moffkalast 5y agoGuy was trying to say "Greetings gentlemen, allow me to introduce myself" but all they heard was "Gweetings gentwemen, awwow me tuwu intwoduce mysewf".
- AlgorithmicTime 5y agoMy naammme is Biggus Dickus.
- readthenotes1 5y agoSince education in the classics is nearly non-existent: https://youtu.be/kx_G2a2hL6U https://youtu.be/kx_G2a2hL6U "Remember what punishments befell us in this world when we ourselves did not cherish learning nor transmit it to other men."
- numpad0 5y agoI guess more like “oh god this is terrible please no” vs “for god’s sake don’t fucking do that”
- amelius 5y agoWhat is curious about this, is that his wife didn't find it off-putting that her husband was speaking woman-lingo all this time.
- commandlinefan 5y agoGood point - my wife is hispanic and I've learned Spanish mostly from her. She's quick to correct me when I use a phrase that she uses all the time that men shouldn't (like "que feito", for example).
- ncpa-cpl 5y agoSpanish varies a lot depending on the country, but I've noticed this: My female Spanish speaking friends use: Holi, Porfi (Hi/Please) While the male ones use Hola and Porfa (Hi/Please)
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- pvaldes 5y agoThis is typical Flanders-tongue but are interesting. The goal is not sounding femenine, is sounding childish. Something that can be useful Porfa is used only when the context is casual. Porfi is extra-casual and childish but men can use it perfectly in the correct context. An example > Por favor (Please) let me eat cake. Not. > Porfa (pleaaase, more pleading and casual) ... No way, is for later. > Porfiiii... (please,please,please... big eyed Cat of Shrek mode) Well, okay... > (bingo!) In Spain using a childish tone by men is perfectly acceptable as long as you turn to the normal mode fast and you have a purpose. Can be used to express a very close relationship with your audience. As a cute effect. And much more important, can be used as comic relief. When mimicking a child you reduce your level of perceived menace to other. Is like saying "Just joking, hehe", therefore you are triggering a calming effect in your public. Holi is the worst offender, but a big tall man talking to an afraid children could use it without any problem to express "I don't want to hurt you". Saying directly "I don't want to hurt you" could sound threatening instead (There is an implicit "I don't want... but I could") An adult man will not need to calm other adult stranger normally, so in this context can do more harm than good. Never use it all the time, and never in business or formal context because you simply lose leverage.
- dustintrex 5y agoThis is a running joke among Japanese language learners, but less of an actual problem than you'd think. The really feminine words (atashi, kashira, ending sentences with wa etc) are trivially avoided, so you end up with neutral/excessively polite/gaijinkusai but not particularly feminine language. For what it's worth, few foreigners master Japanese to the level where they could convincingly sound like a tough male/gangster, but unless you actually are in the Yakuza, this ability is not particularly useful. Sonai yuun yattara ippen washi no chinpo shabutte miruka?
- earthboundkid 5y agoI disagree. Yes, it's trivial to avoid saying Atashi and ending sentence in wa, but feminine language differences are a lot more pervasive than that. There's a ton of subtle stuff, and you end up sounding strange if you aren't really careful. To just give one example, there are a ton of places you can choose to throw in an o- or not, just like in English, you can choose to say "the" or not. As in English, it's about pattern matching and getting used to the subtle frequencies for this stuff. Just like French people sound silly when they use "the" in the wrong places, a man sounds silly when using o- in the wrong places.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago> To just give one example, there are a ton of places you can choose to throw in an o- or not, just like in English, you can choose to say "the" or not. Definiteness marking is certainly an area where speakers of languages that don't do that get confused. But I'm not comfortable saying that there are a ton of places in English where you can choose to say "the" or not. In most cases, there's only one correct choice. Going back over the nouns in my previous paragraph: (marking area[0] speakers[1] languages[2] I ton[0] places English you cases choice[1] [there]) [0] rival article already marked [1] "the" permissible; presence and absence are both fine [2] "the" possible; presence may raise eyebrows
- rendaw 5y agoI think GP was talking about honorific/humble o not the object marker o, and chose a poor metaphor. Because honorific/humble o is often a signal for feminine language... there was a trending tiktok video about prefixing "toilet" with "o" for example.
- redis_mlc 5y agoWomen say, "ohayo gozaimasu", and men can just say in a bass voice, "osu." :)
- TeeMassive 5y agoI'm learning Japanese (very slowly and more of a hobby) and being a caricature of a "gaijin who speaks like a woman" has always been a fear of mine haha. Fun fact, katakana (more sharp and right angled lines) used to be for men and hiragana for women (more round and swift).
- spacechild1 5y agoI speak “female“ Kansai dialect because that's what I hear all the time from my wife. When I speak to other Japanese people they find it pretty hilarious.
- karmasimida 5y agoJapanese is gendered That is probably why.
- dkdk8283 5y agoI think I am missing the punchline.
- wrp 5y agoThe persistence of this phenomenon has puzzled me for decades. From the 1980s, I have asked Japanese women who are married to foreigners, "Since you care about how your husband is perceived in Japanese society, why don't you correct him away from overtly female speech habits?" The usual reaction is to be simply dumbfounded at the question. I've never talked to a Japanese woman who reacted like, "Hey, that's a good idea."