Comments

100 Ways To Say “You” In Japanese — 16 Comments

  1. I think 貴殿is きでん kiden.
    And,Please add 貴公(きこう)kikow to Old usage.

    And,my grand father called his mother 母者人(ははじゃびと)hahajabito ,called his old sister 姉者人(あねじゃびと)anejabito.He from Kagosima.And his home state`s [
    you] is おまんさぁ omansaa,this is deformity from お前様(おまえさま)omaesama.
    My grand mather called her old brother 兄さま(にいさま)niisama.She from Yamaguchi.
    My aunt call her mother お母様(おかあさま)okaasama,and call her father お父様(おとうさま)otowsama,she grew up Tokyo.

    …Yes,the truth is anything but 100!

    • Hello 小川さん

      Thank you for pointing out the 貴殿 and 貴公 mistake. They are fixed now.

      And thanks for all the great additions. You’ve included a lot of good ones!

  2. Depending on what anime you watch, you may hear 貴官 (きかん) fairly regularly towards military officers. Aside from that, quite an impressive list. And as much as possible I avoid using any of them, haha.

    • Nice one. I’m sure in current day Japan there is not much opportunity to use it in a real situation.

      You make a funny point. Here is this list of a massive amount of ways to say you, yet the real goal is to avoid it all together.

  3. Adam, I have a request. Can you hide English on these kind of posts? Pretty please? I always want to read your compilations… But I am worried if english would spoil the experience for me.

    • There’s really no way to do it without requiring a ridiculous amount of work (I’d have to tag every single word individually), and making the post look ugly in the process.

      However, I think this topic (accidentally seeing English when you are going full J-J) is worthy of a post, so I will write about it. In short though for now, it’s not that big a deal to accidentally see English when reading through Japanese (though it feels like it is, and I experienced this same worry also when I was at your level).

  4. perhaps my only two complaint no romaji (despite the hiragana) not everyone is well versed in hiragana and it would be nice to be able get a feel for the word rather than hunt and search. this is deterring for new learners and tedious for those just doing some research on their own.
    second complaint is that you don’t really state what the words actually mean
    you state the idea but you don’t really give the meanings behind the individual words to get a sense of how it would be used in a sentence. like:

    sonokata means “that person” how would this be used? yes, you say of one of higher status speaking to someone of lower status, but in what context? how does this set the mood of the sentence? i love this article but those are two key factors.

    • I would have to argue against listing things in romaji. Romaji is really only needed until you actually start studying Japanese. It should be the very first thing you learn and can be learned to a comfortable level in 3-4 hours.

      I think it is a mistake that so many Japanese learning resources are filled with romaji which really is mostly in the way once you get past the initial hurdle that it is. It is difficult not to read the romaji when present, even though I can read the hiragana right next to it. My brain is wired that way, and I expect most japanese learners will probably feel the same.

      If a learner is deterred by the lack of hiragana on a site like japaneselevelup, then I would argue that they have come to the wrong place/language. If a learner finds hiragana to be an obstacle that they cannot cross, then what is going to happen when they discover kanji?

      Regarding your second complaint, I agree. I would be great with examples of use. Without it the article is good for a laugh, but not really for learning.

    • With enough practice hiragana is as readable as English (or your native language, and it really doesn’t take long (katakana is another matter)). I’ve never once studied romaji and in fact when I do see it, I tend to say the word out loud (and in my head) with a very distinct (American) English accent.

      I’m not trying to become familiar with English letters. I would complain if I saw this site filled with romaji.

    • I just want to chime in with Jesper and Kevin saying that romaji has no place on Jalup. The human brain is wired to be lazy, so whenever romaji is present it is very difficult to look away and only read the hiragana (or kanji). I even start to feel that way about furigana, that I will eventually have to read sources without them to be able to comfortably read kanji, otherwise I just read the kana and not the kanji.

      I just recently noticed that I have finally gotten enough practice reading hiragana that it almost feel as easy as reading roman letters (English or other languages using the Roman alphabet) – that is a great feeling!

      @Johnette Williams, it is difficult at first and it will be slower than reading romaji for a while. However any consistent learner will move past it and see it as just another challenge conquered!

  5. For romaji, everyone answered what I would have said.

    As for going into detail behind each word with examples, it would have created wayyyyy too long a post, and this article was more meant to be a general introduction.

  6. You can also add the old ways of calling a family member like: 母上、父上、姉上、兄上、etc. Or the one ones used in yakuza and other gangs like 兄貴、姉貴。。。

  7. Missing 僕(ちゃん) and お姉ちゃん/お嬢ちゃん which are pretty common when talking to small children.

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