#66
by don't get me started » Oct 06, 2014 4:39 am
Japanese tends to omit pronouns altogether in daily interactions.
So here is my weekend in an English rendering of the Japanese way of expressing it:
Weekend, went to Korea with friend to do presentation at conference. Good and successful. Many people in audience and enjoyed. After presentation go out with other friends. Eating Korean barbecue. Very tasty and spicy. Other person didn't eat much. Say too spicy, but after drinking beer changed opinion then can eat.
Next go to bar and talking to members.
There are pronouns in Japanese, but my sense is that the male/ female dimension is not as prominent in discourse. There are gender differences in the first person singular that don't exist in English. Watashi is the gender neutral 1st person singular, but women will often use 'atashi' which is not suitable for male usage, and men will often use 'ore' or boku', neither of which are suitable for women to use.
My sense in Japanese is that the male/ female distinction takes a second place to in-group/ out group distinctions and pronoun selection based on this dimension and on the politeness/ casual gradation.
Kisama is a VERY aggressive and dismissive version of 'you'. In the Terrence Malik film 'Thin red line' a dying Japanese soldier says to a American. 'Kisama mo, itsuka shinu da yo.' This can be rendered as 'You too, someday will die.' But to convey the sense of aggression and disrespect in the choice of Kisama as the second person pronoun, a better rendering was suggested to me by a friend from Northern Ireland. ' You're gonna die an' all, y' cunt, ye'
There are issues surrounding pronoun choice(or omission) that are differentially important to different language cultures, it seems to me.