Gender differences in Japanese

Common card · No. 468896

The Japanese language has some words and some grammatical constructions associated with men or boys, while others are associated with women or girls. Such differences are sometimes called "gendered language". In Japanese, speech patterns associated with women are referred to as onna kotoba (女言葉; "women's words") or joseigo (女性語; "women's language"), and those associated with men are referred to as danseigo (男性語; "men's language"). In general, the words and speech patterns associated with men are perceived as rough, vulgar, or abrupt, while those associated with women are considered more polite, more deferential, or "softer". Some linguists consider the description of "rough–soft continuum" more accurate than the description of "male–female continuum". For example, Eleanor Harz Jorden in Japanese: The Spoken Language refers to the styles as "blunt/gentle", rather than male/female. There are no gender differences in written Japanese (except in quoted speech), and almost no differences in...

Read on Wikipedia