Honorifics..? Suffixes?
Oct. 13th, 2003 12:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thistlechaserThere has to be a name for these, but I'm not sure what it is. In Japanese: -san, -chan, -sama, all those -things you can stick after a name. Whatever they are, I wish we used them here, too. No, no, it's not because I'm some freaky anime-fan who runs around going 'Kekekekeke!' and making the V sign with two fingers all the live-long day, it's just that it'd make things both easier and richer:
As I've been babbling about for a number of days now, I've been watching this anime series. The Get Backers. In it one of the characters has been adding -kun to everyone's name. I asked what that meant, and was told it could be tacked on to a name to imply a male friend. In one of the eps I watched last night, someone used -han, and since no one was around to ask, I looked it up.
Turns out that -kun isn't just for a male friend, it's for a friendly person *below* you in status. With that knowledge, a whole undertone in the series opened up: While this character had been -kun'ing everyone all along, it took time for the others to start -san'ing him. (-san saying that that person is above you in status.) I missed all that by not being aware of what -kun really meant! This character was saying all along 'I'm better than you', and over the course of the first season, the others came around and agreed 'yes, you're above me'.
How cool would that be to have something like that here? It would make things so much clearer and easier, everyone would know where everyone else stood.
As I've been babbling about for a number of days now, I've been watching this anime series. The Get Backers. In it one of the characters has been adding -kun to everyone's name. I asked what that meant, and was told it could be tacked on to a name to imply a male friend. In one of the eps I watched last night, someone used -han, and since no one was around to ask, I looked it up.
Turns out that -kun isn't just for a male friend, it's for a friendly person *below* you in status. With that knowledge, a whole undertone in the series opened up: While this character had been -kun'ing everyone all along, it took time for the others to start -san'ing him. (-san saying that that person is above you in status.) I missed all that by not being aware of what -kun really meant! This character was saying all along 'I'm better than you', and over the course of the first season, the others came around and agreed 'yes, you're above me'.
How cool would that be to have something like that here? It would make things so much clearer and easier, everyone would know where everyone else stood.
