Nuances of Japanese First-Person Pronouns

Let me explain a pronoun that is often used. I forgot to mention it. 「じぶん（自分/flat tone）」is a pronoun used mainly by men, it carries very humble feeling. 自分 is used by men who are in a community/club/organization that has strict hierarchical relationship, like in 部活(sports club in junior/high school, University) or in 自衛隊(Self-Defense Forces). So referring to yourself with 自分 can give humble feeling but at the same time it gives people that you might be a person who belongs/belonged to a strict military-like hierarchical community. In Japanese, people often say the pronoun 自分 gives 「体育会系」feeling. 「体育会系」refer to a person who engage or engaged in sports activity. That is because in Japan sports clubs in school often have very strict hierarchical relationship among 先輩(older/senior) and 後輩(younger/junior), that resemble that of military.

“If you refer to yourself using name plus Chan, it’s disaster” I’m laughing so hard

This really helped me understand something new about one of my favorite music groups. I used to think 俺スカバンド (Oreskaband) was kinda a boring name for an awesome band. It just means directly “we are a ska band”. But it turns out that the choice to use “ore” is a big deal, since they’re an all female group. I didn’t realize it had a typically male and rebellious connotation. They weren’t being boring. They were being punk rock.

I love that you switched to Comic Sans when translating the "Kaname-chan" sentences. Very funny and effective way of conveying the connotation!

Working in a Japanese-staffed and owned ramen restaurant, I learned the hard way that , while using "ore" to chat with other waiters or my friends is totally cool, you gotta use "boku" or "watashi" when talking to the boss.

The first time I really noticed a difference between who was saying what was during "Your Name," when the female protag's consciousness was in the guy's, and s/he was going down the list of "I" variants, much to the boy's friends' confusion. "Watashi...?" head shakes from the boys, but looking particularly confused "Boku...?" more head shakes with some concern "Ore...?" nods all around Before this scene, I had never really paid attention to which pronouns were being used by whom, so I really appreciate this video breaking down the nuances.

i like how he finds the exact words in english to describe the feelling a japanese word gives. a great way to educate, i'd say he's 100x better than the japanese teacher at my highschool who's just giving homework and doesn't know how to use kanji😅

This actually explains a lot with how a Japanese character's dialogue is written. I have never heard a sweet voiced character use ore and hardly hear a rough character use boku. I dont even know japanese and I can identify the pronouns discussed. It really is very interesting because I dont know of many other languages that have this many ways to refer to oneself in the first person. Having archetypes for them is really unique.

Kaname-san, your videos and explanations of nuances in Japanese language are great. Easy to understand. Has been a helpful addition to the language course I'm doing. Thank you for your efforts!

This channel is going to blow up. The audio quality is perfect, the speaking is clear and the explanations are fantastic.

I have never laughed through a Japanese lesson before. Your humor and presentation style is at an S level. The way you give context to each part is absolutely outstanding. I am sure that you can make an entire career on teaching Japanese in any context, be it on YouTube, writing a book, Private Lessons, etcetera. Your style is just that much better than so many different mediums (books,videos,audiobooks) that I have tried over the years. I hope that you continue your YouTube tenure and I will be here watching all your videos. Keep it up!

It's funny, Japanese seems to put heavy emphasis on letting other people know how to perceive you before they can make a guess. In most western languages you just have a word for "I", but very very many ways to address other people to the point where it becomes slang, and the differences are as subtle. In English I can call another person "dog" and it's, as of now, sort of a tearm of endearment, but also slightly disrespectful but it has a connotation of "other person who is of the same low status as I am", depending on certain subcultures it can be many different words that say the same but I won't mention those in polite company. But in the same way you have "dude" "man" "girl" "buddy" (buddy can also be highly aggressive if it's obvious the person is the exact opposite of that) and I know that Japanese also has things like "Sir" "Madam" "My liege" etc. It seems like for us it's more on the second person to announce what the first person is in relation to them than to immediately explain it from the start, with the one exception being the royal "we" but anyone who'd do that sounds like an absolute clown.

A Chinese person that is still in very beginning stage of learning Japanese might use "ware" just because they inputted the hanzi for "wǒ" into a kanji translator. Also, "ware" is common in older Japanese patriotic songs, like Battotai for example.

I actually heard about many of these nuances before but you are the first one to actually explain where the nuance comes from. Explaining the cultural background makes it a lot easier to understand the feeling behind these pronouns.

I never knew 我 is also used sometimes in Japanese. It is basically the 私‘s Chinese equivalent. It’s really fun to discover the history and connections between 汉字 (hanzi) and 漢字 (kanji) 😅.

Subscribed. Great content on the “why” of nihongo. Its rare to find a teacher so intent on the “why”. Mecchasugoi kanamesan.

Thank you for going over so many options for women. So often people explain male pronouns and I felt I didn’t have many options that suited me so I’ve stuck to わたし. I’ve always felt like I’d want to use ぼく, but wasn’t sure how weird people would think that is. Maybe in casual Japanese I will gain the courage to start using it!

Very underrated channel

I love this nuance and expressiveness. There's really nothing analogous to it in English.

I’m currently learning Japanese and these videos are perfect! They’re challenging, but not so overwhelming that I’m lost. Would definitely love to see more