As mentioned in the Dickensian blog-posts, I will be presenting a short introduction to the basics of polite Japanese and more pertinently using quotes from the translations to illustrate this. In-group and out-group: When talking about Japanese politeness in general, one needs to approach two critical concepts, that of an

In Japanese fiction, certain dialects and sociolects are used to convey the less-than-ordinary characteristics of a member of the personae dramatis, that may either be rustic, agéd, from a different social stratus than the main cast or in ways a wholly different creature altogether. They can range from regular humans

Japanese has, as mentioned in some of my other articles, various ways of expressing respectful existential verbs, i.e. second person or third person "to be," or, rather, the verbs are not conjugated after grammatical number since such aspect is not a part of the Japanese language. What

Japanese has three modes of writing, hiragana, katakana and kanji, whereof the first two constitute the syllable alphabets primarily used for writing grammatical terms, loan words and slang. Kanji on the other hand are characters derived from the Han era hence the term being written in kanji as 漢字 ("

Goku – a character from Akira Toriyama's fantasy manga Dragon Ball, who usually uses ora (オラ, a rural first person singular pronoun) – switches to ore (オレ), the standard first person singular pronoun in Japanese when it comes to informal and assertive conversation, when he turns into the Super Saiyan

Playing through the Japanese version, Super Famicom, of Konami's great arcade game, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles Through Time, I noticed amongst other things that there were the small speech bubbles that appear whenever the Turtles, for example, fall into a manhole, they will come with a witty

Watashi (私・わたし・ワタシ) is traditionally the gender neutral first person singular pronoun and as such preserves this distinction in polite discourse, whereas in informal speech you are more likely to encounter it used by female speakers of all ages. Regardless of this, however, you will in fiction encounter male

Older people have a distinct way of speaking in Japanese media, especially pop-culture, as we shall explore in this short essay: ひっひっひ　あいかわらずクチもカオも　わるいのう いや～　バカバカしい話を耳にしたんでなあ　おぬしの弟子どもが　この前の天下一武道会でずいぶん活躍したそうじゃのう この大会もなさけのうなったもんじゃそこで　今回　なあ　これが本当の武道じゃというのを　みんなに　みせてやろうとわしの弟子どもも　参加してやることに　したんじゃよ へへえへ…すまんのう 優勝は　わしの弟子のいただきじゃよ　ハジをかかんうちに　とっとと帰ったほうがいいんじゃないか？ The highlighted phrases and pronouns all represent the