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this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2023
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Asklemmy
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While not my native language, in Japanese, many insulting things to call people are often translated as English curses, but actually are just increasingly disrespectful ways to refer to the listener. The actual translation for them is just "you" but not respectful. This might not be a complete list, but I got most of them at least.
Anata - Polite way of saying "you" but not often used in conversation except between spouses or lovers. It's preferred to use the listener's name instead.
Kimi - Rude in a polite setting, but not explicitly disrespectful, necessarily.
Omae - Now you're on the level of picking a fight, but good friends often use this for each other.
Temee - Extremely disrespectful
Kisama - Extremely disrespectful
Kono yarou - Extremely disrespectful
Is it Japanese i am think of that has an exclusionary “we” form? Almost as in “We(all of US but not YOU) were invited to the party.”
That's correct, you can insult someone accidentally while complimenting them in a similar way. The particles は (as in wa) and が (ga) have different connotations that can simply different things.
So saying メリーさんの顔はきれい (Mary-san no kao wa kirei, "Mary has a beautiful face") causes an implication that Mary has a beautiful face, (... But nothing else about her is beautiful). Changing the は for が makes the statement come across as intended.
Without going into detail on the whole wa vs ga thing, wa is more like "as for x..." which can imply a "but..." at the end, whether stated or not, which causes this effect.
Inverted "butterface"?
Thanks for the breakdown!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clusivity
Many languages have that. I’m not familiar with Japanese, but it’s not on that article’s list at least.
I'm not a native speaker, but I've heard Japanese doesn't have any outright curses. That is, there are no words which are always bad, just bad in certain contexts.
Omae and Kisama were how one would refer to emperors. There are no more emperors so referring to someone that way is always sarcastic.
Yup, that's why I mentioned they were disrespectful, but are often translated as curses for English understanding.
What about "baka" or "bakaro" whatever the difference is, which I've heard countless times translated as "idiot" in anime?
Baka and it's various forms are actually stupid, fool, idiot, and the like. Calling someone stupid is a pretty common way to insult them, so if you see that, it's probably pretty literal
Can be insulting or friendly banter depending on tone and context.
Sort of like "bitch" in english or "boludo" in Argentina I take. But does baka really mean "someone of inferior intelligence" as "idiot" would suggest?
Literally, yes.
I don't know the word but there's one Japanese word that means "stupid" but is basically the equivalent to the r-word in English. It's banned from being said on Japanese television.
The word you're probably thinking of is kichigai. But there are oceans of words that you can't use on TV in Japan as I understand it, and there have been since the 70s.
Naruhito?
m*nko begs to differ.
Really interesting. I watch anime occasionally and I've been wondering about this. But suddenly the dramatic shoutouts between the good guys and the big bad makes a little bit more sense.
I'd be glad to hear more examples!
"Omae wa mou shindeiru"
"NANI?!"