How to Speak Manly Japanese

Bobby from the Daily Yoji does some investigation into how to speak Japanese in a manly way:

Kyushuu is famous for it’s MANLY MEN, and I’m famous for talking like a girl. One night I set out to see if I could get the men of Saga to teach me how to talk like a dude.

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13 comments - What do you think? Posted by James - June 17, 2010 at 5:47 am

Categories: General Japan Tags:

Rob A

Nice. I didn’t realize there were ‘manly’ areas of Japan. Regarding the speech, I always considered ‘俺’ to be a bit rude unless it’s a really good friend. I use ’自分’ or ‘僕’ most of the time.

k

jibun can be a little confusing depending on where u are. It works in the kansai region along with using uchi for I, however I usually heard only girls use that. Unless it has to do with someone’s team or company like uchinokaisha etc.. Only use Ore, omae, koitsu , aitsu, around friends.
Ben P

I think you might be pretty wrong about 俺… That’s what I was taught in class, too, but after living in Japan and actually meeting people and making friends, ALL the guys I know, manly or girly, use 俺 almost exclusively.

tcharo

Yet it might be rudish a bit? Like guys say fuck, shit, and other four-letter words, too, but they are still considered rude.

Here’s what Japanese Wiktionary has to say about 俺:

http://ja.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E4%BF%BA

Dunno.

Robin

Girlish or not, I respect your command of Japanese!
It’s A LOT better than mine!
http://thejapanjourney.blogspot.com Geckomayhem

Your Japanese is really good. >.<

Looks like you had a lot of fun doing that, too. Man, if I lived in a city, I'm sure my Japanese would improve going out and talking to people like that.
http://www.j-rpg.com Andy K

Saw this from Japundit.

Yeah, I see a lot of guys with this problem, and was one myself! In almost all cases, it was because:
* Friends were primarily women.
* Had a girlfriend (or several).
* Homestay family; most available talking partner being the mother of the family.

…it just rubs off on you. You learn habits like, “Oh, to end a plain form question, end the sentence with the article ‘no’”, etc.

Back at Uni, one of my buddies took me aside at one point and pointed out that: “Hey Andy, I know you’re in the middle of learning and all, and likely spend a lot of time with your girlfriend, homestay mom, etc. Just wanted to let you know, your words kind of come off as feminine and gay. Might want to pick up on male speech patterns”. I wasn’t offended, because even though I was straight (heh, mostly), this friend who was telling me this advice WAS gay, and in fact he often brought me to Shinjuku Nichome (the gay district) to party on the weekends at bi/gay clubs, which I did. A LOT. he was just laying it out for me so that I was aware of it, and could make a choice.

From that point on, my attitude and polite, friendly speech laced with plenty of jokes didn’t change… but I did pay more careful attention to how other men around me spoke, and started emulating those patterns.

Primarily, I dropped my tone a tad, stopped using “no” to end question-sentences (at the beginning I would not know what to do so I would add the male/Older Gent “…kai?”, kinda stilted but still better). I even watched more samurai dramas, which are balls-out manly and all, using mostly dead grammar, but still there are some bits and pieces to pick up on, namely intonation and speed.

Just an aside: If you see him on TV, listen to Stephen Seagal speak Japanese (he does it in one of his movies too, I forget which): ALL of his speech sounds feminine, and he even uses feminine gestures, facial expressions, etc. Like seriously, a total 180 from his “manly man” image. Even when he’s talking about “what he likes about women”, being crude and crass in the process, he comes off as a giant queen. The reason is simple: Seagal is an epic pussy hunter: He spends all of his time in Japan with women, in cabarets, in trysts, and no one has had the balls to politely tell him, “Hey, just wanted to let you know that if I wasn’t looking at you, I’d expect your voice to be coming from a 50-year-old mama-san”.

It’s hilarious, and really points out the effect of men hanging out with women all the time (and not getting checked by their male peers) will quickly start to sound feminine. It’s something to be aware of: You can always speak how you want to speak, but it’s important to know how the listener really (and subconsciously) thinks about your speech.

Anyway, good luck!

-Andy

helical

I believe Steven Seagal learned how to run from Japanese women in addition to the language

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkskuSXqUD0

http://colininjapan.com Colin

I don’t know if this would entirely apply to Tokyo (or other parts of Japan), considering this seems to be more the Kyushu way of speaking :/

Then again, I wouldn’t exactly call myself a fountain of Japanese knowledge.
k

Yea, I lived in a dude’s dorm and ending up talking like these fools, but when I spoke to girls like this they hated it. My ex-girlfriend would hit me every time I spoke like these douches. She went bat shit when she was nagging me about what I was doing one day when I didn’t call her and I just said “お前には関係ねえやろ？”. Yea it’s cool to sound tough around guys, but I’m gonna have to say getting girls is more important than sounding tough. As far as Tokyo dialect, everyone from Osaka thinks the Tokyo dialect sounds prudish and somewhat gay.
Vhax

Some Japanese sometimes use “はらいっぺ～” in some situation. It is not strange word perfectly. That is why they didn’t feel the word as joke.
http://www.zdwonline.de Haf

Wow, that’s a cool video, and the Japanese subtitles help a lot in understanding whats going on. I always like that Japanese TV shows are mostly subtitled, it really helps with listening to and understanding what’s being said, so it’s great that the creator of this video also did this.
After getting a surprised reaction by one female friend when finishing a question with の, I immediately dropped that speech pattern. My Japanese teacher is female but she usually doesn’t use female speech patterns when talking to her students. But I have to be careful about what kind of language I pick up ‘on the street’. Actually I’m always kind of afraid to talk in Japanese to people that I don’t know that well because I fear that I could accidentally say something extremely rude.
S.

Ooh, the poor guy. I never realized how gender affected language until I found myself trying to use “male” words when describing something foreign in my native language of Cambodian, which has distinct male and female speech/behavior patterns.

I’m re-learning Japanese now, and I realized I’m just as stiffly polite as this guy but instead of sounding gay or girly I sound butch instead. I guess this is what happens when my primary learning tool is shonen anime.

How to Speak Manly Japanese

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