This is a course that, no doubt, many of you have been waiting for a very long time, and it is finally here : the Japanese personal pronouns. There is a phenomenal amount to be said on the subject.
To begin with, their use within the Japanese language is much more codified than in our Western languages. You should know that there is a slew of personal pronouns in Japanese, compared to our Western languages which have an average of six to nine personal pronouns (I, you, he, she, it, we, they). And in Japan, the use of one personal pronoun rather than another will depend on several factors. We will be able to choose from a wide range of personal pronouns depending on the language level to be spoken, whether one is a boy or a girl, a man or a woman, according to the speaker’s age or social status in relation to the interlocutor, and even depending on the region in which you live or whether you live more in a rural or country area.
We will even discover several synonyms. There are several ways of saying « I », several ways of saying « you » with certain nuances, with certain connotations depending on what you are trying to express. There are even personal pronouns that come in many forms, it’s crazy !
There are dozens of personal pronouns in Japanese, about fifty to be more precise. You can imagine that we are not going to see all of them today and besides, most of these personal pronouns have fallen into disuse for a long time and are not used at all today.
For this course, only the most interesting and relevant personal pronouns have been selected. That said, I will still present you some outdated personal pronouns, if only for your general knowledge and on which you are likely to come across while reading a manga or watching an anime for example.
This introduction being made, we can now move on to the second part of this course : the first person singular.
私 . わたし → formal → basic « I », main, go-anywhere
Used equally by men, women and children.
僕 . ボク → formal → ♂️ humble, young boys
Male personal pronoun, used by young boys or older boys to appear humble. This kanji has a purely Japanese reading which is しもべ which means « the servant ». It is a way of showing the interlocutor that one places oneself below him.
俺 . おれ → informal → ♂️ display his masculine, manly side
Male personal pronoun, used almost exclusively by men to display masculinity, in order to appear manly. This is a personal pronoun that is very often found in manga in the mouths of characters who like to play tough, sometimes muscular characters with a stern facial expression.
The three personal pronouns above that we have just seen are the most used to say « I » in Japan. Depending on their gender, character, temperament and also their preference, everyone will orient themselves either towards one, the other or even the third.
You should also know that these three personal pronouns are not all suitable for all situations. The context can also define which personal pronoun it would be best to use. For example, the personal pronoun 俺 . おれ is informal. That is, it is not considered polite to use it with your teachers, the principal of your school, or even with your superiors at work. Rather, it is a personal pronoun that you will use with your friends, boys and girls, and possibly in the family circle. Although 俺 . おれ and 僕 . ボク are considered exclusively masculine, sometimes girls, adolescents or young women refer to themselves using this personal pronoun, although in practice this is not considered appropriate. This is quite tomboyish.
So, you may very well be used to using the personal pronoun 俺 . おれ on a daily basis with your friends and maybe even with your family, but in a school and professional environment, if you are male, it will be better to use 僕 . ボク or 私 . わたし to say « I » in a formal way and to show your respect towards your interlocutor.
In practice, girls and boys both generally use the personal pronoun 私 . わたし at the start of their life. Girls continue to use it even after becoming a teenager and then an adult while boys are more inclined to orient themselves towards 僕 . ボク and 俺 . おれ according to their taste and temperament. But most also continue to use 私 . わたし in any circumstance.
Understand that, even though the personal pronoun 私 . わたし is officially the only one that can be used by persons of the feminine gender, it is not a personal feminine pronoun. Boy and girl, man and woman can use it.
我 . われ → very formal → literary, ancient, noble
Very formal personal pronoun, it is not used that much in everyday life these days. You will find it mainly in Japanese works, including video games, manga, novels in the mouths of very old characters or in stories set in the past, sometimes in the days of feudal Japan or in medieval-inspired heroic-fantasy’s worlds.
私 . わたくし → very formal → initial version of わたし
You will have noticed that the kanji of this personal pronoun is the same as that of わたし since it is a shortened version of わたくし. Today, the kanji 私 is mostly reserved for わたし and the personal pronoun わたくし will mostly be written in hiragana or possibly katakana. Sometimes in manga and novels, when the author wants to use the kanji 私 specifying that its pronunciation is わたくし, he writes it in furigana next to it.
Also be aware that all the personal pronouns that we have seen so far can quite possibly be written in hiragana or katakana.
あたし → informal → ♀️ female version of わたし, cute
This personal pronoun, which is the female version of わたし does not have a kanji and is mostly used by young girls who want to look cute. Be careful, however, this personal pronoun is absolutely not suited to a formal context otherwise you will sound like a rather immature kid.
あたくし → formal → ♀️ female version of わたくし
This personal pronoun, which is the female version of わたくし does not have a kanji and is mostly used by young girls who want to look cute. This personal pronoun is considered formal although it is not used so much nowadays.
儂 . わし → formal → ♂️ elderly man, senior
This personal pronoun is used by elderly men, seniors, grandfathers. Sometimes it is used by older women, grandmothers, if they don’t care about being feminine and want to talk like old men.
Again, it also depends on each individual. Each person is free to do as they wish.
あっし → informal → ♀️ elderly woman
This personal pronoun is used by elderly women, seniors, grandmothers. It is the female equivalent of 儂 . わし.
おら → informal → very rustic, very poorly spoken
Informal personal pronoun, derived from 俺 . おれ, it is a very well-known personal pronoun which sounds very rustic, very poorly spoken. Typically, as soon as you leave the urban area and head into the countryside, you will find people saying often おら and speaking in a very incorrect Japanese, very choppy and straying from standard Japanese.
In fact, in manga like One Piece and Dragon Ball, the characters Luffy and Goku talk in a very country Japanese because they both come from the countryside. That said, although manga can be quite nice for discovering the Japanese language, be careful not to repeat stupidly what you sometimes read there.
Some Japanese teachers strongly advise against drawing inspiration from Japanese found in manga. Personally, I think reading manga in Japanese can be very interesting, but it’s up to everyone to use common sense and not to repeat the way of speaking of a character in formal contexts. This could earn you the wrath of your professor or your supervisor.
In western comics, it’s the same. You have characters like Fantasio, Gaston Lagaffe, Titeuf / Tootuff… who speak in really incorrect English. I hope you wouldn’t think of talking like them.
内・家 . うち → informal → ♀️ litt. « his own house, at home » KANSAI
This personal pronoun refers to one’s own house, own home, which is an informal way of saying « I ». The use of this feminine personal pronoun is common in Kansai, a region in western Japan that includes six prefectures including Kyoto and Osaka among others.
自分 . ジブン → formal → ♂️ certain distance / KANSAI « you » informal
The personal pronoun 自分 . ジブン is formal and is used to refer to oneself, most often to say « myself » or « yourself » when we want to talk to another person.
We have already seen this word in the course on the particle で with which it is frequently used to say « by oneself ». For example :
自分で書く . ジブンでかく → write by yourself
自分で歩く . ジブンであるく → walk by yourself
Used as personal pronoun to say « I », this puts a certain distance from the speaker. In the Kansai region, it translates to an informal « you ». Even though we’re still in the first-person singular part, I’m presenting it for you here and at least now you know. Also note that it is not frequently used as a personal pronoun « you » but if you ever come across it while visiting Kansai for example, you now know.
余 . ヨ → archaic → ♂️ no longer used today
Archaic personal pronoun, fallen into disuse, it can happen to come across it in Japanese works, especially video games, manga, novels in the mouths of very old characters or in stories set in the past, sometimes in the period of feudal Japan or in heroic-fantasy universes of medieval inspiration.
It is very rare but you never know. Of course, there are many other archaic personal pronouns, I’ve just put the one you are most likely to meet someday.
朕 . チン → formal → ♂️ mainly used by monarchs
Finally, the last on the list, the personal pronoun 朕 . チン is formal and is primarily used by monarchs. As a result, its use is rare since there is only one monarch in Japan, namely the Emperor. This personal pronoun is particularly used at the beginning of an imperial declaration.
We’ve covered everything there is to say about the first person singular. We can now switch to the second person singular.
貴方 . あなた → formal → « you » main ; a little too close, brutal
It is the second person basic singular in Japanese. Used for a person of a lower rank or equivalent to oneself, it can also be written 貴女 (if the interlocutor is a woman) or 貴男 (if it is a man). This personal pronoun is also very often written in hiragana. It takes its origin from…
其方 . そなた → archaic → very old, superiority
Now considered an archaic personal pronoun, it was once the basic « you » in Japanese. As its use became more and more regular over time, the Japanese felt more and more embarrassed to use 其方 . そなた to address their interlocutor. The personal pronoun 其方 . そなた, which designates the position of the interlocutor, had ended up sounding too familiar to the Japanese who, culturally, like to put a certain distance between themselves and their interlocutor for the sake of politeness. So, they recovered あなた, with the demonstrative prefix あ, which became the basic « you » in Japanese in order to add distance with their interlocutor.
We also have in our Western languages, in particular in French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian, a fairly similar system where we use the polite « you » to put distance with our interlocutor. In French and Italian, we use the second person plural « you », in Spanish and Portuguese we use the third person singular and plural by conjugating the verb as in the third person singular or in the third person plural.
So, you will notice that, surprisingly, the way of expressing politeness from one language to another by playing on the use of certain personal pronouns is quite similar. Having said that, in Japanese there is no such thing as a formal mode in the sense that we understand it in our Western languages to address another person in a more polite manner. Using a personal pronoun over another will not affect the verb conjugation.
And yet, the personal pronoun 貴方 . あなた has started in recent years to be seen as too close, too direct, and the Japanese feel the need to put more distance between them. Contradictorily, it remains the personal pronoun of the second person singular most formal.
We will see that other personal pronouns of the second person singular cannot replace 貴方 . あなた but we will see later that there are alternatives to avoid having to use 貴方 . あなた in a sentence.
You already know, in particular, that we can imply the personal pronoun in a sentence in Japanese, but we will see later that there are still other alternatives.
君 . きみ → informal → affectionate, loving
This personal pronoun is meant to be very affectionate; it is not rude in itself but do not use it in formal situations. It is used when the speaker is of equal or lower level than the interlocutor.
お前 . おまえ → very informal → superiority, very relaxed tone
The personal pronoun お前 . おまえ is for the second person singular what 俺 . おれ is for the first person singular. The personal pronoun お前 . おまえ is considered very informal, especially not to be used in formal situations. In manga and anime for example, the characters who use it are usually thugs, delinquents or characters who lack education, have bad manners. This personal pronoun can also be used to provoke the interlocutor by displaying his superiority or simply used in a very familiar way when he is with his friends. We could, depending on the context, translate it as « hey man ! » or « oh girl ! » or even « hey you there ! ».
You will no doubt have understood that 前 . まえ means « in front », so with お前 . おまえ you can designate the person in front of you.
You will also have noticed the お in front of 前 . まえ that I put in red. This is a prefix that I will discuss more about in a lesson on this topic, so for now, learn this personal pronoun as is.
あんた → informal → oral contraction of あなた, familiarity or anger
This personal pronoun, depending on the context, can express familiarity or anger. Use sparingly.
手前 . てまえ / てめえ → aggressive → very angry
Widely used by men, this personal pronoun reflects the aggressiveness that the speaker feels towards his interlocutor. This personal pronoun is very rarely used by a woman unless she clearly wants to make her interlocutor feel that she is furious. This personal pronoun is very common in manga.
貴様 . キさま → aggressive → deep hostility, disrespect, contempt
This personal pronoun was once synonymous with politeness – most of you will have recognized the honorary suffix 様 . さま which we’ll cover in more detail in another lesson – only to get very ironic and downright insulting. Very present in manga like Dragon Ball for example.
お宅 . おタク → formal → litt. « your home », put some distance
Originally, this expression did not have the meaning we can give it today. It used to be a polite way of addressing your interlocutor. Very popular among lovers of animation and manga, the meaning of the term has evolved to designate today anyone devoting themselves to a hobby, most often done indoors. The term has, subsequently, acquired a pejorative connotation, designating today a person simply fanatic of current Japanese culture, especially in the fields of manga, animation and video games, living only for his passion.
己 . おのれ → archaic → aggressive, degrading / « I » humble
This personal pronoun can be used as a second person singular as well, in which case it is considered aggressive and degrading but when used as a first-person singular it is equivalent to a humble « I ». The logic you need to understand is, in fact, when you use the personal pronoun 己 . おのれ on others, it means that you are trying to degrade your interlocutor. Whereas if you use it on yourself it means that you are degrading yourself, you are demeaning yourself in front of your interlocutor, so it is seen as a humble way of saying « I ».
This personal pronoun is considered obsolete so there is hardly any chance that you will stumble upon it during a chat but you can possibly stumble upon it while reading manga or watching anime where the story takes place in the past with characters speaking in ancient Japanese.
汝 . なんじ → archaic → very old texts, mythological
Very old personal pronoun that you will probably find in manga and video games, but never in everyday life. Possibly, you can stumble upon it in very old texts talking about Japanese myths.
お主 . おぬし → archaic → used by elders towards their inferiors or equals
Another personal pronoun very present in fictions.
First person singular
Call yourself by your own first name
This is something that is done a lot in Japanese, although it is a very informal way of referring to oneself. In Japan, it’s used a lot by children and young girls, it looks cute. Although it may seem very bizarre to us westerners. For example, imagine a character named Yotsuba who says « I stay at home », this is what it looks like :
四葉は家に残る。 → I stay at home.
Second person singular
Call their interlocutor directly by their first or last name
The same idea is possible with the second person singular. We can call our interlocutor directly by his first or last name. For example, let’s say I ask a question to a character named 陽子 . ヨウこ. The question is « what do you drink ? ». Here is what it gives :
陽子は何を飲むか。 → What do you drink ?
Of course, the question will be more or less polite depending on the honorary suffix used. We haven’t seen the honorary suffixes yet, but it won’t be long in the next few courses.
Again, it may seem very weird to us westerners but it is very often done in Japanese.
We did the tour for the first and second person singular. Now is the time to see the third person singular.
Japanese is a language that is very dialogue oriented. Japanese people use a lot of « I », a lot of « you » and also, very often, their own first name to refer to themselves, or the first name or last name of the interlocutor to refer to them. And in the end, the Japanese use very little the third person singular. See below :
彼 . かれ → formal → ♂️ « he »
Formal personal pronoun, exclusively masculine, equivalent of the third person singular « he », can also be translated as « boyfriend » although the strictly correct Japanese word for « boyfriend » is 彼氏 . かれし.
彼女 . かのジョ → formal → ♀️ « she »
Formal personal pronoun, exclusively feminine, equivalent of the third person singular « she », can also be translated as « girlfriend ». The formation of this word might sound a little strange but this is how it was created so learn it as is.
奴 . やつ → informal → litt. « a guy », pejorative, colloquial
Informal personal pronoun, especially not to be used in formal contexts, considered pejorative or familiar. Literally, it means « a guy » or « a girl », « a chick ».
That being said, if we mean « this guy », we’ll say :
この奴 . このやつ → こやつ → こいつ (familiar)
And if we mean « that person », we’ll say :
この人・この方 (polite)
Of course, we can also say その人・その方 or あの人・あの方 with the famous demonstrative prefixes that we studied a few courses back.
However, this is an opportunity to see various ways of saying « who » in Japanese since there is a lot depending on the language register used, if you want to be polite, colloquial or rude, here are all the ways of saying « who » in Japanese :
どの人・どの方・誰・どいつ・どやつ・どのやつ・どなた・どちら様
Before I go to the conclusion, I would like to add a few small details about everything we have just seen. It seems to me that I told you this before, but I repeat it once again: in Japanese, verbs do not change form depending on the personal pronoun with which they are used. The verb never changes depending on who uses it.
Then know that grammatically speaking, according to the rules of grammar of the Japanese language, Japanese personal pronouns – in any case, what we Westerners call personal pronouns – in Japanese, they are not pronouns. Pronouns in Japanese don’t exist, that’s implied. All that we have just seen, from the point of view of Japanese grammar, are nouns which will designate in various ways according to different nuances the first, second and third persons of the singular. And we’re going to use them with particles like we’ve done so far and they’ll never change form. To give you a more concrete example, in English, you have :
I (subject of the verb)
My (DOC)
Me (IOC)
In Japanese, the equivalent will be :
私が
私を
私に
And even if we have different ways of saying the word in English, in Japanese, the word is invariable, it does not change. It is the particle that determines whether the word is subject of the verb, DOC or IOC. But the word, above 私, does not change. Nor the other Japanese personal pronouns that we have seen in this course.
All these Japanese personal pronouns offer immense possibilities to personalize a sentence in Japanese according to the level of language to be held, whether one is a boy or a girl, a man or a woman, according to the age or the social status of the speaker in relation to the interlocutor... We have already seen all this in the introduction.
In fact, some personal pronouns go hand in hand with certain end-of-sentence particles. We have in particular 俺 . おれ which is quite aggressive and people who use this personal pronoun often end their sentences with the final particle ぜ.
Well, this is one example among many, and since we are talking about it, I invite you to review the lesson on final particles where we saw that there are final particles that are used more by men than by women.
Another example. A woman asking a question to herself will use more 私 . わたし with the final particle かしら while a man in the same case, suppose he also uses 私 . わたし, will instead use the combined final particles かな to address a question to himself.
All those personal pronouns, all those end-of-sentence particles and even some variations of grammatical forms like のだ, that we saw a few courses back, offer a richness of incredible nuances that are very often untranslatable into English.
In works of fiction, manga, anime, novels and video games, the Japanese do not hesitate to use all the richness of nuances that their language offers to convey the personality of the characters.
In Japanese JRPGs, you often have groups of characters, very cliché, where you have :
– The hero, very manly, who uses 俺 . おれ.
– The hero’s good friend, a little younger and sometimes shy, who uses 僕 . ボク.
– The girl, a little more mature, who uses 私 . わたし.
– The little girl, who wants to be cute, who uses あたし.
– The wise old man who uses 儂 . わし.
– The hero’s grandmother (if he is an orphan, without father or mother) who uses あっし.
Etc…
In Japanese, in the description of a video game character, it sometimes happens that you give which first person singular the character uses. This is part of its characteristics and that sets it apart from others.
For example, if I take a very simple sentence in English :
I am a human being.
Depending on the first-person singular used by each character, the nuance given to this simple sentence in English will be different and will reflect the character’s temperament. So, we may very well have :
私は人間だ。
僕は人間だ。
俺は人間だ。
あたしは人間だ。
儂は人間だ。
And we can go much further in every possible nuance imaginable by playing with the end-of-sentence particles. So if I take again the sentence :
私は人間だ。
I can say :
私は人間だよ。
私は人間ださ。
We have the same personal pronoun, it’s exactly the same sentence but depending on the end-of-sentence particle used, the nuance, again, will be different.
Note : the word 人間, which means « human being », is a Sino-Japanese word that is pronounced ニンゲン.
I give you another nifty use of all of these nuances. If, for example, a character is more of a coward but tries to hide his cowardice, he will eventually use 俺 . おれ. If the other is really brave with a very manly personality, he will also use 俺 . おれ. So, you see, it’s the same personal pronoun but it will translate two very different characters depending on the context.
You can also find another example in the anime 君の名は where two teenagers, a boy and a girl, wake up in each other’s shoes, and they find themselves having to use their own personal pronouns. The girl, for example, tries to pass herself off as the boy but doesn’t know if she should use 僕 . ボク, 俺 . おれ or 私 . わたし. There is a scene where, inside the boy’s body, she ends up at school with the boy’s friends and starts by using 私 . わたし and « her friends » look at her with big eyes saying « but why do you say ‘‘私 . わたし’’ ? It’s ‘‘俺 . おれ’’ that you usually say. ».
These are nuances which sometimes give a hard time to translators who have to find alternatives to fill in the untranslatable dialog boxes in English, and sometimes the original meaning in Japanese is lost in English.
This course is now over. All that remains for me to do is give you your exercises, as always theme and version. And in the sentences that I give you in English, in the first exercise, and which you will have to translate into Japanese, you will also have to use the corresponding personal pronoun. Thus, carefully read the sentences in English as well as the indications which are given to you in order to know which personal pronoun corresponds best. Also be careful : the use of end-of-sentence particles can be useful.
In the next lesson, we will see the plural of Japanese personal pronouns, another very important lesson. That being said, take a break, take the time to reread this course and we will meet again very soon.
Introduction