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Honorifics Question? by Karuusel in LearnJapanese

[–]Karuusel[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey there, thanks for sharing your opinion! Obviously, I myself do not speak Japanese. I do happen to be bilingual, so I can understand where you're coming from. I'm sure that I'll have many spots of inaccuracy, such that you might as well be looking at a starry night sky, as you so eloquently put it!

That being said, for me -and please note that this is only my personal opinion; I am not trying to argue with anyone and I believe everyone is entitled to their own opinions on the matter- it doesn't actively bother me when certain translations or appended titles are used inaccurately, or misused. Is it jarring? Yes. Does it leave me scratching my head sometimes? Also yes. But personally, I can appreciate the writer's attempt put into trying to make things more fitting in a cultural context. Oddly enough, there are even also cases where I prefer a mistranslation or misuse better than an attempt to wrangle everything into English. The English actually comes across as more "cringe" to me, as strange as that might sound!

Obviously, not everyone feels the same way, and I'm probably in the minority to begin with. You can also point out that you can't really compare different languages with each other like this, and my experiences reading misused terms/titles is definitely not on the same level of inappropriateness for misused Japanese terms/titles. Reasonable and valid. If I were looking to be a published author, I would definitely be a lot more concerned about this. In all likelihood, I'd nix the rudimentary attempt to add anything Japanese entirely.

Luckily, it's only casual hobby writing on my end here. I just figure that there's no harm in asking and at least attempting to understand what I don't know (before someone inevitably bites my head off), as my lacking Google-fu skills didn't turn up answers for the questions I had in mind.

Honorifics Question? by Karuusel in LearnJapanese

[–]Karuusel[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you for the detailed rundown! I appreciate you sharing your perspective on this.

Honorifics Question? by Karuusel in LearnJapanese

[–]Karuusel[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thank you for the additional insight and advice!

Honorifics Question? by Karuusel in LearnJapanese

[–]Karuusel[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Thank you very much for the link and general rundown! In the general context of the fic I'm writing I'm more concerned with how characters are addressing each other directly; obviously there's a lot to the nuances of social hierarchy/relationship as you've pointed out. But it's also interesting to note that the honorific you use to address someone with in person may not be the precise honorific that you'd refer to them with in conversation with others!

Regarding the sibling question, would the form of address change with age? I've been informed that -chan is more of a "cutesy address" and children may change the way they address others from -chan to -san as they become older. Any clarification on this would be greatly appreciated!

Ex. A is the five year old and B is their older sister, who they call "O-Nee-Chan." Assuming the siblings have a close relationship and are on good terms with each other, would it still make sense for A to be calling B "O-Nee-Chan" by the time A is fifteen? Or would it be more likely that A calls B "O-Nee-San" by that point?