Talk:Japanese honorifics

Chan

I need clarification regarding "Chan". In the case of friends or close acquaintances, is the woman usually called by a man a little older than her, or is age indifferent? In several manga and anime I've seen, in some of these cases the two subjects in question (the woman two years older), then married, both use "San". In another case, with two work colleagues in love, the woman is two years older and calls the man with "Kun", while he calls her with "San"; always with the same age difference, a rock guitarist turns to his manager with "San", while she simply calls him by his name; or two close acquaintances (the woman six years older), both use "San". --79.16.232.81 11:46, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

@79.16.232.81: This isn't really the place for lessons. Try looking online or asking a Japanese instructor. This page gives a decent explanation. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 18:41, 8 May 2019 (UTC)

For example, two young journalists, work colleagues and at the end lovers, always called them by first name, without honorific suffixes, but the man very rarely called her with "Chan". --79.24.236.241 06:22, 9 May 2019 (UTC)

I gotta agree with Nihonjoe—this isn't the place for this kind of thing. Any advice we could give would just be "rule of thumb"-type stuff, anyways—there are a million exceptions to how -chan is used. For instance, every family member calls my one brother-in-law XX-chan, while I can't imagine anyone calling my other brother-in-law YY-chan, and I don't think I could give you a rational (or even helpful) explanation why. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 10:57, 9 May 2019 (UTC)

I know I'm late to the party, but also messaging people on their talk pages and requesting lessons (or free translation service) is also somewhat outside the scope of Wikipedia. The above user messaged me on my talk page from a different IP, and has been posting there once every week or two with some new question about the historical accuracy of Taiga dramas or what the place names shown on-screen in an episode of Conan mean. This seems like some kind of spam. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 00:44, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

i'm even later to the party, but if someone is asking in which situations -chan applies, then the article has FAILED TO EXPLAIN IT SUFFICIENTLY. they are legitimate questions, get off the guy's case!

the nuances for male use of -chan are complicated, but in all cases make the man look "cute". there is some use for young boys, but for full-on adults, it is rarely used except for some playfulness by or toward celebrities. like calling deniro "bobby" or DJT the "trumpster". 2601:19C:527F:A680:4112:4C11:D698:8BAC (talk) 01:03, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

partial names

article totally fails to mention how these suffixes often replace part of the name!

the example "kanako" does indeed yield "kanako-chan" but it often yields "kana-chan" as well. and occasionally "ka-chan" or "K-chan" even.

i think there are even cases of girls changing to onyomi for the nickname. like himari or haruna becoming "you-chan". 2601:19C:527F:A680:4112:4C11:D698:8BAC (talk) 01:00, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

-kun

I have heard - very occasionally - the "kun" honorific being applied in anime to girls of exceptional talent (one example being in an early episode of Ranma ½, where Genma refers to Soun's youngest daughter as "Akane-kun" after seeing her martial arts skill). Unfortunately, I don't have any secondary-source citations for this usage. -- Rob Kelk 22:47, 15 October 2022 (UTC)

Merge into Honorific speech in Japanese

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

To not merge, but rather to leave in WP:SUMMARY style to ensure that no page is too big. Klbrain (talk) 08:03, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

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I propose merging Japanese honorifics into Honorific speech in Japanese. This is the way it's formatted in Japanese language Wikipedia (ja:日本語における敬語), and I think English should mirror it, given that honorific titles are a subset of honorific speech in Japanese overall.

A consequence of these pages being separate is that because only one English page can link to one Japanese page, so Honorific speech in Japanese can link to ja:日本語における敬語, but not this page. There's also the English page Honorific, which links to ja:敬称, so this page can't link there.

Overall, I think this page would make a great section under its own heading in Honorific speech in Japanese. It would be more organized and less clicking around.

@Nbarth and Bigpeteb: Thoughts?

AdJHu • 胡安祝 17:19, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

AdJHu Thanks for suggesting this! I think these work better as separate pages, per WP:SUMMARY (Summary Style). These are both long articles, and the guidance is to summarize sections of long articles in the overview article, and keep the details to a separate page, exactly as being done here.

If anything, the Japanese articles should be expanded and split. Consider the discussion of 殿 (dono): in English it includes usage information, while in Japanese it's mentioned only briefly, and in Japanese ちゃん (chan) isn't even mentioned!

The difference might be that English readers need much more background, but more simply, this is a distinct enough topic that it needs its own page.

—Nils von Barth (nbarth) (talk) 03:16, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.