#that being said you still shouldnt overuse the first person pronoun in sentences where its contextually obvious if you wanna sound fluent ww | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

jibunbosh · 8 months

Text

as far as being a trans person in japan goes, despite all of the difficulties that come with that, I think one of the most accommodating things has been... just the nature of pronouns themselves, in the language.

sure, literal translations of gendered third person pronouns exist (彼 and 彼女, kare and kanojo, he and she respectively), but... like, nobody uses them. for one, they're both words for "boyfriend" and "girlfriend" respectively (even if 彼氏, kareshi, is more common than just 彼), so you run the risk of a... rather awkward miscommunication. but, perhaps more pertinently, it's much more common to just use a person's name or title.

on the other hand... you know what does have gendered nuance and is commonly used? the word "I." or, more precisely, all the different first person pronouns in the language.

just by saying "I," "me," or "my," you can... so seamlessly make a statement about yourself and your identity in the middle of nearly any sentence.

queer people use this to express their gender identity. queer people use this to express their subversion of gender roles, too. in retrospect, it makes saying "my name is [name] and my pronouns are [pronouns]" feel so clunky when I can just... move on to my next idea, and just casually convey similar information!

speaking english in the states, i feel like it can be dangerous, sometimes, to introduce yourself with your pronouns, especially when the whole point is to greet people you're meeting for the first time. best case scenario, it's like, oh, those are your pronouns, that's cool. worst case scenario, it's "oh, pronouns? you're one of those trannies, aren't you?" much more commonly, though, is "oh he identifies as a woman," which Makes Me Want To Tear My Hair Out All The Time Why.

when i'm in japan, though, I can just be me, and simply, casually, refer to myself as such. and I think that's pretty cool.

(for more on queerness and gendered language in japanese that delves into A Whole Lot More Nuance, check out this tofugu article)

#that being said you still shouldnt overuse the first person pronoun in sentences where its contextually obvious if you wanna sound fluent ww #japanese #language #lgbt #trans #linguistics #rambles

446 notes · View notes