Also note that for songs, きみ is only two syllables, whereas a lot of the other ones are 3, which may affect things as well due to the meter (I have a feeling this accounts for some of the females using ぼく in songs as well).

bluemarigolds Wrote:あなた -- is the most polite form of 'you" but sometimes has a connotation of familiarity. I've heard it translated as "Darling" in some places. If you absolutely have to use the pronoun "you", this would be your safest bet.

I've searched through this discussion to see if anyone has mentioned this but didn't see it, so forgive me if this is a duplicate, but I think the most polite form of "you" in Japanese is そちら (sochira), not "anata".

Well sort of... そちら is a very indirect way of introducing someone. そちらは田中さんです。It's sort of like saying, over here [ in this direction] is Mr. Tanaka.　そちら by itself is rude, and is equivalent to calling someone "it". If you want to refer to someone politely and don't know their name, you would say: そちらの方。Along the same vein, どちらの方？ would mean "Which person."

atomiton Wrote:Well sort of... そちら is a very indirect way of introducing someone. そちらは田中さんです。It's sort of like saying, over here [ in this direction] is Mr. Tanaka.　そちら by itself is rude, and is equivalent to calling someone "it". If you want to refer to someone politely and don't know their name, you would say: そちらの方。Along the same vein, どちらの方？ would mean "Which person."

On the phone, そちら is very common (and not rude at all) to mean "you".