Thanks for all the replies.

To clarify about myself. I have been learning Japanese for about 3 years and can hold my own. I know to drop anything obvious from my sentences so I'm not self addressing very often.

I think part of the trickiness of this is that there is not a consensus among the Japanese on this topic either, so we all have different advice.

Anyway, to respond to some of the points made.

I would say boku is definitely boyish. The fact that kids use ore is just them trying to be cool basically. They will generally get scolded if they are caught doing this. Further more, my friend who is actually really meek told me that boku is for kids and we we become an adult and are with friend we use ore. I don't think it is quite this simple, but some people look at it like this.

I do notice that those that do use boku are actually quite cute and may be trying to be boyish. This is why I am quite turned off it, since I don't want to play myself down like this.

I am basically too experienced with Japanese to just use watashi. I have heard a lot of Japanese so I have built up strong feelings connected to the forms of self address. I feel really weird using watashi with my GF. I do use (or would) boku at work if necessary, but I tend to use watashi mostly since I am new and feel I should be polite.

With guy friends it is an easy choice, everyone uses ore so I do basically. With lady friends not so clear but I will use ore because it doesn't seem out of place. I was wondering though, do guys tend to be meeker and thus use boku with their girlfriends? Or is ore suitable for speaking with anyone who is close such as a friend or a girlfriend?

I kind of wish there was something plain without any connotations.

Anyway, I think I will use ore with my GF. It looks to be the more suitable.

Last edited by thermal (2008 April 18, 8:35 am)

I had the same issue with my girlfriend too, actually.  I asked her what she preferred, and she said she liked 自分.  Which worked for me, because that's what I had been using already anyway.

I personally haven't had trouble with people mixing up who I'm referring to (me or them or whatever).

Why do I like 自分?  Well...  It's relatively flexible, and it's a little more "adult" (or so I've been told).  I can use it with 目上／年上 people that aren't *too* superior to me (e.g. my best friend's dad; we're practically drinking buddies, but he's still old-fashioned and higher level/older than me).  He personally said that he liked 自分 too, saying that it was "大人."  And if I use it with people of the same level, or lower, it's less macho sounding, and a little more polite, which is closer to my natural speaking style in English and Japanese anyway.  I will still switch to 俺 when I get emphatic about something, though.  Or rather, it just pops out...

A good friend of mine told me that his parents actually told him NOT to use 俺, but rather 自分.  Basically, it was the same reason your parents tell you not to use "ain't," that it seems kind of low-level or crass.  Seeing as how everyone and their dog uses it however, I'm not completely sure I agree; but it's another way of looking at it.

Also, I heard somewhere that in the military, that's what they use to refer to themselves.  Have no idea if that's true, though.

This has pretty much been covered, but I also just want to put in my experience. As far as I know, 自分 is considered the most neutral personal pronoun and actually started coming into popular use in the 80's or so when many people started focusing on which pronouns people who do not fit into the hetero-normative categories should use. Nyuu-haffu (people who don't consider themselves male or female) started coining it apparently (at least according to the articles by the linguists Okamoto and Smith)
As far as "uchi" goes, it is considered more feminine than "atashi" and is usually only used (at least as far as prescriptive grammar goes) by young girls in middle and early high school. If you are a guy, I would definitely not recommend this pronoun, and when used by women it tends to sound a bit burikko-ish (not something I would like to appear as at least). Really though its up to you!

tokyostyle wrote:

Also, someone said it sounds very 大人, but you obviously forgot what language and culture you are talking about.  No one wants to be grown up here.  It has a very negative connotation!  大人 sounds more like a nice way of saying おじいさん.

Negative connotation?!  Yeah, if some chick at gas panic or some other similar Shibuya club told me that, maybe I'd be worried.

Yeah, I said that, but I didn't forget what/who/where I was talking about.  Yeah, sure, SOME people may have an unhealthy obsession with youth and may mean 大人 as a codeword for おやじ, but I'd argue that your average person means 大人 when they say 大人, and おやじ when they say おやじ.  Broadly generalizing that "nobody wants to be grown up" is rather off base.  There is no lack of people who want to be mature without being おやじくさい.

I was reading a science project poster at school today that was about the flavor of different sources of water.  The kid has a few categories and he broke it down by family members and the gist of it was something like this:

Flavor (自分）
Flavor (お母さん）
Flavor (お父さん）
etc.

and おれっち

JimmySeal wrote:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but 自分 doesn't really work as a substitute for a first person pronoun, unless you want to bend over backwards to use it.

How would you say something like "She hit me." using 自分?

(自分が)叩かれた if you want to throw focus on "me".

but as you mention, 彼女が自分を叩いた。 doesn't really work though. it means more like - she hit herself. but context COULD allow for the usage of 自分 = me (personal pronoun) (EDIT:) even in this example.

Last edited by yorkii (2008 April 23, 12:27 am)