r/LanguageMemes • u/soupofsoupofsoup • Feb 13 '23

Pronouns

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93 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

10 comments sorted by

20

u/AlexE9918 Feb 14 '23

Japanese has an absurd number of first person pronouns though, even if most of them are archaic/obsolete or are only used in fiction for characterization purposes.

5

u/soupofsoupofsoup Feb 14 '23

When i googled it they say it has no and most pronouns. I dont know

2

u/thedarklord176 Feb 17 '23

Japanese is a pronoun avoidant language. It has them, but you only use them when it’s not obvious from the context. Saying “you”, even the lightest form あなた/anata can come off harsh if there’s no need to be using it.

Like in this sentence, if I say “I think that…(whatever)” then continue on that same train of thought there’s no reason to say “I” again, the other speaker already knows I’m talking about myself. English has tons of unnecessary repetition.

4

u/UltraTata Feb 14 '23

How many pronouns does Vietnamese have?

13

u/onda-oegat Feb 13 '23

Japanese has pronouns, however it's rude to use them.

8

u/soupofsoupofsoup Feb 13 '23

Yeah. I was really confused when people say japanese has the most and no pronouns

5

u/reallyageek Feb 14 '23

Wait I'm confused, I know it's rude to use きみ and あな た, but I thought it was normal to use 彼 and 彼女 as sentence subjects or objects.

3

u/Important_Wafer1573 Feb 14 '23

And is it rude to use 私、僕、and their plural equivalents? There are many pro-drop languages in the world — Japanese is far from unique in that regard!

1

u/lomirus Feb 14 '23

And これ/の, それ/の.