Forum - View topicprefixes
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kenpachi dude
 Posts: 42 Location: South Africa: Cape Town |
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I'm trying to learn the prefixes when you adrest diffrent people. What is the -chan, -nij -oni? When do you use the diffrent sayings and can you use it for people NOT related to your family? Could someone give me a list or something?! (If this post is a little of topic, i'm really sorry!!!)
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Steventheeunuch
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Won't go too into detail about what each thing means, but when they are attached to the end of a name, they're suffixes, not prefixes. A suffix in that regard (san, chan, kun whatever) would denote things such as social standing relationship, all of that good stuff.
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angel_lover
 Posts: 645 Location: UK |
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Try this Wikipedia article. The usual wiki disclaimers apply...
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trackstar1013
 Posts: 179 Location: Canada |
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For the most part from what I know: name-san is like saying Mr. Mrs. Ms. While name-sama is like saying the name with a lot of respect for example "the lovable name" ext... name-kun is like a girlfriend talking to her boyfriend with respect and name-chan is vice versa guy talking to girl.
There are a few others but this is what I am going to say for now. |
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Zalis116
Moderator
 Posts: 6897 Location: Kazune City |
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First off, prefixes come before (as in preliminary voting, pre-emptive war, pre-mature...
 , you get what I'm talking about), suffixes come after.
Check the wiki for a more extensive listing--I will say that -kun is usually used for equal/lower status males (relative to the speaker), and it's not limited to girlfriend -> boyfriend; it's also used between guys, or teacher -> student, boss -> employee. On rare occasions, I've seen -kun used for girls, but that's almost always in a work or "evil organization" environment. Family terms can be used for people outside the speaker's family: big brother/sister (oniisan/oneesan) for young people (~20s), aunt/uncle (obasan/ojisan) for middle-aged people, and grandmother/grandfather (obaasan/ojiisan, careful on those long vowels) for older people. For instance, Jim from Outlaw Star calls Gene "aniki," which is a more yakuza-esque/tough-guy variant of "older brother." There are many jokes on this system, where (for instance) a character will call a woman "obasan" and she'll say "Hey, don't call me that, I'm still young!", even when a familial relationship actually does exist (as with Shouko in Angelic Layer telling Misaki to call her Miss Shouko (Shouko-san) rather than Aunt Shouko (Shouko-obasan)). But beyond the suffixes, you also have to pay attention to how characters are being addressed overall--in general, using one of the many words for "you" is pretty casual/possibly rude, using last name (which can also be accompanied by -san or -sama) is more formal than first name, and when more formality is required, people will use titles in place of names, like President, Director, Chairman, -sensei, -senpai, Principal, etc. [/i] |
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dormcat
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 9902 Location: New Taipei City, Taiwan, ROC |
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Employer / supervisor / teacher can call a female employee / subordinate / student with -kun suffix. |
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kenpachi dude
Posts: 42 Location: South Africa: Cape Town |
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Sorry about the prefix, I meant SUFfix. English is my second language! Now I understand it! Thank you all!
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