Japanese Speech Styles: Masculine vs. Feminine Speech

Shortly after writing my first post about Japanese speech styles, I was going through one of my Japanese textbooks when I found an excerpt about the different styles (I love coincidences). As I read it, I was reminded that there was a little bit more than just the four levels I previously discussed. In the last post, I talked briefly about the two different branches of Keigo, and although very different from Keigo, informal speech also has two parts. But that is where the similarities end. While humble and honorific forms of Keigo are gender-neutral and are universally used in Japanese, informal speech tends to be a little bit more gender-based.

In many European languages, when you hear the words "masculine" and "feminine", the first thing that comes to mind is nouns. Nouns will often take a gender, and you have to use the right modifier. For example, in German, before you say the noun, you have to modify it with one of the following: der (if it's male), die (if it's female), or das (which is neutral).

Masculine and feminine in Japanese, however, isn't like this. The words and modifiers don't change. Instead, different sounds are attached to the end of sentences  The difference between male and female speech can only be heard when you speak informally. Here are some examples:

On the left are examples of male speech and female speech is on the left. The first image shows some of the different sentence endings. In formal speech, you would usually end a question with "desu" (です). In informal speech, this "desu" is shortened down to "da" (だ). Following "da", depending on which gender you identify with, you can add one of the sentence endings shown above (plus there's a lot more out there, but this post would turn into a book if we went over every single one. For those of you learning Japanese, some of these endings can be personal preference, so I invite you to discover the ones that resonate with you). For questions, you usually end the sentence with the particle "ka" (か). In informal speech, you can change this "ka" to either "kai" or "no". 

In the bottom image (again, male speech is on the left, and female speech is on the right), these words are just some of the different ways of saying "I". In formal speech, you would usually just use "watashi" (わたし) or "watakushi" (わたくし) in a very formal setting. Once you exit formal speech and start speaking with friends, you can start to use other forms of saying "I". While "boku" is used mostly by men and boys, in pop culture, such as in songs, you will sometimes hear females using this word and the male speech style. When speaking, however, this will usually be corrected, especially if your professor is listening (insert flashback here). Also good to note is that "atashi" is usually used only by younger girls. Once you hit a certain age, usually in your teenage years, you have to make the switch from "atashi" to "watashi" (again, you never know when Sensei is listening, so definitely take care when pronouncing "watashi" around your teacher). In addition, boys will often speak a little bit more slangy whereas girls will sometimes try to speak cutely. These styles are usually accentuated by anime, so young kids, as well as those learning Japanese, will often pick up on these styles. It does sometimes get confusing which sounds and words are for one gender versus the other, but once you get it down, it makes it all the more fun to mimic those anime characters. 

I've read that more recently, younger Japanese boys and girls have started to shift away from these casual gender-specific speech styles. It is interesting that for a language that is mostly gender-neutral, they still have these different speech styles. I do believe (and I kind of hope) that one day we will see the disappearance of these speech styles, but probably not for a while. In the meantime, it is always fun to try out these different styles. I use them a lot when I'm joking around with my friends. My only advice? Don't let your teacher hear you using the wrong one. Hell hath no fury like an angry Sensei.