NATLANG: Re: QUESTION: types of plurals, few/many

En réponse à "Karapcik, Mike" <KarapcM@...>:

>
>         What I thought of was a cycling or change of pronouns.
>         There is a similar case in Japanese. The 2nd person pronouns
> tend to
> change in how honorific / pejorative they are over time. For example,
> "kimi"
> was very honorific about 100-80 years ago. Then, it slid down and
> became
> respectful. When I took Japanese about 11 years ago, the sensei (who
> worked
> in Tokyo for 7 years, and his wife was from Hokkaido) said that "kimi"
> was a
> step down from the speaker. It's something people use when speaking
> with
> custodians, menial laborers, or someone they are annoyed with. A friend
> of
> mine is taking Japanese now (starting level 5 in the fall, and his
> sensei is
> from Japan), and he says "kimi" is very informal and casual, often
> used
> among young friends (*not* a superior).
Really? I have on my computer the episodes of the sentai series currently aired
in Japan (which began in February of this year) in the original Japanese, and
in Episode 3 "kimi" is distinctively used by a 40-year-old producer to talk to
a young girl (18 or so) who wants to do an audition to become an idol. It fits
perfectly with what I had been taught of its use: as a 2nd person pronoun used
by adult males to refer to young girls, often with an ironic tone (but not
always). I'm positively sure that it's not used by young people, except maybe
by boys when talking to a younger girl. The fact that the speaker must be male
and the listener female for the use of this pronoun is an extremely strong
requirement as far as I know.

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

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