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Re: first lang test

From:Yoon Ha Lee <yl112@...>
Date:Thursday, February 8, 2001, 19:56
On Thu, 8 Feb 2001, Andreas Johansson wrote:

> >By the way, I don't know if anyone's still interested months after the > >death of that thread, but I asked that Japanese professor about "boku", a > >while back, and she said something rather interesting - that she had heard > >high school girls using it, but not for the past 5 years. Her opinion was > >that it was a fad that had died. > > > >E-Ching > > Being new to the list, I can't help wondering what "boku" is? Some kind of > articificial language from Japan I gather? Anybody that'd like to give me > the detail?
Er...as I understand it, it's the first personal singular pronoun used mainly by boys or younger men, and I *think* it leans toward the casual/informal side, though considering how convoluted Japanese honorific-systems can be I'm going to wait for an expert to confirm that. :-p BTW, E-Ching, thanks for that tidbit! Interesting indeed...I hadn't thought of the possibility of Japanese pronoun usage being affected by fads, though with the school-age set it would make a certain amount of sense.... YHL