Re: first lang test

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