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Equating Japanese honorifics with their Western counterparts

Zauriel

The Angel of Justice
13 Mar 2005
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5
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The suffix of -san means mister, miss, or mrs. -san is gender-neutral, not gender-specific

-sama would be equivalent to "sir", "ma'am", or "master"

Sir is used as a honorific before the given name of knights of Europe. For example; Sir William, Sir George.

-dono is even higher than -sama so it is equivalent to lord or lady. Amidamaru calls Yoh "Yoh-dono" in my bootlegged video Shaman King while Amidamaru addressed him as "Lord Yoh" in the Shaman King manga.

-sensei is referred to a mentor or a teacher. It would be equivalent to a Professor in college, to a coach in sports, to a master/instructor in martial arts, or to a mister or miss in elementary, middle and high schools or to an instructor in flight schools, cooking schools, and perhaps the military, etc .

-chan would be similar to "'little", or lass. I have heard peopple say "Little Heidi" or "Little Betty".

-kun would be similar to buddy or pal.
 
You can'ty really equate them... there some culture involved can't be simply substituted. You just have "to know".
 
Yes, GP-san is right! There are actually no "true" equivalents for many words between Japanese and English/Western languages because they are rooted in their own respective cultures.

The gap is narrower for technical, scientific and other terms of recent coinage. :)
 
The lack of equivalence is one of the things that makes it interesting to learn a new language - like you need a Japanese word to say 'tsunami', unless you want to say 'a very large ocean wave caused by an underwater earthquake or volcanic eruption'. I also like the german 'schadenfreude', and I don't know how many phrases that are better expressed in Latin.

😄
 
Actually I think tidal wave would word... I think it's a similar word to Typhoon, which we use in English to denote a hurricane in Asia. :/
 
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