With lessons 1-8 of the Pimsleur Japanese I course we should be able to understand the grammar of the following clips from ‘Shigatsu wa kimi no uso” (Your lie in April). They all use casual language, though, so we might not recognize the words at first, but it’s easy to map them to the formal language used in Pimsleur. The clips are very short, both because they have to qualify as ‘fair use’ of copyrighted material, and because it’s difficult to find dialogs with the grammar of the lessons that span more than a sentence or two and that contain mostly words used in the lessons. In many cases, a dialog will have additional words not covered in the lessons, in which case we added a short explanation of what the new words mean.

Personal pronouns

The formal pronouns ‘watashi’ (I) and ‘anata’ (you) don’t show up in animes as often as we would expect because in animes, where casual language dominates, the preference is to use other ways to say ‘I’ and ‘you’, each one with its own nuance. In this clip from ‘Your name’ (kimi no na wa), a girl – Mitsuha – that unwillingly exchanged bodies with a boy – Taki – is talking to his friends – Tsukasa and Shinta – for the first time; not knowing how Taki addresses himself, she guesses until she hits the right one:

 
The most common words for ‘I’ in movies, animes and manga are:

• わたくし – watakushi – very formal
• わたし – watashi – formal
• あたし – atashi – feminine
• ぼく – boku – young, respectful, male
• おれ – ore – confident, tough, mostly male
• じぶん – jibun – ‘jibun-no’: my, ‘jibun-de’: myself

Japanese avoid saying ‘you’, and instead use the name of the person, so all of these forms of ‘you’ are mainly relevant in pop culture:

• あなた – anata – formal, business-like, neutral; it is also a way for a wife to address her husband, meaning ‘dear’ or ‘darling’
• きみ – kimi – affectionate, friendly
• あんた – anta – quite casual, sometimes rude, or confrontational
• おまえ – omae – quite casual, sometimes rude, or tough; the word means ‘respected front’ but this meaning no longer applies
• きさま – kisama – vulgar (used all the time in ‘Bleach’ by about everyone)
• てめえ – temee – vulgar, mostly male (“Bleach”‘s Ichigo’s favorite word)
• じぶん – jibun – ‘jibun-no’: your, ‘jibun-de’: yourself

Other popular personal pronouns are

• kare – he
• kanojo – she
• koitsu, soitsu, aitsu – this/that/’that over there’ guy
• anata-gata – respecful ‘they’
• ware-ware – we

However, the most common way to refer to groups of people is pluralizing names or personal pronouns with either ‘-tachi’ or ‘-ra’, e.g.,

• watashi-tachi, boku-(tachi/ra), ore-(tachi/ra) – we
• anata-tachi, kimi-tachi, omae-(tachi/ra), temee-ra – you
• tanaka san-tachi – Tanaka san and company
• sensei-tachi – the teachers
• kodomo-tachi – the children

There is no fixed rule for when to use ‘-tachi’ and when to use ‘-ra’, though; ‘-tachi’ is formal and ‘-ra’ is casual, so we always pluralize the formal pronouns with ‘-tachi’, and the casual ones with ‘-ra’. Thus, there is never a ‘watashi-ra’, or a ‘temee-tachi’ because it doesn’t make sense to have a polite word with an impolite suffix, or viceversa.

As the level of politeness veers to the middle between formal and casual, we find that we can pluralize the pronouns with either, e.g., ‘boku-tachi’ and ‘boku-ra’ are both fine. Still, at this level, what pronoun may go with what prefix becomes confusing even for Japanese people because most people don’t use or hear these pronouns in real life situations; they mainly appear in pop culture.

There are many more ways of saying ‘I’ and ‘you’, depending on the character’s trade – a samurai, a farmer, a servant; location – Tokyo, Kansai, Okinawa, Hokkaido; and mood – irritated, pretentious, humble.

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watashi, desu/da, ne/na Ep. 1

 

• Kawori is talking casually, so she drops the ‘wa’ particle, and uses ‘da’ and ‘na’ instead of ‘desu’ and ‘ne’
• ‘baiorinisuto’ is the gai-rai-go for ‘violinist’, i.e., it’s a word borrowed from a foreign language.

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Jaa, ne, hana, ‘o’ prefix, arigatou, san/chan Ep.2

 

• 花 (‘hana’) is flower(s)
• Kawori is talking respectfully of the flowers so she adds the ‘o-‘ prefix
• Still, Kawori is talking casually so she drops the ‘wa’ particle
• In the formal speech, Kawori could thank the girls with ‘arigatou gozai-mashita’ because their ‘kindness’ is already completely in the past, i.e, Kawori already received the flowers
• ‘chan’ is a casual form of the ‘san’ honorific

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o-hayou gozai-masu (casual) Ep.6

 

• ‘o(s)su’ is a very casual shortening of ‘o-hayou gozai-masu’.
• Even though ‘o-hayou gozai-masu’ means ‘good morning’, in certain contexts, like here, it simply means ‘hey’, or ‘sup’ (what’s-up).
• Since the encounter between Kousei and Tsubaki happens at night, a formal greeting would have been ‘kon-ban-wa’.

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watashi/boku, desu/da (casual) Ep.15

 

• ‘baka’ is ‘fool’ or ‘idiot’
• ‘boku’ is a casual form of ‘watashi’.
• ‘da’ is the casual form of ‘desu’.
• Cats say ‘meow’ in English, and ‘nyaa’ in Japanese.
• Since ‘nyaa’ is an onomatopoeia, we could also write it in katakana: ニャア.

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anata/kimi, no, wa Ep.16

 

• Kousei is talking casually so he drops the ‘no’ particle
• ‘kaban’ is bag or briefcase
• ‘kimi’ is a casual form of ‘anata’; it has a connotation of familiarity and affection
• ‘are!’ is an exclamation that means ‘What the…?’ or ‘Oh my!’

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watashi/kimi, desu/da, na-adjective Ep.18

 

• ‘kimi’ is a casual form of anata
• Kawori is talking casually, so she uses ‘da’ instead of ‘desu’
• ‘zankoku-na’ (i.e., cruel) is a na-adjective. The ‘na’ particle is appended when the adjective is applied to a noun, e.g., ‘zankoku-na hito’, but is not added when the adjective is alone, e.g., ‘zankoku desu’.