Gender differences in spoken Japanese

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Nov 16th 2011 07:07
I asked a question about how to speak English politely on Lang-8 recently. I got some wonderful suggestions, for example, heroes in action movies would not be good models as an English speaker to me. I am wondering that English also has gender differences in spoken English like Japanese language.

For Japanese language, there are gender differences in spoken Japanese. We, Japanese people, called onna kotoba (女言葉, "women's words") and otoko kotoba (男言葉”men’s words”). If a baby girl is born, her mother usually teaches onna kotoba as part of discipline.

When my friend and I went to a party which was held by a couple of a Japanese wife and a Dutch husband, and then my friend laughed a lot alone. There were some guests including another international marriage couples, but there are no funny things to me. I wondered what was so funny to her. I asked her and she answered that almost all big macho Dutch husbands spoke onna kotoba (female's words). 「ねぇ、それ取って ( Please pass it to me.)」「あら、ありがとう。(Oh, Thank you. )」「それもちょうだいよ(Please give it to me)」In these words, 「ねぇ、あら、~よ」are typical onna kotoba. Men also can say these words, but they sound pretty feminine.

If I translate these words into English, they are not funny. But if I notice that these onno kotoba is spoken by men, it sounds funny and gives me strange impression in the men. We, my friend and I, knew that they loved their wives and got much influence from their wives, but still it sounds funny. ^^ Spoken Japanese makes macho Dutch men feminine unconsciously. ^^