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3Differences by Status and Sex

Upper and lower classes

It has often been pointed out that speech differences match people’s stations in life. The ancient people of India were noted in this respect. According to Jespersen, the language generally called Sanskrit was spoken by gods, kings, princes, and Brahmans, but shopkeepers, minor offcials, policemen, fishermen, and the majority of women spoke a different language called Prakrit.¹ Present-day Javanese is also well known for this. It is said that there are seven ranks, and the people of each rank speak a different dialect.²

In Japan it was in the middle ages (13th–16th centuries) that the differences in speech according to social levels were most intense, when nobles, warriors, priests, townsmen, and peasants all spoke different languages. This can be clearly understood when one listens with attention to the dialogue in a Kabuki drama. The following conversation in the Tkaidch Hizakurige (Walking along the Tkaid)³ shows how different the samurai’s speech was from the townsman’s:

Samurai:	Shite omitachi wa Edo mono da na. (Well, I see you are from Edo.)
Kitahachi:	Say de gozaimasu. Watakushidomo wa yazen notomari de go manohai ni toritsukarete, kini nangi o itashimasu. (Yes, sir. Last night at the inn we wereattacked by a thief and now we are in great trouble.)
Samurai:	H, sore wa chikagoro kinodoku ja. Naruhodo gomanohai no sashita no wa itakar. (Well, that is something to be pitied. It must hurt you, having been stung by the gomanohai flies.)
Kitahachi:	Iya, gomanohai to msu wa dorob no koto de gozaimasu. (No, sir. What we call gomanohai is a dorob.)
Samurai:	Dorob to wa nanja. (What’s dorob?)
Kitahachi:	Hai, dorob to msu wa tzoku no koto de gozaimasu.(Well sir, dorob means a thief.)
Samurai:	Hah, nanika hito no mono o toriyoru tzoku no koto o dorob to y ka. (I see. Do you call one who steals something from others dorob?)
Kitahachi:	Say de gozaimasu. (Yes, we do.)
Samurai:	Sono mata dorob o gomanohai to y no ja na. Naruhodo geseta geseta. (And you call this dorob a gomanohai, don’t you? I understand now.)

Superiors and inferiors

Differences in speech due to differences in social standing, as in the above example, are not conspicuous in European countries, although they do exist to some extent.

There was a scene near the end of the second act in the British movie Romeo and Juliet in which Juliet, seeing her nurse coming back after being sent to Romeo, implores Romeo’s answer. According to the linguist, Izui Hisanosuke, there was a clear distinction in the use of honorific terms in the conversation between the two.⁴

Such differentiated expressions can be seen in Japan to a marked degree. In the examples of English usage below, you can hardly tell who is higher in rank:

A: I have sung too much and feel thirsty.

B: I’m sorry I did not bring some tea.

C: Don’t you feel tired?

A: No, not a bit today. I think I have never had such a good time.

This is taken from Shioya Sakae’s translation of Hototogisu (Cuckoo).⁵ In the Japanese original, the high and low social standings of the three speakers can be seen quite clearly:

A (Namiko):
	Amari utatte nan daka kawaite kitayo.
B (Maid):
	Ocha o motte mairimasen de.

C (Takeo):
	Kutabire wa shinai ka?
A (Namiko):
	lie, chittomo ky wa tsukare masen no. Watakushi konna ni tanoshii koto wa hajimete.

It is noteworthy that “A,” a young girl like “B,” lowers herself and uses polite words when talking to “C,” but when talking to “B,” her speech is so rough and blunt that it might even be taken for that of a man.

Before World War II there was a Shchiku motion picture called A Warm Current. Sonoike Kinnaru praised the words of the mother in the story and said: “Her words spoken to her son are a little too polite for a parent. How well they reveal that she is his mother-in-law.”

This problem is also related to the style of language used, which I shall discuss in the next chapter, “Differences by Situation” (p. 53).

Male-female distinctions

One of the peculiarities of the Japanese language is the difference in the language of men and women. If I may quote the example given by Nogami Toyoichir in Hon-yakuron (On Translation),⁶ the following conversation in English can be taken to be either between two men or between two women.

“You write uncommonly fast.”

“You are mistaken. I write rather slowly.”

“How many letters you must have occasion to write in the course of a year! Letters of business, too! How odious I should think them!”

“It is fortunate, then, that they fall to my lot instead ol yours.”

Now, if we translate this into Japanese, there will be the following differences when we consider the conversation to be between two men and then between two women:

“Baka ni hayaku kakeru n.”

“Iya, kore demo osoi h da.”

“Yoppodo, takusan no tegami o ichinenj niwa kakun dar n—bijinesu no tegami datte sa. Kangaetemo tamaranai n.”

“Tokoro ga, saiwai to kimi ga kakun ja nakute, boku ga kakun da kara n.”*

“Zuibun hayaku okake ni naru no n.”

“Chigau wa. Kore de atashi osoi h yo.”

“Donna ni takusan no otegami o ichinenj niwa okaki ni narun desh n. Bijinesu no otegami datte, kangaetemo tamannai wa.”

“Demo shiawase to anata ga okaki ni narun ja nakute, watashi ga kakun desu mono.” ^†

The differences in expression between the above conversations are extremely clear.

	Anata.	“Dear.”
	Nan dai?	“What is it?”
	Ato wa ienai—	The rest she is too shy to say—
	futari wa wakai.	The two are young.

—SAT HACHIR⁷

It is a characteristic of Japanese that from such brief expressions as the above, one is able to guess that the speakers are a man and a woman, what their approximate ages are, and even what the relationship between the two is.*

Years ago when there were still many American soldiers stationed in Japan, we used to see an American, driving a jeep with a Japanese woman by his side. On seeing a Japanese car suddenly appear from a side street, the driver would say, Dame n, butsukaru wa yo! (That’s no good—you’ll bump into me!).^† We could guess with what kind of Japanese he was associating and from what kind of person he was learning Japanese; it was all very hilarious. But the American surely thought he was using proper Japanese. It would have been hard, indeed, to explain to him why it was funny.

According to Jespersen, it sounds womanish to use “so” when one means “very much,” and “common” when one means “vulgar.”⁸ But it seems that there are very few differences in the expressions used by men and women in European languages in general.

In contrast, the languages of the American Indians are notable for the differences between the speech of men and women. It is said that among the Caribs of the Lesser Antilles in the eastern end of the Caribbean Sea, only the men speak Carib, while the women speak the same language as the Arawaks on the continent. It is as if the men spoke Japanese and the women Korean. There is a legend that the islands were formerly inhabited exclusively by an Arawak tribe and that the Caribs invaded them and killed all the men, sparing the women. This, they say, was the source of the anomaly.⁹ The Arawak language must sound unspeakably bewitching to the men; if the boys by mistake should use Arawak, they would surely be jeered at and feel embarrassed.