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Second, we have the sentence-final particle わ. The first is the pronoun 私, which is considered to be feminine when used in casual contexts. There are three features that place this sentence within the realm of 女言葉. Let's take a look at a typical example of 女言葉:
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While this naturally means that the actual linguistic features of 女言葉 have shifted over time, there is one aspect that has endured throughout the ages - the belief that women speak (or should speak) in a more indirect, polite, and subtle manner than their male counterparts. Over time, these speech styles were reimagined as the way that all women (should) speak. It's a common belief that 女言葉 dates back to ancient times, but in reality, the features of 女言葉 are based on just a few points in history when small groups of upper-class women developed new speech styles. 女言葉, or "women's language," is a speech style that is associated with femininity, refinement, classiness, and modesty. We'll start by examining the two ends of the stereotypical gendered speech style spectrum - 女言葉 (women's language) and 男言葉 (men's language). Still, understanding the first perspective is also important, since stereotypical gendered speech styles influence speakers as they make choices in their language use. Our main focus in this article is to see how real people with diverse gender identities use Japanese, so we'll mostly concern ourselves with this second perspective - real life, practical language use. There are two different ways that we can approach this question - from the perspective of stereotype and ideology, and from the perspective of practical language use. Setting out to define gendered language is a more complicated task than you would expect. If you haven't already, we also recommend installing a text translator plug-in for your browser, such as Rikaikun or Safarikai to help you read the kanji in this article. If you need to brush up, have a look at our Ultimate Hiragana Guide and Ultimate Katakana Guide. Prerequisites: This article assumes you already know hiragana and katakana. My hope is that this article leaves you with a more thorough understanding of gendered language options in Japanese, and empowers you to make the choices that best suit your unique identity and communicative purposes. We'll also discuss オネエ言葉, another stereotypical gendered language style that originated in the gay bar scene, and is now highly visible in Japanese media. We'll take a look at the stereotypical gendered language speech styles known as 女言葉 ("women's language") and 男言葉 ("men's language"), and then dive deeper into how speakers deviate from these linguistic gender norms in real life. This article aims to give a more queer-inclusive overview of gendered Japanese language use. If you don't identify that way, it's even more difficult to figure out! Even if you identify as cisgender (a person whose gender identity and birth sex are the same), the traditional "girls use this, boys use that" explanation for gendered Japanese can be hard to wrap your mind around. As great as this is, the array of gendered language choices can be hard to navigate, and many language learners receive overly-simplified or contradictory advice about gendered language use. In English, we rely on others to call us by our preferred pronouns, such as "he," "she," or "they," but in Japanese, the power to express your gender through language often rests in your hands.
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Over time, I came to understand that Japanese is full of different language features that communicate your gender identity. It made me wonder what other aspects of my language use were communicating information I wasn't aware of. This answer only confused me further, because I had definitely heard men more masculine than I stick 〜わ to the end of their sentences too. I wasn't yet aware of any other features of gendered language in Japanese, so I assumed it had something to do with my intonation - usually a dead giveaway that I'm gay when speaking English. His statement caught me off guard, because I knew I'd been using the "male" pronoun 僕. I was an assistant junior high school teacher, and was outside helping the PE teacher set up for the upcoming sports festival. I still remember the first (of many times) that someone told me,