Japanese Continued

To clear up my previous stabs at language, I IMed one of my Japanese friends, and he says the -ue construction is a lot more archaic than -sama. (Apparently -sama was used until around 1950s but -ue was like 1700s. I only know the bare bones about Japanese history so I can't confirm its validity, but it seems consistent with period dramas.)

Celena does call Allen "oniisama" in ep26, so I guess it's consistent in the series that the men use -ue and the women use -sama. Although, why exactly? @_@a Maybe to give the feeling of samurai spirit and old values to the guys, since they're warriors? (Dryden, the only aristocrat, only referred to his father as "my old man" and never addressed him in the series.)

And my friend says "senmon" is a noun and therefore only form compound nouns, so Hitomi would use "pro". Excellent. Fits in with my evil plan very well. Mwhahaha.

As for honorific titles and such, the formal stuff will fit. They used a lot of -dono as address in political relationships. Kings were referred by their country; Aston continually called Van by "King of Fanelia" or just "Fanelia". (The only "Van-sama" uttered outside of Van's people were Voris when he asked Van to retreat for Temple Fortana. Crusade crew called Van "ou-sama".)

But for personal relationship titles (e.g. -san), I am of Chocolatelova's opinion that I'd like to have Hitomi call Allen and Dryden by -san.

In fact, the only people Hitomi did not refer to deferentially were Merle (understandable since she's younger) and Van. Her relationship with him was clear during her summary narration at the beginning of every ep--she referred to Allen as "ano hito", but Van was always "aitsu". They both mean "that person", but "aitsu" is rude :P Maybe it's because he was such a jerk in ep1, she got the habit to call him a jerk back all the time. And of course, Van used "aitsu" with her, as well.

Here's Van being his jerk self:


That was a rather dry post, so here's a link to the thumbnail theatre, always funny to read. My favorite line is Folken's "Of course. THIS IS ANIME™, and you're a Japanese high school girl. There's no force in the universe which can resist you." So true.