Its a combination of many things, intonation and delivery, politeness (formality, honorifics etc.) level, word choice, particle choice.
Its known as onnarashii (女らしい) speech.
Its a historical thing which is gradually falling out of use. These days you tend to only mostly find it in situations where the politeness levels are needed/expected (e.g. hospitality industry).
[–] xelxebar 4 days ago
[–] netsharc 4 days ago
[–] thaumasiotes 4 days ago
> Its a historical thing which is gradually falling out of use.
No, not at all. Different sexes present themselves differently in every culture and therefore in every language. If you only learn from one sex, you won't be able to tell what parts of their language are sex-specific, and you'll learn to speak like they do.
I've gotten this criticism without speaking at all, by texting with people on Wechat. One girl remarked to me that saying 嗯嗯 [it's an agreement noise; very close in concept to "uh-huh"], with two syllables, came off as overtly feminine. As a man I guess I'm supposed to text 嗯.
I still use 嗯嗯, though, because it's as common as dirt in my experience and 嗯 is much rarer. Is that an artifact of my pool of conversational partners? Probably.
[–] viraptor 3 days ago
What's different in English? Apart from purely situational stuff ("going shopping with girlfriends" for example), what's specific to the language itself?
[–] voxelghost 3 days ago
In Japanese its うんうん, Uhn-Uhn - it might read very slightly on the feminine side , but definetly not 女らしい - and not something that people would point out.
Are you sure?
Personal pronoun choice differs significantly between sexes. Women employ more onomatopoeia usage on average. かしら codes as feminine. Males have flatter pitch variation in general.
Those are just off the top of my head.