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points by thaumasiotes 4 days ago | 0 comments
> Its known as onnarashii (女らしい) speech.

> 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
> and therefore in every language

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
what? 嗯嗯 is Chinese - no wonder the Japanese get confused. [edit: just realized that you mentioned wechat - so you are probably talking to Chinese people?]

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.

[–] thaumasiotes 2 days ago
Yes, I'm talking to Chinese people. My entire point is that there is no special "you learned to talk like a woman" phenomenon in Japan - that phenomenon is universal across every human culture. If you learn to talk by speaking to women, or by listening to women, then you will talk like a woman, and anyone native to the culture will notice.