someone with more knowledge should probably be making these posts, but i managed to catch a couple interesting things and i did a quick skim of some posts for this show and didn't see anyone else commenting on this so here you go-
the word that Kataoka uses for wife here isn't the standard one most people would use in modern common speak in Japan, he calls Odajima his 本妻, honsai, which DOES mean wife, but it specifically means legal wife, or original wife. (the kanji 本, hon, means origin among other things, and is the same kanji in 日本, Nihon, which is the Japanese name for Japan (origin of the sun).) it's an older term that isn't really used anymore from what i can glean, like i found an article talking about some Chinese men living in Japan in the 1930s who had wives back home in China (their honsai) and local wives in Japan (it didn't give a word for them).
the common word you would use today to talk about your own wife is 妻, tsuma. you might use かみさん, kamisan, also, another informal way to say it, but that one also means landlady so it definitely wouldn't be one that would fit with Kataoka and Odajima's situation at all.
later, in this bit, Kataoka says 俺の嫁, ore no yome, which is a modern slang way of saying "my wife". the internets tells me that it's gained popularity because of nerds online, as yome is an older word that means daughter-in-law, but the phrase has been picked up to mean wife, and just yome is used for wife a lot of the time now. it's a pretty informal way to say it, which makes sense given the company they're with.
the word used here for Odajima is あ姉さん, ane-san, which translates literally as older sister, but is not commonly used in speech for regular people. the more common words for older sister are お姉さん (onee-san), 姉さん (nee-san), or 姉ちゃん (nee-chan), depending on your level of formality when talking to or about your or someone else's sister. 姉, ane, by itself, can be used to talk about your older sister to other people, but it's not something you would call another person when speaking to them whether they're your sister or someone you know. あ姉さん (ane-san) however, is specifically is used to refer to the wife of a Yakuza boss, which is why it's being used here obviously.
wait, you may say, if you're one of the handful of people who saw my other post about linguistics in this show, didn't you talk about the use of aniki (兄貴) last time? isn't there a similar word for sister like that?
yeah, 姉貴 (aneki) is a word that exists, but it's not commonly used. it's an informal word used by young men sometimes, but it doesn't have the slangy Yakuza bent that 兄貴 has. あ姉さん is the word they ended up with instead.
language is cool! forgive any inaccuracies in either of my posts about this so far, i took two years of japanese at university like 20 years ago (i'm old) and have hung on to scraps of it over the years mainly because of watching japanese dramas and anime so sometimes things catch my ears still and i can combine them with things i know about japanese culture. plus the internet helps.
idk if i'll have more of these posts to make because i feel like there's people much better suited to doing this than me but i hope this was interesting for someone at least!
prguitarman
snowghoul
theartofmadeline
pixelskylines
vaporwave
jbbartram-illu
