#linguistics fun

[pikahlua]

Hi pikahlua. It’s been a while since I checked on your blog. How are things?

I got my hands on the Japanese Ultra Analysis, and wanted to check where the birthplace was said to be. Google translate told me, “静岡県あたり,” means “around Shizuoka Prefecture.” Usually I hear it translated as “near” which implies they’re outside of the prefecture, but “around” I think could mean either one. I wasn’t sure if this difference matters or not.

If it’s okay, I wanted to ask if the word choice might lean towards either implication, if they’re inside or outside prefecture borders, or if it’s too vague to say either way.

My understanding of "atari" in that context is that it means "in the vicinity of" or "around" too. So I think it's reasonable to just see it as the general Shizuoka prefecture area, or else some place not precisely defined for whatever reason but still around there. That sort of thing.

[pikahlua]

Very small question. From what I know, "Zuku" or "Zu" don't make sense linguistically as nicknames for Izuku. My question is, is there any nickname, specifically as a shortening of his name, that would make sense in Japanese? Like "Izu"? Or even "Ku"? Or is his name itself just not nickname-able?

(this being said while ignoring honorifics as nickname-makers.)

I don't want to say that never happens, but the cases I've heard of for such things are when someone's name is like...at least four syllables. Like I've heard "Yoshi" as a nickname before, though it wasn't a nickname I encountered IN Japan. And consider Momo's nickname in canon is "Yaomomo," a combo of her given and family names. But unless I'm mistaken, I'm pretty sure "Izuku" is more like a theoretical name Horikoshi made up, and no one in real life has ever been named that before--or if they have it's an exceedingly rare name. So there isn't really a standard nickname for it in the first place. (Well, unless you include "Deku.")

That said, why would you ignore honorifics? If you did, you'd have to ignore "Kacchan"! 😔

[pikahlua]

I can't believe there are still people talking about me.

Sigh okay fine.

Chapter 431 Izuku tells Ochako he wants to talk with her more, not stay with her. I guess some official translations decided to lean heavily into one reading by choosing "stay with her." Whatever. As I've stated many times, my translations are literal and literal ONLY.

How do I know he says he "wants to talk more"? It's like, the most basic Japanese you learn in year 1. This isn't complicated stuff.

Motto hanashitai.

Motto means "more." Hanashitai is the word hanasu, which means "to talk," conjugated to mean "I want to talk." And when I say it's not complicated, I mean Google has absolutely no issues translating it either, so anyone who says otherwise is perfectly capable of checking my work on this and chooses either to not do so or to ignore it.

Anyone who's casting doubt on this extremely uncomplicated translation is being gross, because anyone can read "I want to talk more" as romantic if they want to, but to change the meaning to make it sound MORE-UNQUESTIONABLY-ROMANTIC-I-SWEAR is just an attempt to influence how OTHERS read this moment, and this moment was made INTENTIONALLY vague for open-ended reading, as Horikoshi has made clear several times now.

And I scored a 100 in Japanese years 1, 2, and 3. Bite me.

[pikahlua]

This is just a random fic research question; I've seen plenty of instances where Katsuki calls Inko "Inko-san" or Izuku calls Mitsuki "Mitsuki-san", and also "Auntie". Auntie sounds fine, and Izuku called her this canonically in the novels, but how realistic is calling your childhood friend's parent by their first name + san? I've seen this from some Japanese fanworks too, but it sounds weird to me or even impolite, so I'm curious. Could it be something that originated in and remained stuck since childhood?

I'd think a situation where a child would call a non-relative adult by their first name(-san) would be very rare and the result of some extremely specific set of circumstances. I'd stick to having younger people use the family names of their elders in the context of modern Japan if that is relevant to your creative works. I'd be curious about the context if a Japanese creative work included something like that.

[pikahlua]

hi!

I'm really sorry if you've answered this one before, but after searching through your posts I couldn't find it so I wanted to ask it anyways : how does katsuki refer to his mom in japanese?

I know that in english it was translated as "hag", and in my language as "old woman", but I was wondering how it came across in Japanese

He calls her バッバー babbaa, which is his delinquent bastardization of baabaa, which is a derogatory term for an "old lady." So "hag" works just fine lol.

[pikahlua]

Firstly, thanks for your work! I dunno if this has been asked before, but since I'm not well-versed in anything Japanese, I thought I should ask someone who knows better. So we already know that Katsuki calling Izuku by his name is pretty normal, and sounds more intimate when you contrast it against his previous usage of "Deku". My question is, if Izuku started calling him "Katsuki" (without any honorifics, as uncharacteristic as it sounds), would this sound more or less intimate than "Kacchan"?

That'd entirely depend on the context. Like, there ARE people who call Katsuki "Katsuki" in the canon, you know.

When we say something is "intimate" or "familiar" in Japanese, we're not just talking about romantic intimacy. We're talking about social circles. Inner circles and outer circles. In the above case, it's just common for younger people to use first names for their peers. You get first names and nicknames in elementary school, and maybe in middle school you keep up the first names or you call new acquaintances by their family names, and then in high school, which is supposed to be training for the adult world, you meet even more new people so most everyone you refer to by family names. But if you've known someone by one name since you were four-years-old, you aren't going to suddenly switch to using their family name. That'd be weird and a shocking addition of formality into a much more familiar relationship.

So the change-up you're describing depends entirely on the context. Maybe Katsuki would ASK Izuku to use his full name because he just doesn't wanna go by the nickname anymore. Maybe Izuku switches to "Katsuki" because he's mad at Katsuki and this switch with no warning or discussion is meant to jar Katsuki into realizing something is wrong (I can't imagine Izuku doing this, but that's an option). I once read a doujinshi where Izuku and Katsuki DISCUSS Izuku switching to using "Katsuki" and he doesn't wanna do it because it feels weird, like he doesn't wanna do it unless they're dating, or it means a big new step in their relationship. Sometimes, not always, in the more mutual scenarios like dating, a change in how the two in the relationship refer to each other is discussed before it happens. "Hey I wanna call you this." "Hey can I call you that?" "I'd like it if you call me this." "If you called me that, it'd be okay with me." And sometimes the thing a person wants to be called by their partner is a cutesy nickname.

So if Izuku were to call him "Katsuki," this change wouldn't be happening in a vacuum. There would be some context surrounding it, and that context would determine how this change would come across.

[pikahlua]

So, I’ve been in the fandom for some time, and I wanted to ask you about the way, in the vast majority of bkdkbk fics and doujinshis, Izuku often talks TO Katsuki in 3rd person. “Kacchan is hot,” “Kacchan looks so good like that,” etc. I haven't noticed it in any other ships, and only ever Izuku speaking like that to Katsuki. Is this some kind of quirk of the Japanese language that I'm not getting? It sounds strange to me in English. What do you think?

I think I've touched on this a little before, but what you're probably encountering is a translator's specific flavor of how to bring those moments into English. In Japanese, second-person pronouns are in many cases impolite, not to mention there are MANY second-person pronouns to choose from that each have their own meanings and implications. Izuku is an average person with an average level of politeness, and so he often does the very Japanese thing of just saying a person's name in place of a second-person pronoun. It sounds awkward in English because we don't usually do this with our conversation partners, but it's actually the norm in Japan to refer to a person to their face directly by their name rather than call them "you." As for other pairings, it's really just a matter of those artists determining how these characters refer to each other likely based on what they say in the canon material. Some characters DO use second-person pronouns, or maybe they use second-person pronouns for some people or in some situations only. This is a whole level of consideration in writing how characters interact that I would say is not as pronounced in the English language, but we do have our own versions of this same phenomenon. It's just what we consider polite and rude in addressing people is different.

[pikahlua]

Unless I’m getting it wrong, not using honorifics is rude because it’s too familiar. So would Katsuki not using honorifics when he switches to ‘Izuku’ fall under his standard rudeness or is it appropriate bc they’re osananajimi?

Almost. Note that it's not that dropping honorifics is a sign of familiarity so it's always rude, it's that if you do it with someone you AREN'T close enough to, it would be offensive. A lot of what determines what's polite or appropriate in Japanese has to do with the context of the situation: Are they in a private or public space? How do those conversing relate to each other in terms of social standing? Are they equal, or is someone in a higher position deserving of respect from the lower? What kind of relationship and background do the two people have together? Knowing that, you should start to see the picture of how this works for Izuku and Katsuki. They knew each other from very young ages, before they would have developed their senses of in-groups and out-groups. THAT'S the special trait of an osananajimi. It's that they knew you as a peer before you could put on your social mask, and that makes them close to you in a sense no other person may ever be. Hence, you would expect them to behave familiarly with each other.

But that's not the only context you can apply to this. Note that Katsuki isn't the only character who forgoes the honorifics. A lot of students in class 1-A, particularly the boys, drop the honorifics when addressing their peers as well. It is in some sense casual, familiar, and rude, because these concepts are intertwined to a degree. It's a common thing you see in anime--it's a manner of expressing these characters' personalities, particularly the ones who are trying to come across as tough and masculine and, for lack of better word, bros. It's less about what's appropriate in a real-life setting and more about how the writer gives hints about who the character is and how they think, about their tropes.

So I don't even blink at Katsuki's lack of honorifics with Izuku. It's just a flavor to him that tells us about Katsuki's character and about his relationship with Izuku, and it's entirely what I would expect from him. It's gruff, masculine, and familiar. In fact, his brand of familiarity is so caricatured that he basically shows respect by switching from really rude pronouns to just regularly rude pronouns. That's just who he is.