Agreed, manga definitely exagerates the gender and colloqialism of the
language.  If you want to learn to truly sound native, read them... but
watch for the cursing/swearing.  Might want to learn what some of that stuff
means from a real close friend that won't mind you asking instead of
blurting something out in public and finding out you've just offended
everyone.  Especially if you are using the adult manga.

Keith L. Kovala
klk@renderedelement.com

> -----Original Message-----
> From: pic microcontroller discussion list
> [mailto:PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU] On Behalf Of D. Jay Newman
> Sent: Tuesday, December 16, 2003 9:26 AM
> To: PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
> Subject: Re: [OT:] Difference between Its and It's
>
>
> > > Japanese may not have specific gramatical gender, but men
> and women
> > > speak differently enough that when reading you can tell
> if a man or
> > > a woman is talking.
> >
> > Able to tell gender of written Japanese?  Spoken yes,
> because they use
> > very different colloqial conjugations of the words, but I can't see
> > how that would appear in writing since written Japanese (at
> least in
> > newspaper and books is pretty 'textbook'.  This however is
> akin to the
> > dialect differences
>
> You are most likely correct. "Standard" Japanese is the
> masculine dialect of Tokyo. And formal language of any sort
> tends to use the standards.
>
> Textbook English won't prepare a Japanese person for parts of
> America, either.
>
> > But back to the point... I can't say as reading Japanese
> you could see
> > whether the author was male or female, unless you are talking a
> > personal letter.  This also doesn't point to gender in the
> language,
> > cause a pencil
>
> I'm not saying anything about the gender of the author, but
> that of the character. I should have stated that I study
> languages to read fiction. In Japanese my goal is manga,
> where the gender differences in language tend to be a bit exagerated.
>
> Though, even in English I can usually tell the gender of the
> author of a piece of fiction if I read enough of it.
> Unfortunately in English I don't know exactly how I do it,
> because English is my native tongue.
> --
> D. Jay Newman           !
> jay@sprucegrove.com     ! Xander: Giles, don't make
> cave-slayer unhappy.
> http://enerd.ws/robots/ !
>
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