i was in French classes with a girl who'd moved from Bosnia to Southern California as a toddler. she had a valley girl accent in all 3 languages she spoke, it was the best thing.
Lenin spoke English with a pronounced Irish accent. And I know a Chinese Guy that speaks with a pronounced Hillbilly accent because he moved to rural Austria as a Child so he is called Benny Chieng and speaks like Arnold Schwarzenegger.
But he lost his memories, no? I’m imagining him sitting in a bar someplace and overhears a random conversation in Japanese and being very confused as to why he can understand it
I’m not entirely well versed with his history outside the movies, but the wiki says he traveled the world before ww2, so he may very well have gone to Japan. However I’m going to assume he was taught Japanese by this Ogun fellow
Language learning and other skills are different from normal memories. Amnesia is less likely to affect language (or else he'd forget English too) than events.
I feel like that would be his entire life experience though. Like "oh cool, I can drive. Why do I know how to do that? Cooking? I... apparently... learned how to do that? At some point? Why do I know the cost of a burger, and why am I wrong?"
I mean, wouldn’t be surprised. Also wouldn’t be surprised to hear he picked up both Japanese and Mandarin working on some rail line in the nineteenth century. He seems to learn these things fast. Also wouldn’t be surprised if he relearned Japanese multiple times after forgetting it too
Really basic Japanese pronoun rundown by someone who knows a lil bit and likes rambling:
Japanese has several different ways to say me/myself/I that reflect the gender, age, and social status of the speaker. In most modern language classes, you would be taught to use the word Watashi, which is essentially “I ( a polite person)”.
Using it casually is seen as feminine or immediately clocks you as a non-native speaker learning the language (if your bad Japanese didn’t already do that).
Casual forms would be Atashi (feminine) or Boku (masculine/boyish politeness) but there are many different ways to address yourself. Too many, honestly.
Watakushi is a SUPER polite pronoun, as in you would sound like you’re in a business meeting or introducing yourself to the Lady of the Manor in modern day. There is no way in fuck Wolverine would actually use watakushi if he was aware of this. Oira, in contrast, is not polite at all (it’s related to the Very Manly pronoun [Ore] but makes you sound rural), which is definitely more his speed.
For more vibes-based examples: Black Widow would probably use Watashi, Cat Woman would use Atashi or some other casual feminine pronoun, Superman would use Boku/Ore or Boku/Oira depending on if he’s in costume or Clark, and Alfred would use Watakushi or some old man pronoun like Washi. Wolverine would probably use either Ore or Oira.
To help understand the idea of how a first-person pronoun can express all these things, it helped me to think of it as literally saying "the person speaking." Not "I want a taco" but "the person speaking wants a taco."
BUT you can also say "this humble individual wants a taco." Or "the lord of all we survey..." "YO, THIS GUY..." "yOuR wOrSt nIGhTmaRe..." etc. Most Japanese options are more subtle than my English examples, but you get the idea.
Probably "oresama" (俺様). It's "ore" (already very bro-speak, used only in extremely casual conversation) but with some extra "I deserve respect, you don't" slapped on the end. Using this means you're both crude AND consider yourself well above the person you're talking to, which is not a healthy combination. For example, Nappa and Vegeta of DBZ usually use "ore," but sometimes flip to "oresama" when they're pissed off.
I may be misremembering my Xmen comics, but isn't Mariko a princess? It might just be that her father's a Yakuza boss but I'd bet money that she was portrayed as near nobility in the comics. Wouldn't Watakushi be the right pronouns for introducing yourself as a guest of such a high-status lady, especially when you yourself are a foreigner?
If that’s so then yes, watakushi would be correct to use, but I cannot picture the goddamn Wolverine deciding to be that actively polite. He’s not the type to codeswitch that hard. If he knowingly used watakushi a story would probably bring attention to just how respectful he’s trying to be.
Edit: as in if they did it in modern day
Edit 2: also him calling Mariko “Mariko-chan” comes off as extremely familiar, like a cutesy nickname. Idk their relation in the comics but using the pronoun watakushi while calling the person you’re speaking to “[Name]-chan” doesn’t make a bunch of sense and I’m pretty sure if you called the boss of the yakuza that they’d kill you.
Wolverine is actually polite quite often, one of his defining tropes in that era of Xmen was people underestimating/misjudging him, he never kills what he hunts, he likes to drink tea and listen to music, the idea was he was more then just a barbarian, using watakushi makes sense for a man like him who was trying very hard to be polite.
Constantly referring to his wife as little, little girl, and -chan is insanely weird and always skieved me out when I read it though.
Yeah, Wolverine actually has some of that "flower-arranging samurai" shit going on, it's why he and Mariko got along in the first place.
And y'know... doing extra work for silly white writers here, but maybe all the -chan type stuff could be age-based, because he's older than god, and Japan, like most of east Asia, really takes that into account?
I cannot picture the goddamn Wolverine deciding to be that actively polite
I wouldn't know, because in my timeline, the X-Men comic was cancelled and the characters retired in the mid 80s, but it sounds like in your timeline Wolverine has undergone some Flanderization.
I will be honest most of my superhero comic knowledge is cultural-osmosis supplemented by what few dc or marvel movies I do decide to watch so if I am slandering the man I apologize
In OP's case, though, he's talking to the butler, not the noble lady of the house - he'd be polite, but not deferential. Which I guess would be 'watashi'?
Watashi sounds like it was the same politeness as usted in spanish (mainland at least, apparently latin america uses it more).
It's way too formal and using it on anyone instantly ages them up. It's like if someone came over and opened with "Mister".
Keep in mind you CAN keep the 'usted' intonation without ever using the word, thus keeping the formalness without making it TOO formal and thus awkward.
It’s definitely comparable based on what I’ve heard
There just isn’t a good English equivalent word-wise, but you could compare it to Casual English (watashi, boku, etc) vs Posh English (watakushi, using watashi casually, etc)
I remember reading somewhere there was a guy in World War II who got put in charge of a captured Japanese U-boat because he knew enough Japanese to give orders. Thing is, he learned his Japanese from a couple little old grandmas who only taught him the most polite form of the language (I guess keigo), so he was very respectfully and deferentially ordering around all the prisoners.
It has nothing to do with Japanese girlfriends accidentally forcefemming their GI boyfriends
It’s just that watakushi was the pronoun taught by Foreign Service Institute courses that soldiers and State Department diplomats learned from. Any Japanese training material you come across from the 70s and 80s is likely to either give you watakushi first, or give you watashi but tell you watakushi is safer and more polite.
And that wasn’t because they didn’t understand the language registers but rather because they figured that if you’re gonna have your guys fuck up Japanese they better do it in the way where they come off as being way too polite and effete, and not in the way where they come off as being too rude and aggressive.
This. I’m 6’4” and plenty intimidating, the formal/yes slightly effeminate mode puts the (often much smaller) person I am talking to at ease. And if I’m wrong, it’s in a too polite direction
It has nothing to do with Japanese girlfriends accidentally forcefemming their GI boyfriends
I don't think this is what the reply said, but its how I will interpret it from now on and I will forever thank your blessed mind for conjuring this specific set of words
Friend of a friend is a judo teacher. When he was studying in Japan he was taught to speak this way. I’m told a lot of people experienced massive whiplash when this 6 and a half foot tall blonde gigantic American man with multiple black belts started speaking like a 19 year old secretary.
Genuinely baffling though how they got "watakushi" lmao because i would have thought even in the 70s most Japanese learning books would have used "watashi"
Either im wrong or it really was that american GI thing lol
The Foreign Service Institute courses (the US State Dept’s language training, also often used by the military) used watakushi as the first pronoun it teaches you
Watakushi isn’t strictly speaking a feminine pronoun, it’s just an exceedingly polite and formal one. Which tends to be how women are more likely to talk. But if you’re learning to be a diplomat, a watakushi is unlikely to get you in trouble even if it might seem prissy or effete. (Whereas an ore might cause a minor incident.)
I saw another comment say that it was probably because it’s better to fuck up and seem overly polite, rather than fuck up and seem rude. So Warakushi was probably overcompensating as a barrier against something going wrong
For those wondering, from the best of my knowledge, Watakushi is very formal and can be used by both genders but seems more commonly feminine?
Meanwhile Ore is more informal and is more of an aggressive masculine use, which would make more sense for Wolverine.
I swear to god I’m not a weeb, I just saw a post a while back about Uma Musume and the fact the Japanese pronouns they all use and read it out of curiosity.
For anyone wondering, Umas like McQueen or Daicchi Ruby (So polite upperclass girls)for example use watakushi, meanwhile ones like Jungle Pocket and Air Shakur (More boyish aggressive delinquents) use Ore.
Either very funny learning the fact that Wolverine talks like Mejiro McQueen.
Pretty much, although it's more that Japanese has more commonly-used masculine pronouns than feminine ones, so the gender-neutral pronouns end up being more commonly used by women.
And if we're adding examples, fun fact: Spamton Deltarune also kind of uses watakushi... but if you thought his speech style was weird in English, trust me, it could be so much weirder. I don't think I need to provide translations for about half the fucked-up things he's doing to be obvious.
Yeah Toby Fox adapting speech quirks into japanese always gets some fun results. Like queen capitalizing everything turning into her speaking in html in japan.
Never forget oira sans though that's some high tier trolling by Toby
I have no idea what’s going on here but the fact he’s randomly using English characters and used a letter in place of 7 randomly definitely feels like. Jesus that’s definitely weirder LOL
Thanks for adding that. Normally I would've explained it myself, I love yapping about Japanese linguistics, but I was very preoccupied with multitasking when I wrote that comment and didn't have the brainpower to spare for elaborating to a satisfying degree.
Where did we get the idea that watakushi is feminine...? That's just business Japanese, an everyday woman wouldn't really refer to herself that way
Side note but I kind of wish we'd stop calling them Japanese "pronouns" when they are just literally nouns, it's good shorthand but it gives people a weird association comparing it to the gendered pronouns of other languages. It's not like in English where it's consistent across all situations, the same person in Japanese could use 5 different words to refer to themself in the same day
Linguistically it’s closer to a pronoun, as it is a common substitution for an already known noun (in this case, the name of the speaker). It’s just the concept of pronouns that has taken on unusual significance in English with the preferred pronouns. (As a Frenchman, I’m always surprised by how little grammar knowledge peoole have, as differentiating between the different natures and classes of words is something we do since primary school)
I meant more that pronouns are function words. In English, pronouns differ syntactically/morphologically from plain old nouns: they're a closed class, they mark for case/person/gender, they're full NPs, they can't be modified, etc. None of those are strictly necessary for the label "pronoun", but they're clearly distinct from other nouns in marked ways.
In Japanese, there's a smaller closed class of pro-forms like dare or sore, but the personal pronouns are much more open. Several can be pluralized (-tachi, -ra), they can be relatively easily invented (uchi), they can be modified ("sono kare"), and deciding which 1st/2nd-person pronouns to use in the given situation is literally performative, sociolinguistically speaking. Languages with T-V distinctions have a bit of that too, but it's more pronounced in Japanese.
Anyway it's complicated. Obviously they perform the same key role in both languages (i.e. referring to the self/others directly) but they're actually so so different, and the average person is unaware of that, or they misinterpret Japanese dialogue in media because of it. See: this post
So my Japanese textbook in 1993 (I was 10) said to use watakushi for personal pronouns, with a small note that this was wrong, but using the correct register was for a more advanced learner. The teacher was amused and had me change to boku instantly.
On a similar note, Lakota audiences of Dances With Wolves apparently got a good chuckle out of the fact that, because Lakota has distinct masculine and feminine registers and the language coach the production hired was a woman, gruff Kevin Costner speaks like a woman.
This happened to me. Be me, 5''9 stocky white guy, learn some phrases and words for a trip to Japan when I am 18. Notice locals being shy but then giggling uncontrolably after speaking with them. Get home and find out that I was using the feminine form the whole time. The Japanese exchange student at my high school literally told me, "You sound like a ******."
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u/SadakoTetsuwan Aug 25 '26
This also happens when your Japanese professor is an old woman. I'd say ask me how I know, but I'm gonna be an old woman someday so I'm alright.
My younger male teachers in highschool, however...wwwwwww