Japanese pronouns (代名詞) are words in the Japanese language used to address or refer to present people or things, where present means people or things that can be pointed at. The position of things (far away, nearby) and their role in the current interaction (goods, addresser, addressee, bystander) are features of the meaning of those words. The use of pronouns, especially when referring to oneself and speaking in the first person, vary between gender, formality, dialect and region where Japanese is spoken. According to some Western grammarians, pronouns are not a distinct part of speech in Japanese, but a subclass of nouns, since they behave grammatically just like nouns. Among Japanese grammarians, whether nouns should be considered a distinct part of speech (品詞) has varied. Some considered them distinct, others thought they were only nouns. The gakkō bunpō (学校文法) of today has followed Iwabuchi Etsutarō's model, which does not recognize pronouns as a distinct part of speech, but merely a subclass of nouns (see ).

Use and etymology

In contrast to present people and things, absent people and things can be referred to by naming; for example, by instantiating a class, "the house" (in a context where there is only one house) and presenting things in relation to the present, named and sui generis people or things can be "I'm going home", "I'm going to Hayao's place", "I'm going to the mayor's place", "I'm going to my mother's place" or "I'm going to my mother's friend's place". Functionally, deictic classifiers not only indicate that the referenced person or thing has a spatial position or an interactional role but also classify it to some extent. In addition, Japanese pronouns are restricted by a situation type (register): who is talking to whom about what and through which medium (spoken or written, staged or in private). In that sense, when a male is talking to his male friends, the pronoun set that is available to him is different from those available when a man of the same age talks to his wife and, vice versa, when a woman talks to her husband. These variations in pronoun availability are determined by the register. In linguistics, generativists and other structuralists suggest that the Japanese language does not have pronouns as such, since, unlike pronouns in most other languages that have them, these words are syntactically and morphologically identical to nouns. As functionalists point out, however, these words function as personal references, demonstratives, and reflexives, just as pronouns do in other languages. Japanese has a large number of pronouns, differing in use by formality, gender, age, and relative social status of speaker and audience. Further, pronouns are an open class, with existing nouns being used as new pronouns with some frequency. This is ongoing; a recent example is jibun (自分), which is now used by some young men as a casual first-person pronoun. Pronouns are used less frequently in the Japanese language than in many other languages, mainly because there is no grammatical requirement to include the subject in a sentence. That means that pronouns can seldom be translated from English to Japanese on a one-to-one basis. The common English personal pronouns, such as "I", "you", and "they", have no other meanings or connotations. However, most Japanese personal pronouns do. Consider for example two words corresponding to the English pronoun "I": 私 (watashi) also means "private" or "personal". 僕 (boku) carries a masculine impression; it is typically used by males, especially those in their youth. Japanese words that refer to other people are part of the encompassing system of honorific speech and should be understood within that context. Pronoun choice depends on the speaker's social status (as compared to the listener's) as well as the sentence's subjects and objects. The first-person pronouns (e.g., watashi, 私) and second-person pronouns (e.g., anata, 貴方) are used in formal contexts (however the latter can be considered rude). In many sentences, pronouns that mean "I" and "you" are omitted in Japanese when the meaning is still clear. When it is required to state the topic of the sentence for clarity, the particle wa (は) is used, but it is not required when the topic can be inferred from context. Also, there are frequently used verbs that imply the subject and/or indirect object of the sentence in certain contexts: kureru (くれる) means "give" in the sense that "somebody other than me gives something to me or to somebody very close to me." Ageru (あげる) also means "give", but in the sense that "someone gives something to someone other than me." This often makes pronouns unnecessary, as they can be inferred from context. In Japanese, a speaker may only directly express their own emotions, as they cannot know the true mental state of anyone else. Thus, in sentences comprising a single adjective (often those ending in -shii), it is often assumed that the speaker is the subject. For example, the adjective sabishii (寂しい) can represent a complete sentence that means "I am lonely." When speaking of another person's feelings or emotions, sabishisō (寂しそう) "seems lonely" would be used instead. Similarly, neko ga hoshii (猫が欲しい) "I want a cat," as opposed to neko wo hoshigatte iru (猫を欲しがっている) "seems to want a cat," when referring to others. Thus, the first-person pronoun is usually not used unless the speaker wants to put a special stress on the fact that they are referring to themselves or if it is necessary to make it clear. In some contexts, it may be considered uncouth to refer to the listener (second person) by a pronoun. If it is required to state the second person, the listener's surname, suffixed with -san or some other title (like "customer", "teacher", or "boss"), is generally used. Gender differences in spoken Japanese also create another challenge, as men and women refer to themselves with different pronouns. Social standing also determines how people refer to themselves, as well as how they refer to other people. Japanese first-person pronouns by speakers and situations according to Yuko Saegusa, Concerning the First Personal Pronoun of Native Japanese Speakers (2009)

List of Japanese personal pronouns

The list is incomplete, as there are numerous Japanese pronoun forms, which vary by region and dialect. This is a list of the most commonly used forms. "It" has no direct equivalent in Japanese (though in some contexts the demonstrative pronoun それ (sore) is translatable as "it"). Also, Japanese does not generally inflect by case, so, I is equivalent to me.

Archaic personal pronouns

Suffixes

Suffixes are added to pronouns to make them plural.

Demonstrative and interrogative pronouns

Demonstrative words, whether functioning as pronouns, adjectives or adverbs, fall into four groups. Words beginning with ko- indicate something close to the speaker (so-called proximal demonstratives). Those beginning with so- indicate separation from the speaker or closeness to the listener (medial), while those beginning with a- indicate greater distance (distal). Interrogative words, used in questions, begin with do-. Demonstratives are normally written in hiragana. When a Japanese speaker uses ko-, so- and a- forms, they are not necessarily considering spatial distance, but also psychological, temporal and topical distance. For more forms, see Japanese demonstratives on Wiktionary. Other interrogative pronouns include 何 なに nani "what?" and 誰 だれ dare "who(m)?".

Reflexive

Japanese has only one word corresponding to reflexive pronouns such as myself, yourself, or themselves in English. The word 自分 means "one's self" and may be used for human beings or some animals. It is not used for cold-blooded animals or inanimate objects.

Old Japanese pronouns

Each Old Japanese pronoun has a "long" form that ends in -re, and a "short" form without -re. When combining with a genitive particle, the short forms of personal pronouns, as well as animate nouns, notably combined only with ga, while demonstratives (ko, so, (k)a) and inanimate nouns combined with no, only with ga in limited circumstances; in contrast, modern Japanese pronouns (many of which were originally nouns) and nouns only combine with no. The short forms are used with ga and in compounds, while the long forms are used independently. Of these, tare evolved into modern dare, whose genitive form is simply dare-no. Ta-ga is sometimes used for literary effect, for example in the Japanese title of For Whom the Bell Tolls (誰がために鐘は鳴る). Ware is often used in fiction, and wa-ga in fixed expressions, such as 我が国 ("my/our country"). Genitive forms, when combining with a noun that began in a vowel, may fuse with it. For example, wa-ga "my" + imo "sister" → wa-gimo "my sister"; wa-ga + ipe1 "house" → wa-gipe1 "my house" (wa-gie in modern Japanese). These demonstratives largely survived intact into modern Japanese. Kare came to be used as a gender-neutral third-person personal pronoun, and eventually used to translate masculine third-person pronouns specifically in European languages ("he/him"), while ka-no was used to create kanojo and to translate feminine pronouns ("she/her").

The modern pronouns kanojo and kareshi

The third-person feminine pronoun, kanojo, had not existed until sometime around the end of the Tokugawa shogunate and the beginning of the Meiji era. Prior to this, the distal demonstrative pronoun kare, are (彼) was used as a gender-neutral personal pronoun. 彼女 started out as a mere shortened spelling of the phrase ka-no wonna (かのをんな), which could be spelt in full as の, literally simply means "that female person," and is composed of the genitive form of kare, ka-no, and the noun wonna (now onna). Although not being a pronoun in a lexicographic sense, this phrase can be used pronominally like modern expressions such as a-no hito (あの人) or a-no mono (あの者) for the singular "they/them," a-no otoko (あの男) for "he/him," and of course, a-no onna (あの女) for "she/her." The pronunciation of this phrase was consistently listed as ka-no wonna (カノヲンナ) across various pronunciation dictionaries for elementary students during the Meiji era. The earliest exception was the 1876 dictionary Kaisei Syougaku Tokuhon Zibiki (改正小學讀本字引) by 田中𦤺知, which listed KA-NO ZYO Mukau-ni wiru musume (ムカウニヰルムスメ). It has been suggested that the editor may have simply used ka-no zyo (now kanojo) for novelty back when jo (女) was still commonly used as a free noun. This unique pronunciation was listed in a few later dictionaries. The same aforementioned dictionaries and more also listed ka-no wotoko, ka-no mono and ka-no hito. The phrase ka-no wonna (and its alternative ka-no zyo) rose to prominence due to Meiji writers' need to translate third-person feminine pronouns in European languages, such as she and her in English or elle and elles in French, which they eventually incorporated into their own writings. An 1871 French-Japanese dictionary translated elle as ka-no wonna-ha. ka-no wonna-ni. tuma (彼女ハ. 彼女ニ. 夫), and elles as kare-ra (彼等); an 1885 English-Japanese dictionary translated her as ka-no wonna. ka-no wonna-ni. ka-no wonna-wo (ノ. 彼ノ女ニ. 彼ノ女ヲ), herself as ka-no wonna zisin-ni (ニ), and she as ka-no wonna. mesu. In contrast, masculine pronouns such as he /him/his, il /ils, etc. were translated with kare (彼) and kare-ra (彼等). Kanojo, as a lexicalized pronoun, was first attested in literature in its written furigana-glossed form as kanozyo in the 1885 novel Tousei Syosei Katagi (當世書生気質) by Tsubouchi Shōyō. Meanwhile, Sudō Nansui (Mitsuaki) used sī and ka-no wonna in his 1887 novel The Ladies of New Style (新粧之佳人); and Futabatei Shimei used are in his novel Ukigumo published in the same year. As a phrase, ka-no wonna/ka-no zyo referred to female non-relatives, but as a pronoun, kanojo came to be used for female family members in literature, for example by Natsume Sōseki in his 1912 novel To the Spring Equinox and Beyond (彼岸過迄), where a character refers to his mother as kanodyo; the regular phrase ka-no wonna still occurs in reference to a different woman. At this point, the phrase ka-no wonna and the pronoun kanojo/kanodyo coexisted with different usages even in the same work. Kanojo eventually acquired its status as a lexicalized noun meaning "girlfriend" during the late Taishō era. The third-person masculine pronoun kareshi (彼氏) was coined during the early Shōwa era as an alternative to the once-gender-neutral kare (彼) and as the opposite to the feminine kanojo (彼女). Its first written attestation as a pronoun is attributed to Tokugawa Musei's 1929 essay collection Mandanshū (漫談集); as a noun meaning "boyfriend," to Nagai Kafū's 1934 novel Hikage-no Hana (ひかげの花). Morphologically, kareshi (彼氏) is composed of the aforementioned demonstrative-turned-personal pronoun kare (彼) and -shi (氏), the latter of which is an honorific suffix to names, mostly male names, and can be translated as "Mr." Kareshi was often used in a tongue-in-cheek way; compare the masculine and self-aggrandizing ore-sama (俺様), which also consists of a pronoun (ore (俺)) and an honorific suffix (-sama (様)).