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Male using feminine speech in Japan 2015/6/5 07:43
Alright, I live in America and My friends and I usually speak as girls in a joke kind of way when we talk about girls. Recently I realized in Japanese females use "yo" and "ne" at the end of a sentence usually without "desu" or "da". Men use "desu" or "da" before using "yo" or "ne". What if I use the female version without "desu" or "da". Would Japanese people think I am a homosexual or will they take it as a joke just as my friends do?

P.S. Please use two scenarios, a gaijin like me doing this or a native Japanese person doing this. thanks a million
by Matt the datt (guest)  

Re: Male using feminine speech in Japan 2015/6/5 14:00
I can't quite imagine exactly how you talk, but am just thinking that you talk with Japanese girls around you (in the US) in somewhat feminine-sounding Japanese, playfully?

If a Japanese guy did that, I "might" think he is gay, or if it sounded intentional, I might think he is just playing. (But I would not jump to conclusions - it also depends on how feminine-like he acts overall.)

If a non-Japanese guy did that, I might just think, oh, he studied the language under a female language teacher for a long time. This can happen - when I used to teach the Japanese language to a European guy (in Europe), in terms of grammar I was teaching "neutral" speech, so to say, but the only Japanese speakers he was exposed to was myself (Japanese woman) and another Japanese female classmate, so the intonation/general tone he picked was very soft.
by AK rate this post as useful

Re: Male using feminine speech in Japan 2015/6/5 17:41
If I were to hear a male foreigner using feminine speech, I would think that he learned japanese from a "sleeping dictionary"
by .. (guest) rate this post as useful

Re: Male using feminine speech in Japan 2015/6/5 19:20
When you say "speak like girls in a joking way when talking about girls", do you mean imitating the way they talk when you are telling a story about them?

If so, it's actually rather common in Japan among young males. If a Japanese guy is telling a story about an encounter with a dits, he may reenact the encounter and speak her lines the way she did (likely with embellishments). It makes the story funnier for the listeners and also drives the point home that the girl was an idiot.

Is that the sort of scenario you are describing?

Or do you mean you just talk like girls for no reason? If that's the case, I cannot recall ever hearing that.

As others have said, sometimes when a foreigner makes jokes of any kind, even when it's very clever, the Japanese first reaction is that the foreigner doesn't know what their really saying, so I suspect as others have already said, that they will assume a female taught you Japanese and perhaps even pity you since the assumption will be that she taught you feminine speech without considering that you are male.
by Rabbityama rate this post as useful

Re: Male using feminine speech in Japan 2015/6/7 15:09
"yo", "ne", " so yo ne", "wa" are feminine endings. "ohohoho" a mature woman laughing with a palm covering the mouth will make the man an "okama", not that anything wrong with being one. "da yo ", "da ne", "so da ne", "so da yo" or "so da na" is ok for men.
When quoting what a woman said, you don't repeat exactly but drop those feminine endings.

by ay (guest) rate this post as useful

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