Okay, frequently in Japanese I hear people say things after a person's name: "sama", "san", "shi", "sensei". I get the "sensei" one because it's more known to english speakers, but the other ones have me lost. What do they mean?
Okay, frequently in Japanese I hear people say things after a person's name: "sama", "san", "shi", "sensei". I get the "sensei" one because it's more known to english speakers, but the other ones have me lost. What do they mean?
Last edited by Russt; 2009-08-14 at 05:16 PM. Reason: Fiel-chan ^-^
They denote speaker's closeness to another person. Like If I called you Paul-chan or Paul-kun, it'd mean I'm very close to you, like a best friend or something.
-tan is just for moe purposes. You usually see it in anime as referring to cute or young characters, and it's sometimes used IRL for mascots and such.
I think there's a section on -tan, -chama, etc. in that Wikipedia article linked above.
EDIT: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanes...alk_variations
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