Japanese pronouns

Japanese 'pronouns' 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 and their role in the current interaction 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 pronouns should be considered a distinct part of speech has varied. Some considered them distinct, while others thought they were only nouns. The 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.

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" 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 : who is talking to whom about what and through which medium. 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, 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": also means "private" or "personal". 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 well as the sentence's subjects and objects.
The first-person pronouns and second-person pronouns are used in formal contexts. 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 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: means "give" in the sense that "somebody other than me gives something to me or to somebody very close to me". 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 sentences comprising a single adjective, it is often assumed that the speaker is the subject. For example, the adjective can represent a complete sentence that means "I am lonely". When speaking of another person's feelings or emotions, would be used instead. Similarly,, as opposed to 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 by a pronoun. If it is required to state the second person, the listener's surname, suffixed with or some other title, 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.
Most common Japanese first-person pronouns by speakers and situations according to Yuko Saegusa :

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. Also, Japanese does not generally inflect by case, so, I is equivalent to me.

Job-related personal pronouns

Archaic personal pronouns

Suffixes

Suffixes are added to pronouns to make them plural.

Romaji	Hiragana	Kanji	Level of speech	Notes
tachi	たち	達	informal; examples:	Also can be attached to names to indicate that person and the group they are with.
kata,gata	かた, がた	方	formal	More polite than. gata is the rendaku form.
domo	ども	共	humble	Casts some aspersion on the mentioned group, so it can be rude. domo is the rendaku form.
ra	ら	等	informal	Used with informal pronouns. Frequently used with hostile words. Sometimes used for light humble as domo.

Demonstrative and interrogative pronouns

words, whether functioning as pronouns, adjectives or adverbs, fall into four groups. Words beginning with indicate something close to the speaker. Those beginning with indicate separation from the speaker or closeness to the listener, while those beginning with indicate greater distance. Interrogative words, used in questions, begin with
Demonstratives are normally written in hiragana.

Romaji and pronunciation	Hiragana	Kanji	Meaning
kore	これ	此れ	this thing / these things
sore	それ	其れ	that thing / those things
are	あれ	彼れ	that thing / those things
dore	どれ	何れ	which thing?
kochira, kotchi	こちら, こっち	此方	this / here
sochira, sotchi	そちら, そっち	其方	that / there
achira, atchi	あちら, あっち	彼方	that / there
dochira, dotchi	どちら, どっち	何方	what / where

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 and.

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 some animals, including humans. 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 and inanimate nouns combined with no, only with ga in limited circumstances; in contrast, modern Japanese pronouns and nouns only combine with no. The short forms are used with ga and in compounds, while the long forms are used independently.

Person	Long form	Short form	Genitive form
1st	are "I/me"	a	a-ga "my/mine"
2nd	nare "thou/thee"	na	na-ga "thy/thine"
3rd		si	si-ga "his/her"
	tare "who"	ta	ta-ga "whose"

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. Ware is often used in fiction, and wa-ga in fixed expressions, such as.
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".

Type	Long form	Short form	Genitive form
Proximal	kore	ko	ko-no
Mesial	sore	so	so-no
Distal	kare	ka	ka-no

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, while ka-no was used to create kanojo and to translate feminine pronouns.