I sound like what in Japanese?

In Japan, women and men speak different versions of the language. How's a guy to learn the difference?

from the September 17, 2007 edition

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I didn't mind being corrected on my pronunciation. But I was disappointed to learn that for the past 2-1/2 years, I had not been speaking good Japanese.

Suddenly, she fired off a list of the mistakes I had apparently made umpteen times. She said her friends had often snickered when I referred to myself in the third person, as many Japanese women and girls do, and when they heard me end sentences with the particle "wa," which is usually used by women to soften the tone of a sentence. Most of all, she said, I needed to take the pitch of my voice down several notches from the tone I had learned.

The solution, of course, was to hang out with more Japanese guys. But for me, a freelance journalist with a part-time job and daily Japanese classes to attend, I had little time for new friends.

Besides, Japanese men, unlike their friendly female counterparts, are often inaccessible. They generally work 12 hours at a stretch and afterward go out in tight-knit, impenetrable groups. My girlfriend once tried to recruit a few male coworkers to teach me better Japanese but had little success. They were either too busy or just too exhausted.

No help came from my teachers – they were all women and were hesitant to correct me anyway. There were no Japanese men working at my baito, or part-time job, either. And textbooks do not often clarify the difference between men's and women's vocabulary. Some teach a few things, but most do not get into the finer points or advanced terminology used separately by men and women.

So I started the painstaking task of dissecting my own style of speaking, asking teachers, my home-stay parents, pretty much everyone, whether such-and-such was proper for men to say. It got to the point where I couldn't finish a sentence. I would stop in the middle and ask, "Tadashi desuka?" ("Is that correct?")

Some people would be honest, but many weren't, telling me my Japanese was fine. I asked some people point blank if my Japanese was joseiteki, or girlish. Some giggled knowingly, but no one would come out and say it.

My ego had been artificially inflated over my skill in speaking Japanese and then – pop! – the bubble burst.

Since then, I've made some adjustments, but an honest Japanese friend recently told me that my Japanese is still chotto kirei, or "a little pretty."

Not what I wanted to hear, but shoganai – it can't be helped. That's all right. I guess at this point I've gotten used to it.

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