Talking Like a Boy: A Lesson in Manspeak

Has anyone ever told you that you should talk like a girl? Here in Tokyo, this has become a phrase I have become all too acquainted with. For, in Japan, men and women not only have separate train cars, they have separate language codes as well.

Before I moved to Japan, my Japanese friends were mostly men, so I learned the language of the Japanese male. Instead of saying "watashi" (I), I would blurt out "ore" which means the exact same thing, but in what I like to call manspeak.

Before I knew that there were different types of "speak", I was often unsure as to why I was getting strange looks on the trains or in local restaurants. I was pretty confident that what I was saying was correct, so I chalked up all the stares to the typical "Oh my, a foreigner is speaking our language" curiosity.

Then, one day, my boss heard me say "ganbare" to another coworker. Ganbare is manspeak for ganbatte, which means "good luck" or "you can do it" in Japanese. He literally sat me down and told me not to speak that way. When I asked him why, he simply replied, "It just sounds too weird. You should speak like a girl!"

Since then, my female coworkers have been trying to show me how to speak properly, cutesy and in high tones, like a proper Japanese girl should. I don't think it's working. I like the trills that occur in Japanese manspeak, and the harshness of the words. It sound more real. At least more so than the over-the-top squeaking that occurs in the ideal speech of a Japanese woman.

I know a girl here who has a Japanese father and an American mother. She speaks in Japanese manspeak, and makes no apologies for it. When I asked her why she speaks that way, she simply replied, "I'm not going to try to change the way I talk based on silly gender rules."

Maybe I should take a cue from her.

Have any of you ever lived in a place where men speak differently from women? If so, did you change your speech patterns or did you just go with the flow?

Share your thoughts!

Word Buzz Friday: Learn A Language

Instead if the normal vocab today, I decided to try something new. I found these videos doing a simple search on YouTube. They are a bit slow, but the pronunciations are easy to follow. Here's you chance to try your tongue at a new language when you have nothing to do this Memorial Day Weekend!

German



Japanese



Italian



Portuguese





Spanish



Turkish

Comic #2: Barcelona

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This has a little backstory to it: I tend to travel alone and without many plans, so when I was in Barcelona and noticed some lost Japanese tourists trying in vain to understand what a man was trying to say to them in Catalan, I used my rusty Japanese skills to try to help, since I understood mostly what he was trying to say (about the cable car being closed). They were just so shocked that I spoke Japanese and grateful for my help that I ended up staying with them most of the day and really speaking only Japanese - except when we ordered food. I certainly never thought my Asian language skills would be useful in Europe, but I guess that's what makes languages worth learning - they can help you meet people and go places you never would otherwise.