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?

By Matthew Rusling

from the September 17, 2007 edition

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Wherever you go, men and women tend to speak differently. But in Japan, those differences are more pronounced than in many places. Among the multilayered rules of grammar and usage governing spoken Japanese, there also exist underlying concepts of "men's Japanese" and "women's Japanese." By the end of my 2-1/2-year stay there, I had unwittingly become conversant in the latter form.

Like many Western men who spend more than a year in Japan, I learned most of my intonation, expressions, and slang – the things not taught in the classroom – by mimicking a Japanese girlfriend.

I thought my Japanese was fine, while in reality the effeminate, almost childish twang I had been learning made me sound very much like a 20-something, pink miniskirted Japanese woman.

Grammar and syntax aside, Japanese men generally speak in shortened huffs, while women tend to speak in artificially high octaves, elongating their word endings in an almost coquettish attempt to flatter the listener.

I didn't realize this at the time, though, because my contact with Japanese men was fleeting.

So I would make constant mental notes on my girlfriend's pronunciation, grammar, and usage, as well as insist that she never utter a word of English in my presence. I even kept a notebook in my pocket so I could write down any new words I learned on a given day. Then I'd study it in the evening.

Japanese acquaintances, eager to compliment anyone who can say a few words in their language, would constantly say "Josu dane!" or "Your Japanese is really good!"

With this frequent flattery, which the Japanese, especially the women, have mastered, my ego eventually became airborne. But what I didn't know was that people around me were actually laughing. Not maliciously, but sort of as if I were a gaijin peto, or foreign pet.

I wasn't alone. I had friends who sounded like average American guys in English but whose voices, once they broke into Japanese, took on the girly tones of the high-heeled Asian fashionistas they were dating.

Most of these guys were in an English-speaking environment all day at teaching institutes that employed mainly foreigners. After work, they would go home to their Japanese wives or meet their Japanese girlfriends, and therefore had little contact with Japanese men.

Because the Japanese tend to avoid any form of confrontation, my girlfriend would never correct me. That is, until one day in an ice-cream shop when she couldn't take it anymore. She snapped, "Don't say it that way – you sound like a girl!" referring to my choice of words to describe the ice cream we were sharing.

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