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hakseng
can anybody tell me how to use those suffix appropriately ? thanks !
Zezei
go watch anime
skat3r
You know i knew a guy in Japan who called himself O-sama
Tami
Silly Hakseng-sempai
Jaimu-Jaimu
I've posted in three threads just like this anyway baka. tongue.gif
ranmatatsumaru
QUOTE (Wikipedia)
Kun
Kun (君) is an informal and intimate honorific primarily used for males. It is used by superiors in addressing inferiors, by males of roughly the same age and status in addressing each other, and in addressing male children. In business settings young women may also be addressed as kun by older male superiors.

Schoolteachers typically address male students using kun, while female students are addressed as san or chan. The use of kun to address male children is similar to san when addressing the boy's parents. Not using kun would be considered rude, but, like san for one's own family, kun is traditionally not used when addressing one's own children.

In the Diet of Japan, diet members and ministers are called kun by the chairpersons. For example, Junichiro Koizumi is called "Koizumi Junichiro kun". The only exception is that when Takako Doi was the chairperson of the lower house, she used the san title.

Chan
Chan (ちゃん) is the informal, intimate, diminutive equivalent of san, used to refer to children and female family members, close friends and lovers. Chan is also used for adults as a title of affection. For example, Arnold Schwarzenegger gained the nickname Shuwa chan in Japanese. Similar to kun, chan is not necessarily optional when referring to the female children of others, and it is often avoided when referring to one's own children.

Chan is sometimes applied to male children if the name does not fit with the kun suffix. For example, a boy called "Tetsuya" will be nicknamed "Tetchan" rather than "Tekkun" for reasons more to do with phonetics than anything else.

Although it is usually said that honorifics are not applied to oneself, some women refer to themselves in the third person using chan. For example, a young woman named Maki might call herself Maki-chan rather than using a first person pronoun like watashi. Chan is also used for pets and animals, such as usagi-chan.

In the same way that chan is a version of san, there is also chama from sama, typically used for an older person. Non-standard variations of chan include chin (ちん), and tan (たん).

San
San (さん) is the most common honorific title, used when addressing most social outsiders, for example, non-family members. San is used unless the addressee's status warrants one of the other terms mentioned below.

San is often translated as "Mr.", "Ms.", "Mrs.", and the like. San may also be used in combination with things other than the name of the person being addressed. For example, a bookseller might be addressed as honya-san "Mr. Bookseller", and a butcher as nikuya-san "Ms. Butcher".

San is also used when talking about entities such as companies. For example, the offices or shop of a company called Kojima denki might be referred to as "Kojima Denki-san" by another nearby company. This may be seen on the small maps often used in phone books and business cards in Japan, where the names of surrounding companies are written using san.

San is also applied to some kinds of foods. For example, fish used for cooking are sometimes referred to as sakana-san. It is also sometimes applied to animals - a rabbit might be usagi-san.

Both san and its more formal equivalent, sama, imply a kind of familiarity. In formal speech, the title shi may be preferred.

Sama
Sama (様) is the formal version of san. This honorific is used primarily in addressing persons much higher in rank than oneself, and in commercial and business settings to address and refer to customers. It also forms parts of set phrases such as okyaku-sama (customer) or omachidō-sama ("I am sorry to keep you waiting"). Sama also follows the addressee's name on postal packages and letters.

Sama is also often used for people considered to have some high ability or be particularly attractive. If a young man is considered particularly handsome, he might be referred to as Tanaka-sama rather than Tanaka-san by his female admirers. For example, Leonardo DiCaprio has gained the nickname Leo-sama in Japan.

Sama is also used in an arrogant context, as in the arrogant male pronoun ore-sama, "my esteemed self", meaning "I".
hakseng
oh wow thanks, so it doesnt really depend on the gender eh you can pretty much use them for both genders

oh tami what does sempai means icon_redface.gif I think that akagi from slam dunk was called akagi sempai icon_smile.gif
qcn
i think "sempai" is mainly used with schoolmates that are in a grade above you.

when in doubt, use the suffix -san in addressing people. i stayed in japan for two summers with my cousin and everywhere i went, people tended to primarily address each other using -san.
Zezei
sempai - senior(s)

kouhai - junior(s)
skepticguy
QUOTE (hakseng @ Dec 14 2005, 10:03 AM)
oh wow thanks, so it doesnt really depend on the gender eh you can pretty much use them for both genders
*


No! That's not my experience. My wife refers to our daughter exclusively as "chan" and my son exclusively as "kun". She would never swap the two. And I refer to both my wife and daughter as "chan". I don't like to use "kun" with my son because it doesn't really fit with his American name (even though my wife does).
RainbowBrite
kun- used when you describe something cool, chan- refers to toy, san- say it when you're in the desert, and sama- means hot. so lets run through this:

Your computer-kun is awesome!

That vibrator-chan doesn't work.

Must be pretty hot-san in 60% of Africa.

That Willaim Hung-sama is Teh Bomb!!#!$!@$#
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