#linguistics party

[bakuhatsufallinlove]

Who Wants To Talk About Japanese Orthography In Manga???

Me, it's me, I do, and I have been chomping at the bit to get the chance to.

Orthography refers to the conventions of written language to represent sounds. That may bring to mind the idea of rigid grammar rules or spelling standardization, but in a linguistic sense, orthography simply describes observable trends across language use. This isn't about authority--I am not going to talk about what schools teach or say people should write one way or another. This is about examining how real people use written language creatively to convey different things in popular media.

This is a huge topic, so I'm only going to use examples from MHA to highlight Horikoshi's style.

First, let's get a run-down of the main parts of written Japanese and how they tend to be used.

We've got kanji and kana; kanji are logograms, while kana are syllabaries. Kana refers to both hiragana and katakana collectively, but we will delineate the two from here on.

The Wikipedia page for kanji, describing this more succinctly than I'm about to.

For clarity, I'm gonna color-code each one.

Let's take a quick look at all three in action.

Chapter 65

By virtue of being the syllabary that grammar particles are written in, hiragana can get away with a lot that kanji and katakana can't.

You can write simple sentences in hiragana alone, like so:

The sentence is perfectly comprehensible like this, but it reads as casual or perhaps a bit immature, like the person is either leaving out kanji for speed or simplicity (like online) or they aren't confident using kanji. Although, the word hito (person) is extremely common and its kanji is simple, so this would probably look more natural:

But there are also kanji for the word kawaii, so you could also write it this way:

On the other hand, writing the whole thing in katakana looks weird as fuck:

bECAuSE iT kINDA reADS LIKE THis, or maybe L I K E T H I S

It seems almost alien, overemphasizing the phonetic sound of the words, implying there's something notable or unusual about them.

But what if you write it like this?

Both ways use katakana to put flavor on a specific word. The first puts it on person, which could be used in a situation where someone hasn't been named yet, but the speaker tonally emphasizes your knowledge of them--like "oh, you know who."

The second emphasizes cute, which could read as sexually suggestive, teasing/joking, or even a threatening tone, depending on the context. "Real cute, ain't they?"

Basically, the connecting grammar bits need to be in hiragana, but nouns, verbs, and adjectives can typically be written in any of the three systems. That introduces choice into the matter, and these choices may have some cultural connotations.

This is a subtlety in written Japanese that manga loves to take advantage of. Orthography contributes a lot to characterization and tone, so individual creators develop little quirks as part of their own writing style.

Now let's finally take a gander at some of Horikoshi's!

Kanji instead of hiragana for semantic emphasis

Chapter 48

Best Jeanist could have used only hiragana for the word "good" (いい, ii), which is a very common way to write it. But he's not just commenting that they are nice kids, he's talking about them as "goodie two-shoes" and even puts brackets around the idea. The kanji emphasizes the cultural idea of a Good Child™, a well-behaved, morally upright, obedient young person.

Kanji instead of hiragana denoting a serious or severe tone

Chapter 36

Katsuki's "you" pronoun omae being written with kanji comes across as markedly serious, especially compared to how his dialogue is normally written. This is actually the only time Katsuki says omae and it is written with kanji--all the rest are in hiragana, which tends to read as more casual.

Hiragana instead of kanji denoting a gentle tone or youthful/childlike language

Chapters 129 and 183

Katsuki and his omae show us how kanji use can be seen as more mature and serious; Eri's dialogue does the opposite of this by using hiragana when it could use kanji, emphasizing her youth and innocence.

Katakana instead of hiragana or kanji for emphasis or slang

Chapters 209, 207, and 2

As I detailed above, one of katakana's most common uses is similar to italics or all-caps.

But you also tend to see slang written with it, and depending on the slang, the word being in katakana can immediately clarify it from other, perhaps more standard meanings. In Jirou's case, her personal pronoun uchi can mean a couple other things, so it being written in katakana clarifies her usage. It could arguably also imply she is taking a bit of an argumentative tone--Katsuki's slang is typically written in katakana for both of these reasons!

Katakana denoting regional dialect/accent, nonstandard pronunciation/muddled speech, or confused articulation

Chapters 102, 208, 394, and 2

Ochako gets flustered and defaults to her regional Kansai dialect. Instead of "chigau wa" (Tokyo dialect), she says "chau wa" repeatedly.

Katsuki and Toga both drop the w- sound from a word. Katsuki says "ore a" instead of "ore wa," while Toga says the word "kawaiku" as "ka'aiku" and "kawaii" as "ka'aii." Notice how the katakana which represents the vocal omission/hiccup is actually smaller than the others? That's also a little stylistic detail for communicating this kind of nonstandard speech.

Izuku repeats All Might's words, chikara wo, in a confused daze because he isn't following All Might's point. By removing the kanji especially, this kind of katakana emphasizes him sounding the words out without recognizing the underlying meaning.

Basically, Japanese has some excellent ~vibes-based~ orthography because of how the language is structured!

Of course, you find this kind of thing in English as well--especially in the age of the internet, where people note that "how dare u" reads as tonally distinct from "how dare you." As you develop language fluency, you tend to pick up these things subconsciously more than anything, but it's one of my favorite things to analyze and compare.

These are just a few examples and my own interpretations of them. I'm sure there are many more uses and flavor-nuance I'm not picking up on. Since any given choice can be read a few different ways, context is very important. My examples aren't definitive proof of anything, but it can be fun to keep these kinds of details in mind while reading.

Shueisha and Shonen Jump surely have in-house standards for text, and mangaka must operate within that range. That said, I have indeed seen every one of these examples in other manga as well.

And on the independent side of things, doujinshi and online manga are basically the wild frickin' west--I have seen tons of totally crazy, highly creative ways to take advantage of the unique flexibility found in Japanese, but that's a post for another day.

I will probably write more about this kind of thing in the future when I can pinpoint some more observations, but I hope you all enjoyed the ride. <3

[bakuhatsufallinlove]

I am sliding into this question because this is such a fun thing to nerd out about.

Pika is correct--this particular moment is motivated by the need to diversify the voices on the page. Horikoshi writes "ganbare" a number of ways, yes, but he also uses a slightly different font for each person who says it. As a result, the reader experiences each separately, rather than them all getting muddled together and mentally skipped over.

It's like the manga depiction of a quick-cut montage--if this were a movie or tv show, we could hear everyone's voices, and each one would sound different.

It is a very clever way to make sure the readers immediately understand that this page depicts twelve different people saying it once, rather than one person saying it twelve times as the "camera" pans across other people--something that could happen, stylistically!

Compare 422's many voices to AFO's tantrum from 410.

Same font, same size, repeated vertically ad infinitum across the whole page around him, so there's no other way to interpret it.

That said, I have observed other times where the choice between kanji, hiragana, and katakana conveys a buncha other stuff, so I made a special post for that!

In chapter 422, some of the “ganbare” are in kanji, some in hiragana, and some in katakana. Could you explain why this might be?

I don't know if this covers all the possible reasons, but in my experience this sort of variety could imply different nonspecific accents or languages or pronunciations, plus it breaks up the monotony of reading the same word over and over. It's a stylistic thing, basically.

[dsm-wannabe-linguist]

I hate gay linguist Halloween parties, what do you mean you’re a colourless green dream serving furiously

[preciousbabyrat]

sequel to this poll because if you like someone your accents may converge :3 and also i feel the need to repent for skipping over how pliable accents can be in your native language even well into adulthood because I am in fact a linguistics poser biased due to my first language's dialect levelling

[proto-language]

making my dreams a reality (feel free to download and print these and send them to your friends who have proven their ability to form regular plurals)

[waitineedaname]

idk if i have just lucked out with the people at my school but i am loving the social experience im having in grad school. in undergrad, it felt like the main way people socialized was through parties or drinking, which wasn't really my thing, but so far the vibe with my grad school friends has been "instead of going to a party, do you want to sit in my living room and hang out with my dog for three hours" or "wanna go to a piano concert?" or "do you have any friday night plans? do you want to get milkshakes and play board games?" and it's great

[akuma-tenshi]

wait how did kolya die. im p sure it was a long time ago during one of olya's stalker missions or whatever but i dont know the details. what happened to u funni man

dissolved in the grinder. in the incident where olya lost her eye and sergei got all fucked up. it's depicted in the mill n you can see sergei's scars in that one scene in punch it, punk! and some official art. i think nikita got his neck scar there too. iirc sergei saved olya instead of kolya and nikita (kolya's brother?? i think??) was upset at him for it, which.. understandable but also that's a really fucking hard decision to make.

my thing is we never saw his exact death, and we don't know if olya, sergei, and nikita saw the moment he died either (plus trauma kinda changes memories so they may remember it differently); we only know the aftermath. meanwhile with nikita we saw him get shot and like.. heard / saw his final thoughts in message lost (very underrated song btw i sometimes just go listen to it on loop for a bit). it's extremely unlikely that kolya is alive and is probably just getting attention / spotlight bc yura is becoming more entangled with the stalker lifestyle and therefore closer to both past and present stalkers, but i think it's a funky theory and fun to speculate on. i also just rlly like kolya's design, he feels like he'd be fun to chill with (i know nothing about his personality). if he's actually well and truly dead i won't be too fussed abt it but i like theorising lmao

[una-ragazza-con-un-flauto]

Source: The Language Nerds

​Quando sei ad una festa e nessuno vuole parlare di linguistica

[thisisnotjuli]

living it up in the group chat tonight talking about french philosopher and essayist Roland Barthes (1915-1980) and french sociologist anthropologist and philosopher Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002) with my best pals @angelitosdemiel and @two-hands-toward-the-sun

[chickadeeee]

tags I use

#:) genuinely makes me smile, #(: hot, #XD makes me laugh and yes it’s cringe on purpose

#export control is stuff I want to share with friends outside tumblr, #industry plant is jokes related to my job, #political career is kink or related to my experience with kink, #dream home is house/decor inspiration, #moodboard is either cute human interactions or uplifting stuff

#tag party is for when I say a lot things in the tags, #my post self-explanatory

[steampunktomboy]

Language lessons are genuinely a lot more fun when the teacher speaks your native language about as well as you speak the one they're teaching. We just had a French lesson where we were translating the names of body parts and she couldn't differentiate between the way us Estonians pronounce "j", "l" and "m", it was so funny.

[unproduciblesmackdown]

ppl will be explaining how a difference is a difference & not a Deviation from a Superior state, & people who are the ones considered Default Normal (superior) will be like "okay....to be polite....i Might say i consider Some aspects of Some people's existence mere 'difference' & not being less than me...." as like hey i'm a Benevolent god. i still actually get to consider you worse & don't have to "humor" anything that challenges my superiority. if you only want everything to fit into the norm then it will all come back to upholding the norm. thinking of people's analysis of their own realities as equally legimate as being like Obscure, Irrelevant, Superficial & then using that reasoning to justify dismissing them. same as worrying that the [Different Lessers (Others(tm))] as Everywhere = a manifestation of the awareness that, yeah, respecting them as equals Does threaten your norm which is smothering everything everywhere. ppl who need to lock in the idea of Borders around personhood like um Yes they're all delineated separate Identities outside any hierarchy & so i think it's relevant to for some reason push back against "ohh so now Everyone's queer" like why not. why couldn't they be. what if they were. what if queerness was everywhere b/c it's ideological not a cordoned off Alternative Identity that is accommodated by focusing on Love(tm) as the new border around whose existence we might begrudgingly accept at arm's length (i.e. being otherwise "normal"! just imagine swapping out the binary gender (or, deep breath, presumed Private Parts) of one partner in an exclusive romantic lifelong nuclear family marriage, & that is Gay / Trans Rights. still gross but maybe we can do it, as long as they don't talk about it or shove it in our faces or even exist for more than one encounter w/us in our lives b/c what are the odds). evergreen laughing at someone suggesting ableist logic might be embedded in language of past & present b/c it's just So little to ask for that it's irrelevant but it's also So much to ask for that of course i'm not gonna do anything more than pass it along like "this is why i don't take ableism seriously" like yeah it's the disabled randos like it's the individual cringe teens(tm) ruining [the cishets would take Gender seriously otherwise!!!] & that's why you won't think about it or do anything about it & continue being comfortable with the norm & resent that actually their Difference is Less & disability is something worse that ppl "excuse" & all these ways that people are & all these things that they do are funny & weird & inexplicable & etc & one can't possibly be cruising along perpetuating a hierarchy with a sense that you're reasonable, well meaning, kind, etc etc & thus Justified, systemic oppression definitely wants to maximize how uncomfortable & arduous it feels to everyone rather than push to make it more streamlined & rewarding to embrace, or at least accept, whatever superiority over others you're afforded

[manasseh]

'chat' is just a regular noun guys that's not how grammar works

[dreamerdagn]

with my whole soul I support Aabria being “offered a comma” and instantly slapping it away. language is indeed whatever you believe it to be

[sentient-carrot]

Det blir antageligvis skifte i lokalstyre rundt om i landet som... E så dritt. Regjeringa e så ufattelig ubrukelig med ranke på sentrumshøyre politikk og ej bare hata så sjukt at vi ikkje lenger har et ordentlig styringsparti på venstresida. Håpe at SV kan ta over den mantelen, men for nokken dritt valg vi har å sjå fram til dei neste 10 åra sikkert.

[ekho-ekho-ekho]

sorry but if you want to speak intelligently about global politics, you have got to learn the difference between an endonym, an exonym, and a slur.

an endonym is the name any group uses to refer to itself.

an exonym is a name that one group uses to refer to another group.

a slur is a derogatory term used by one or more groups to insult another group.

SOME exonyms are also slurs. some exonyms started as slurs but were later adopted by the group in question, often for political reasons or as a form of reclamation. some exonyms didn't start as slurs and became derogatory over time.

but most exonyms? trace back the etymology and you'll find that most exonyms just mean "Those Guys From Over There."

exonyms exist in every language. they exist because of language. because some endonyms are damn-near impossible for an outsider to pronounce.

it is not automatically offensive to use an exonym. it is not automatically incorrect to use an exonym. and, if you don't belong to the group in question, it is not your place to call someone out for using an exonym.