Re: addressing someone without -san or similar

From: Adam Atkinson (ghira_at_mistral.co.uk)
Date: 06/21/04 

Date: Mon, 21 Jun 2004 10:23:58 +0000 (UTC)

"Michael Cash" <REMOVEmikecashCAPS@sunfield.ne.jp> wrote in message
news:pocdd0pg19ojo33j67ul5vr20t9nar3bhq@4ax.com

> >Is there any special significance to Hikaru and Sai's addressing each
> >other this way? When we hear characters' thoughts, they think
> >about people using names with no suffixes. Is this a usual
> >convention?
>
> It is known as "yobisute" (from "yobu" and "suteru", I'll let you
> piece it together from there).

I didn't know either of these words. My dictionary says "call
out / summon" for the first and "discard/abandon" for the second.

Um. I don't think I see what this means.

> It is, as you may have guessed from the
> previous sentence, at least common enough to rate having a term to
> call it by.
 
> Special significance? From your own observations, what would your
> guess/assumption of the special significance be?

Well, I can imagine that when you're just thinking about someone
you might well just think of them as a surname rather than
a surname with a suffix on it. As for the conversations between
Sai and Hikaru, I had guessed it might be because they were
friends, but even the kids in the show who are friends
always seem to call each other "-kun" or "-chan" so I'm not
quite sure that's it, and even when they first meet
Hikaru and Sai just use each other's names and I can't
imagine they were "close" right from the start. And it
can't be that they're choosing to show each other disrespect.
Since Hikaru sometimes "thinks" to Sai and sometimes speaks
aloud, I thought there might be a difference there, but I
haven't noticed one.

There may well be other instances of people being addressed
only by name - perhaps when Hikaru is in serious trouble? I believe
I've noticed some instances of people being referred to only by
name, in their absence (usually children). I'll try to pay more
attention to this.

I'm mostly just listening out for anything I understand at all,
and usually watch something after we've done a new chapter
to see if I can hear the new things we've just done being
used. This week we did "-tai" for wanting to do things,
and sure enough a randomly chosen episode of HnG had
a character saying "maketakunai". We also did some weather
words recently, and there was a reference to rain in the same
episode. Very occasionally, I understand a whole sentence.
I don't know if this seems very silly, but I did this with
Italian way back when as well - feel as though you're making
progress my understanding slightly more isolated fragments
in "real" material than you did the previous week -
and I thought it helped there. 

-- 
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