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As far as I can tell, everything in this article applies to Japan as well.
This is most likely an equivalent to thee/thou which was considered rude to use for one's superiors or elders as in:
"Don't tha "thee" me!" - it's ok for me to use for you but not t'other way round.
Now many believe thou/thee to be respectful because of the bible, where in fact it is used as familiarity.
Most Vietnamese do the same things too.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm guessing because of "neo" being rude
This reminds me, it's actually very interesting how English movies get translated into Korean and vice versa, since the nuances mentioned in the article are hard to translate / convey in the other language.
I thought it was interesting to see how foreign language dubs handled that line. Sometimes they translate the French into the dub language as if it had just been English like the rest of the song. Sometimes they leave it as French. I don't remember any that translate it into a language that isn't the language of the dub, but also isn't French.
(Of particular note, the French dub leaves the line as "untranslated" French.)
Something that feels similar to me is the treatment of the Italian brothers in Lady and the Tramp. In the English original, they are jovial immigrants from Italy who operate an Italian restaurant and speak English in a very thick Italian accent.
This cultural concept translated better into some foreign languages than others. In the French dub, the brothers are jovial immigrants from Italy who operate an Italian restaurant and speak French in a very thick Italian accent.
> The younger person also addresses the older person, usually with a title or another word that fits their relationship, but not their name. Only the older person addresses the younger one with their name. (There can be more nuance.) I love this. I'm an old French guy and still can't quite accept when srangers in an email (or a machine, a system, a web form) adress me using my first name. Being "on a first name basis…
Giving respect based on seniority is one of the major reasons why autocracies thrive unchecked in some countries as younger people are unable to hold older folks accountable.
Autocracy is usually driven by the opposite, unrestricted mobilization of the youth. In particular true in the West today. Bukele is not exactly a pensioner, and if the US has displayed one thing in recent times it isn't respect for the age of their leaders to put it mildly.
> The younger person also addresses the older person, usually with a title or another word that fits their relationship, but not their name. Only the older person addresses the younger one with their name. (There can be more nuance.) I love this. I'm an old French guy and still can't quite accept when srangers in an email (or a machine, a system, a web form) adress me using my first name. Being "on a first name basis…
Would addressing you by your mail address work ? Handling people's name is I think the bane of our field, and leads to many of the awful choices like forcing fields with a first and last name for instance, or requesting people's gender to properly set the Mr and Mrs. As a dev I'm not happy about it, as a user I hate it, I'm not sure the majority of people are happy either with the current state of things. Accepting t…
If you mean an email (or the part before the @), also no. People sometimes sign up from addresses like contact@example.com, and "dear contact" would be super confusing.
The "right thing to do" is to have a "what should we call you" field, which should be completely separate from any names collected for legal purposes, if any.
> The younger person also addresses the older person, usually with a title or another word that fits their relationship, but not their name. Only the older person addresses the younger one with their name. (There can be more nuance.) I love this. I'm an old French guy and still can't quite accept when srangers in an email (or a machine, a system, a web form) adress me using my first name. Being "on a first name basis…
Interesting, as a German (which also has a similar system), I am the complete opposite, I find it super irritating when people address me by my last name. And the worst part is having to figure out how to address others, especially people you've known for a while but aren't really close to, e.g. say long-time neighbors I rarely meet. Luckily, in the IT industry, it's common to just use first names with everybody.
It becomes even more interesting when traditionally cultures (like mine) don't use surnames, but modern IT systems stemming from the Anglo Saxon culture force people to arbitrarily assign one of their names as a surname or IT systems generally don't work.
This article does not address another layer that makes the Korean age system complicated: the "빠른" system. It refers to people born in January or February who, due to the school cutoff being in March, often enter school a year early and socially identify with those born in the previous calendar year. For example, if I'm "빠른95", which indicates that I was born in 1995 between January and the end of February, I get to…
this is a thing in the us as well—- tho the cutoff is august or september normally. there’s no name for it, but it’s real. and american kids are also way more like to make friends in their school peer age group. i believe this is almost a universal truth for the first world
This article does not address another layer that makes the Korean age system complicated: the "빠른" system. It refers to people born in January or February who, due to the school cutoff being in March, often enter school a year early and socially identify with those born in the previous calendar year. For example, if I'm "빠른95", which indicates that I was born in 1995 between January and the end of February, I get to…
That's very interesting, thanks for mentioning it! I didn't know about that, hence I didn't include it. But it makes sense, I have sometimes noticed people asking whether the other was born early or late into the year, and change their standing based on that, but didn't know that that could have been because of the "빠른" system.
Typically, throughout middle school to university days, a South Korean individual is expected to use the honorific version of the language when speaking to someone older. This version involves a completely different set of vocabulary and grammar, used to show "respect to others" and sound "polite," effectively preventing one from being casual with others. Whereas a 빠른 is allowed to befriend people one year above their age and gets to use "반말" (the casual version of the language) with those peers.
A social complication can arise when two groups with a monotonic increase in age meet. Say, friend group A comprises a regular 95 and a 빠른 95. They became friends in high school and talk casually. Then there's group B, which consists of a regular 95 and a 빠른 96, who also became friends in high school. Now, when groups A and B start hanging out together at university, the 빠른 95 has to decide whether to use honorific or casual speech with the regular 95 and the 빠른 96.
The ones stuck in the middle, in this case the 빠른95, gets called "족보 브레이커", which roughly translates to "pedigree breaker".
It gives you an age bracket within which everyone is equal, once and for all, regardless of their exact date of birth. Your friend isn't suddenly going to speak down to you when he turns 7 and you're still 6, except perhaps as a joke. Both of you are 8 in Korean age, and will turn 9 at the exact same moment. This age bracket produces a stable peer group who can remain friends for life, regardless of when or where individuals went to school, got a job, or enlisted in the army -- all the other places where hierarchy can be imposed.
Of course, the year is also important for reasons of superstition. There are still some elderly people who ask for the (Chinese zodiac) animal associated with your year of birth, instead of the year itself.