TL;DR: Is the delinquent speech pattern in anime and manga considered natural Japanese? (Think Yuusuke from Yu Yu Hakusho, Naruto from Naruto, Inosuke from Demon Slayer, etc.)
Some background: I’m currently gathering info for my Master’s thesis which I intend to write on 役割語（やくわりご）aka “role language.” These are specific words or grammatical structures that indicate the personality of a character. A common example is 老人語（ろうじんご) or “Elderly Person’s Speech.” Characters who use this speech pattern will use the First Person Pronoun 「わし」 and will use 「じゃ」「じゃろう」in place of 「だ」「だろう」. However, *actual* elderly people in Japan don’t talk like this so it is not technically “natural” Japanese in that it would not occur in a natural conversation.
Which brings me to my question: is the way that 不良少年（ふりょうしょうねん）talk in anime and manga considered “natural” Japanese or can it be considered a role language?
Some examples that I’ve collected:
1. Naruto (*Naruto*): 「集中してんのに邪魔すんな‼︎!」（しゅうちゅうしてんのにじゃますんな」Standard Japanese: 「集中しているのに邪魔するな‼︎!」Here, I’m particularly interested in the deletion of る before the assimilation into the following nasal sound. Can this be observed in natural, spoken Japanese?
2. Inosuke (*Demon Slayer*): 「俺は読み書きができねぇんだよ」（おれはよみかきができねぇんだよ」Standard Japanese: 「俺は読み書きができないんだよ」In this example, I’m interested in the assimilation of the 「あ」and「い」into 「え」. Again, is this also observed in “natural” Japanese?
3. Luffy (*One Piece*): 「わりぃ/おれ死んだ」（おれしんだ）Standard Japanese: 「わるい/おれ死んだ」Like the Demon Slayer example, the 「う」is assimilated into the following 「い」
There are a lot of characters in anime and manga who talk this way but I’m not sure if it can be argued that the way these characters speak is “natural” Japanese or a form of role language. Any help is greatly appreciated! I’ve been slowly picking my way through 「ヴァーチャル日本語役割語の謎」by Kinsui Satoshi as well but I haven’t found much about 不良少年 specifically and I think I want to write about that.
よろしくお願いします
11 comments
This is just my opinion which doesn’t mean much, but I think all three are kind of common if one is trying to appear masculine, rough, and/or casual. I think they are natural but people don’t usually talk like this.
It’s probably best to stick to learning vocabulary or grammar items from manga and anime – it’s always easy to pick someone who has learnt from anime and manga because they sound so weird and unnatural
At least in Tokyo dialect, there are some typical sound collapse rules like /ai/ > /e:/, /ui/ > /i:/, の > ん, る > ん, etc. which are very common. Most men (plus young women) use them in private situations on a daily basis. So, those examples are common and natural.
Btw the word 不良少年 seems to be a bit off here. While the word means a specific type of gang teenagers (like in Tokyo Revengers), in reality those wordings are far more popular and most men (+youg women) use them. At least in Tokyo.
Also, your 「集中するのに邪魔するな‼︎!」 should better be 「集中しているのに邪魔するな‼︎!」. Goes like: しているのに > してるのに > してんのに.
I don’t think you can entirely clearly delineate between the two categories. Yakuwarigo are highly exaggerated and stylized but based on real speech patterns. And often the exaggerated speech patterns of movies can in turn influence the ways real people speak (for instance, yakuza consciously trying to imitate characters from yakuza movies).
People IRL do say things like しょうがねぇ; it’s not like totally made up. I doubt most of them use these forms anywhere near as consistently as anime characters, though. I remember a dust-up from like ten years ago with a politician making some remark at this form and people judged it excessively crude or whatever… I can’t remember the details but maybe that’s the kind of thing that would be useful to look into for your research.
A quick and dirty answer：Yes, they do, in as much as some Americans talk like, say, any two swearing characters in a Tarantino film (think Travolta and Jackson in *Pulp Fiction*.)
And, in the same way, one overhearing can immediately assume the speakers:
1) Are of particularly limited emotional maturity.
2) Probably don’t use this register all the time.
3) Are trying to affect some sort of role (e.g. cool or coarse).
4) Are male.
Having said that I’ve met some rough characters in the past who might speak in this way more often than not, but they weren’t anyone I would want to see again and I knew them through a friend who had an unhealthy fascination with snack hostesses and men who very likely were involved in the mob.
Edit: Finally for any Westerner to speak in this fashion would be met with the same befuddled, slightly repulsed amusement as an American might feel if confronted with a native(born) Japanese who began speaking English using a slew of swear-words.
Source： Lived here since 98. Thanks for the downvote, ~~OP.~~
Wouldn’t that be a question *you* would want to answer in your thesis?
I agree with the 2 & 3 examples being more masculine and rough, but I feel like the る to ん change as seen in the Naruto example is just casual/informal/colloquial language. Kind of like how Americans drop the “t” in interview, or how you might use contractions in English.
Another thing that occurred to me as I was thinking about this is that a lot of these forms overlap with “country bumpkin” type of patter. E.g., if you listen to the way Goku and Chichi talk, or check out something like these songs, you’ll see what I mean:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qswm7ifzeck
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=P4JN9Sfqz0c
Obviously the effect is different in this case, but some of the phonetic changes are the same.
I would disagree about your point that people don’t use language like 老人語 irl. It really depends where you are. In Hiroshima, my grandfather would often end sentences with 「じゃろう」as often as I would say 「だろう」in my own speech. It may be thought of as weird in Tokyo but Japanese =/= 標準語
I might not help you, but that question seems interesting to me. Even though my teachers have always emphasized that as learners it’s best not to learn from しょうねんマンガ, thinking that maybe it would be used naturally or else it’s based on the way other japanese speak sounds intriguing.
I don’t have much knowledge on this subject but it’s quite fascinating! Good luck on your thesis