What’s the most obscure personal pronoun you’ve discovered so far?

15 comments

1. Really? Is that not the same as ども？ because I’ve heard that a lot, I think it’s pretty commonish

2. i think maybe こちとら, at least that’s the one ive most recently learned

3. Oh man, I know I’ve seen one recently that was super obscure. But I only saw it once and don’t remember.

   わがはい never fails to make me laugh though. Especially on a character I don’t expect to use it. For instance, King from Owl House.

   I call it “the Cat pronoun”.

4. All the weird ones I know are old-timey cliches.

   拙者、余、妾 etc

5. 拙僧 was kind of a surprise when I first came across it, for sure.

6. The Emperor’s son could call himself 朕子。

7. I like the fact that 手前 is apparently also a 1st person pronoun. Not that I’ve seen it in the wild, I’m going by the dictionary here.

   Edit: now that I think of it, is this the origin of phrases like てめえの都合 etc.?

8. Japanese pronouns are an open class, technically any word could be legal if the its understandable to the majority.

9. わい, お主

10. [deleted]

11. I think it’s funny that 俺様is actually not used as a personal pronoun that I’ve seen

12. 妾

13. 汝 for “you” is the fanciest I got so far ahaha

14. 己. Nothing fancy, because I’m not reading much literature yet, but quite obscure for my level if I can say so myself.

15. Got confused by 汝等 not so long ago, because the character clearly was not pronouncing it as なんじら for some reason. Then I looked it up and was surprised it’s actually another pronoun with unique reading うぬら (not that unique though once you realize it’s just a derivative of おのれ).