I’ve spoken Japanese all my life and just recently decided to give Duolingo a try because my Japanese has been a bit rusty lately. It keeps saying 彼 (which I know means “He”) but personally I’ve never said it and in the time I’ve spent in Japan I haven’t really heard anyone else say it. I asked my mother (who grew up in Japan) if people actually still use it, and she said not really. Am I missing something or is Duolingo just pulling up random old words and teaching them?
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Duolingo has a very unnatural way (not wrong but so textbook-like) of structuring sentences in both Japanese and Korean. Now I live in Japan, and I have not used 彼 in years. The last time I saw it was in my Japanese beginners books.
Usually, when we use “彼” or “彼女” in daily conversation, it refers to a boyfriend or girlfriend (significant other).
Your mother is correct. We rarely use “彼” or “彼女” as pronouns for “he” or “she.”
I haven’t used “彼” or “彼女” while conversing with other Japanese people. I’m a native speaker of Japanese.
I only used them when I needed to translate English sentences into Japanese at school or when speaking to someone from abroad who isn’t familiar with the Japanese language yet. I used “彼” and “彼女” as pronouns to clearly indicate subjects.
Duolingo is bizarre in teaching, since some of the things in the Genki book are never used, making Duolingo a bit “unnatural”. Decent to perhaps the basics, but should move on to something else after that.
It shows up on English textbook for Japanese kids because we need to substitute English third person pronoun with something. So aside from the case mentioned here (gf/bf), it’s mostly about the sentences translated from languages that has such features. In another word, these Japanese is something we hear mostly only on subtitles of western media.
There are indeed a few more situations where we use 彼 and 彼女 just like he and she but the situation is very limited. So if you felt the need to declare sexual orientation for pronoun then yes you can use it, and probably you have heard it several times.
Japanese beginner here, if you wouldn’t use it for pronouns to indicate subjects, how would you go about making a sentence then? So if I want to say “he ate ramen”, would I just say “ラーメンを食べました” and keep the subject implied?
I avoid using 彼 in most situations. If feels a little rude or lazy
Beginner apps and textbooks usually don’t explain the language how it really works but try to keep them as similar to the native language of the learner.
Therefore they heavily use Japanese pronouns while in reality they are quite rarely used.
I can understand why they do that (makes it easier in the beginning and it will be corrected later on anyway), but for Japanese I hate that approach. It causes tons of problems later on. If you’re coming from English or other indogermanic languages there are not many languages that are so different than Japanese. Trying to make Japanese work like English just doesn’t work.
Please don’t use Duolingo for Japanese, it’s not a good app for that language at all. In general I wouldn’t recommend using Duolingo for longer than a month. It’s okay to check whether you like a language but it’s not good at all for actually learning it.
彼 is used but not nearly as often as it is in learner materials. It is not a word you will use in daily life but every Japanese person and fluent speaker you talk to will know it.
I don’t think I’ve heard it used much in daily conversation, but it happens on occasion. Comes up sometimes in books and television scripts, though, especially during narration or exposition. In regular conversation, most people seem to use gender-neutral 3rd-person pronouns or the person’s surname, but 彼 or 彼女 do sometimes get used for someone who is close or lower in status, I think.
Edit: as an example, I was just watching 聖女の魔力は万能です, and at ~6:15 in episode 2, a character introduces a subordinate of his named Sei, who he had been telling a friend about, with “彼女がせいだ”.
Surprised at all the answers saying it’s not used much. It *is* used a lot, you’re just allowed to drop pronouns in Japanese so it’s not every sentence like English.
If you don’t want to use it or you find it too vulgar for the situation, you can avoid it with things like ◯◯さん or あの人. You don’t *have to* use it. But it’s really the only 3rd person pronoun that just means “he”, there isn’t a whole set of possibilities like for 1st and 2nd person.
Might just be that duolingo and other basic learner materials include a pronoun in every sentence, which definitely isn’t natural.
Am a novice, but I have heard people use 彼氏(かれし) to mean boyfriend.
To clarify, I meant 彼 as in かれ/He.