Hello! I am learning Japanese, and want to create a social media account in that language. This way, I’d be immersing myself into picking up new words, using/recalling common ones and getting to communicate with lots of new people beyond the language barrier.
My issue is that I am not natively Japanese. Would this be rude/intrusive of me? I definitely don’t want people to think I am pretending to be Japanese either, I think that clarity is probably very important.
I had previously tried to compliment a Japanese artist, but it seemed to have come off rude. They replied with something that didn’t seen to mean anything at all, and I’m worried that I might’ve accidentally said something really upsetting.
So, would it be disrespectful to create a Japanese social media account as a non-native speaker? If not, what can I do to make sure I’m being as respectful as possible about it?
7 comments
You could look up Japanese names on Twitter. Twitter doesn’t have region boundaries, so anyone in the world can follow anyone else’s account. About a third of the profiles I follow there are Japanese musicians
Would it be rude if a Japanese person who isn’t fluent in English makes a Reddit account? I think it’s the same thing.
I really dislike these ‘would X be offensive’ posts. Makes me sad what social media has done to people’s perception of the world.
Just use Line instead. That’s the main one people use in Japan for social media.
i don’t think it would be! you’d be making friends from another country and i don’t see anything wrong with it. as a chinese-speaker, i get really excited when people do the same with my language and i respect that they’re making an active effort to learn the language.
You’re not going to be pretending to be Japanese, right? Just talking about creating an account, as yourself, on a Japanese social media site?
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, go forth and make friends!!!
(Side note … I wonder if anyone still uses mixi?? hahaha. I feel old …)
HelloTalk would be a good option