自分の or 私の?

6 comments

1. 1. I have never seen 自分 shortened to 分, because that is a completely different word. If it is being used, it’s not a super common usage.

   Note: this next part is basically my own thoughts based on having to learn through context of living in Japan and not having it being explicitly taught to me.

   2. I’ve always thought of 自分 as used to mean “one’s own” as opposed to “my/mine”.

   自分の can mean “your own” as well, depending on context. You can tell a group of people: 自分のものを使ってください。meaning use your own (as opposed to someone else’s).

   When using it to mean “my own” I feel like I use it when discussing my own “X” in a topic about “X”. And that bit about (as opposed to someone else’s) is kind of what I think is part of the nuance.

   Like, what’s the difference between
   My Japanese is poor.
   And
   My own Japanese is poor.

   The first feels like the topic is just MY Japanese level, whereas as the 2nd feels like the greater topic is just Japanese level in general and I want to specify my own Japanese skill as opposed to others.

2. 自分 is never shortened to 分. They are completely different. Not interchangeable.分 means rank or position in society like 士農工商, noble, commoner in the Edo era or earlier. Today, the phrase 分不相応 remains and is sometimes used. To the best of my knowledge, 分 is the same as 分際(≒身分).私の and 自分の are sometimes the same and sometimes different.

   自分の can be used to mean “your/yours”.

   それ自分の猫？ Is it your cat?

   分の国→×

   私の日本語は下手なんですよ ⇔ 自分の日本語は下手なんですよね

   I would say they are the same. But I feel they might be a little different and I can’t tell. We don’t have to worry about that.

3. Using 自分 as a 1st person pronoun is not very common, though it is used by some people; For example, (1) by X-gender people who don’t want to use gender-specific pronouns (in casual contexts where 私 is used only by female). (2) among some of groups such as univ athletic teams, that maintain a traditional military-like atmosphere.

   In short: Just use 私. You can use 自分 as well but it’s not common and may give a “different” impression to the listeners.

   Fun fact: In Kansai region 自分 is sometimes used for 2nd person pronoun (“you”).

4. [deleted]

5. The other replies basically covered the difference between 私の and 自分の, but I’ll add that in your examples you’re basically translating English sentences into japanese 1:1, which sounds very unnatural. Try to read some native content to familiarize yourself with japanese sentence patterns, and build from that. Just forget about translating from English.

   As an example, starting a sentence with 私 only makes sense if you are changing subject from someone else to yourself, or you want to emphasize the fact that what you will say applies to you, and not someone else.

   To mirror your example, If you are having a conversation with a japanese native and you want to say your japanese is bad, you could just say 日本語が下手 and it would make sense, since you’re obviously talking about yourself here. In informal speech, you’d probably omit the particle が, as well.

   If you were in a situation where it would be ambiguous whose japanese you are talking about, such as when the topic of the whole conversation is someone else entirely, that’s when you’d start with 私

6. jibun needs context and varies by dialect but yes, you can use it to mean me/my. i would say it has a stronger connotation of “me specifically”/”me but not you” if you use it in the first person.

   like you would be more likely to say 自分の猫 if you were having a conversation where someone else mentioned *their* cat and you want to contrast the two. 私の猫は、寝ることが好きです。／そうですか？自分の猫は、走ることが好きです

   (though i think the last time i had this exact conversation, i used うちの猫 – in this case うち kinda means “my” but particularly “my house’s” or “my family’s”. also i think it was actually “うちの猫はばかなんです” – my stepsister’s cat is a big orange doofus)