A weird thing in Japanese TV series

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2026.01.24

 My mom was watching Japanese TV series in the living room. In this series,the female characters all ended their lines with expressions like “～だわ”or “～かしら,”those strange, overly feminine sentence. We Japanese women rarely talk this way in reality. It felt so off that I almost laughed.To be honest, it's annoying.

 You see this a lot in Japanese subtitles for Western films too.They subtitled and dubbed Women'quotes with those femine sentence on purpose. Subtitles like that have become less common recently, but I guess it’s common in almost all of the films pre COVID.

 That reminded me of something I read long ago - this thesis. The author says Japanese has something called “役割語”(Role language) This kind of feminine speech is part of that role language too.

 People often tell Japanese learners, “You shouldn’t use anime or manga to study Japanese,” and this role language is probably one of the reasons why. I understand it now.

 Another interesting point is that some gay men deliberately use this kind of feminine speech, what’s often called "オネエ言葉". Since this is deeply connected to identity, it’s a much more complex topic. Oh,I really like languages.