〜1,000,000 Ways to Say "I" in Japanese

More than any other language, there are more ways to say "I" in Japanese. How in the world will you learn them all, let alone use them correctly? こんにちは、 Here's a true story: Perhaps like you, when I started learning Japanese, one of the first things I learned was わたし (watashi). That's a word for "I," in case you didn't know. I used it all the time. "I this" and "I that." But then, someone tells me "Don't use わたし all the time, you're a dude, you should use ぼく (boku) or おれ (oré)!" But then I do some reading and I'm put under the impression that おれ is for gruff bar brawls. I have kanji to study! Why am I worrying about all the ways to say "I?" Then Kanae helped me out by writing a big article about Japanese first-person pronouns. I learned that ぼく sounds sophisticated (nice!) but can also sound boy-ish (hmm, so it's not so simple). I learned おれ doesn't have to sound gruff and mean, but you may need to change up your other grammar to make it sound right, and be careful about who you use it with. Bottom line: Japanese first-person pronouns are a really interesting and complicated part of Japanese and I'm glad I took the time to dive into the details. There are also (I'm just estimating) 1-2 million of them. Approximately. Read: [Japanese First-Pronouns: Moving Beyond WATASHI]( ♡, Michael @ Tofugu P.S. Since you're a subscriber to this email list, you can download this article's giveaway [right here](. It's a Japanese first-person pronoun study sheet PDF. You don't have to put your email into our annoying Tofugu pop-up yet again to get it. Way to think ahead. Copyright © 2019 Tofugu, All rights reserved. You are receiving this e-mail because you signed up to get Tofugu Newsletters. Our mailing address is: Tofugu 117 SE Taylor St #303Portland, OR 97214 [Add us to your address book]( Want to change how you receive these emails? You can [update your preferences]( or [unsubscribe from this list](.