1. Do Japanese people still use danseigo and joseigo (especially interjection)?
  2. Can joseigo be used by men? Such as まあ and あら.
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-12-04T08:04:51.663
82929
2021-01-06T01:22:08.753
41093
question
interjections gender
Japanese Interjections (Danseigo-Joseigo)
Using your first question as a Google query produces the link to this
[research
article](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340481050_An_Analysis_of_Language_Shifting_The_Use_of_Danseigo_by_Women_in_the_Workplace)
that suggests that nowadays women are also using danseigo in the workplace.

Regarding the second question, さあな... but in anime, まあまあ which carries
additional/different meanings from まあ is used by male characters.
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-12-04T22:39:01.380
82938
2020-12-04T22:39:01.380
30981
82929
answer
Wikipedia [has a
list](https://ja.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%A5%B3%E6%80%A7%E8%AA%9E) and AFAIK
there are still many words used by primarily by men or women separately even
though there’s some cross pollination so to speak.

One example that comes to mind is the sentence-ending わ: it is described as
feminine in many textbooks but it’s also used by men nowadays (though possibly
in a different manner).
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-12-06T01:17:20.500
82954
2020-12-06T01:17:20.500
3295
82929
answer
I wrote a (term) paper on this!

Anyway, based on the secondary literature I read, danseigo/joseigo is way more
prevalent in media than in 'real life', but it does also exist in real life.

Quoting myself (which I hope is okay):

> [...] More substantially, Okamoto (1995) carried out an analysis of the
> conversations of ten female Japanese-native college students, in which she
> analyzed recordings of conversations and the use of forms, which she
> classified as masculine, feminine, or neutral. The vast majority of forms
> used were neutral, and all but two used more masculine-classified than
> feminine-classified forms. Further research done by Okamoto suggests this
> might be a generational change.

(See Okamoto 1995, p. 303f. available
[here](https://web.stanford.edu/%7Eeckert/PDF/okamoto1995.pdf) for more
details)

Joseigo is also still important for sounding stereotypically feminine, where
that's still desirable, e.g. to attract partners. There's a bunch of self-help
books teaching that women's language makes you more attractive. (Nakamura
2014) I personally have also seen quite a few of these googirl cartoons
seemingly making fun of women speaking in male language - but I might have
been misinterpreting these.
CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-01-05T02:41:30.173
83465
2021-01-06T01:22:08.753
2021-01-06T01:22:08.753
41089
41089
82929
answer