Role language - the lords' Japanese speaking patterns

[Thane]

A few days ago I wrote a topic on Reddit about the way the lords speak in the Japanese versions of Fire Emblem. Since people found it interesting, I figured I should share it here as well, with some minor edits.

I've always been interested in both languages and video games, and I believe there is more of an overlap between the two than a lot of people realize. For a series like Fire Emblem, while we can bicker over what makes a good story, we all tend to agree that interesting characters are one of the most central parts of it. With so many characters in one game that you're supposed to care about, it's vital to make sure they all stick out somehow, be it via a gameplay niche, design, or, you guessed it, their way of speaking. This is where the term "role language" comes in.

What is "role language"?

Role language, or yakuwarigo is effectively a fictional character's idiolect - a person's individual and unique use of language. Unlike in real life, however, role language is a way of speaking prescribed to a character by an author that is more concerned with evoking certain mental images rather than trying to stay true to real life.

An English example of this would be to have a character speak without contractions, like Kreia in Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords. Do many people speak like this in real life? No, but in the game, combined with her tone, it gives her dialogue a specific flavor while making it sound like everything she says is carefully considered and well-thought-out.

This is not to say role language and real life language usage are completely different entities. For instance, masculine and feminine words, common in Japanese, are used in real life as well as in in fiction, but is still role language due to how their usage portray the character. In the most basic sense, it's a tool used to convey and reinforce character traits through speech.

Historical and linguistic context

To understand how role language is used in Japanese, I'll need to explain a few things. I'll keep it simple; it's not like I expect you to learn fluent Japanese to get my point though by thunder I wish it were that easy. Keep in mind I'm not an expert on this topic, although I've studied it a bit, so don't take my word as the gospel. Anyone who speaks better Japanese and knows more about this stuff than I do is free to correct me, of course.

Japan is an island nation, and has thus for a very long time been isolated, which has an immense effect on how a language is shaped. Furthermore, the terrain within Japan is incredibly mountainous, which has historically led to separated, smaller, tightly-knit societies and later on been important during times of political division. Because of this, Japan is rich in diverse dialects. This is not particularly uncommon; you've got an incredible spread of dialects in Spain thanks in part to the large number of different ethnic groups, and in Italy there are still older people who don't really speak standardized Italian, but only their regional variant, just to give to brief examples.

Where Japan stands out more in a Western context is the different levels of formality. Not only are there different ways of expressing first and second personal pronouns (i.e I and you), but you can also conjugate verbs to be more polite/softer/respectful, among other things. In real life you change this depending on who you're talking to and in what situation, but while also common in games and manga, it is not a necessity, and in fact not doing it at all can further add to someone's characterization.

While the linguistic landscape of Japan is diverse and hard to paint in broad strokes, fictional characters are a bit easier to tackle. Because of how the language itself is expressed, it has given way to a lot of linguistic tropes in terms of how characters are portrayed. For example, there is an old man/wise mentor/teacher way of speaking, using a rarely-used first personal pronoun among other things, which is applied to characters like Gandalf, Dumbledore, and, to give a Fire Emblem example, Athos.

The basics

The most basic way of defining a character is by looking at what first and second pronoun they use. Unlike Indo-European languages, Japanese has multiple variants of these, and I will only go through the most relevant ones, ranked in terms of formality.

First person pronouns

• Watakushi - Incredibly formal and only used in rare circumstances or by certain characters, usually nobles and/or snobs.

• Watashi - Formal for men, informal/formal for women. This is the standard pronoun that is taught to foreign students, as it is rarely too formal/not formal enough. However, men, at least younger ones, tend to rarely use it in casual conversations both in fiction and real life.

• Boku - Informal and boyish. Often used by younger characters, but can be used by older people as well. Has a softer ring to it, and in modern manga sometimes used by young girls as well.

• Atashi - Informal and used primarily by young girls.

• Ore - Informal/vulgar, used only by men. People who use this are either very casual, sleazy, vulgar, in a position of power, or just manly.

Second person pronouns

While you tend to use a person's name and an honorific/title when addressing someone in Japanese, you can also use a second person pronoun, though I'd argue it's more common in fiction, at least based on personal experience.

• Anata - Formal. Used by both genders but tends to be used by female characters no matter the situation.

• Kimi - Informal and exclusively male.

• Anta - Informal. A bit more confrontational/aggressive/uneducated than kimi, and can be used by both. Pretty sure all tsundere's use this.

• Omae - Informal/vulgar. Used mostly by men. Aggressive and rude edge when not used between friends. Also used often to speak down to others from a higher position.

• Teme / Kisama - Insults. The latter is Sigurd's last word, so it's pretty strong stuff.

And finally, the lords

The pronouns are, as previously alluded to, not the only way to use role language, but it's one of the more tangible and consistent ones. I will cover some other important aspects in a more sweeping fashion as I go through the lords. 

One final disclaimer: I haven't played through all games in Japanese. I've tried doing enough research for this but analyzing every conversation would be a little too much. I will also not cover Robin and Corrin, as their way of speaking is customizable.

Female protagonists

Women in Japanese entertainment media tend to speak "one level above" politeness of men. There's more emphasis on using titles, honorifics, using more carefully cultivated language, and so on. I feel like there's usually less linguistic diversity among female characters, and I suspect the fact that most prominent manga/game writers are men, but since I don't know enough about Japanese to back such a guess up, don't take my word for it.

For starters, all female protagonists in the series use the same first and second personal pronouns in I believe every situation; watashi and anata. That said, there are some differences between them.

Eirika and Lucina speak in a polite fashion in practically every situation. The only time I saw this deviate was when Eirika talked to Tana - yes, even with Lyon and Ephraim, Eirika conjugates verbs to be more polite. 

Polite conjugations such as these can be interpreted in various ways. There are characters who always speak formally to sound emotionally distant (think Soren, Miriel and Lukas) or professional (think Seth and Frederick), but here it's most likely to make them sound rather feminine and soft-spoken. One could also interpret Lucina as trying to maintain some distance, as she's more stoic than Eirika.

Celica, Micaiah and Lyn are relatively similar. Celica is very formal with Mycen, Nomah, and strangers, probably more so than the others, but all three also make ample use of a sentence-ending particle - wa - that does little other than to make the sentence sound more feminine and perhaps a little softer. This is rather rare in everyday Japanese but ridiculously common in entertainment media. Celica in particular uses this after almost every other sentence, but Micaiah and Lyn are no slouches there either. To further make Celica sound even more feminine, she also uses a sentence-ending particle - no - in statements (as opposed to only questions), where guys tend to use n da, and some distinctly feminine words like kashira, "I wonder".

This is not to say there are no differences in how they speak. Keep in mind that this doesn't mean that just because the way of writing their dialogue has similarities it doesn't mean their personalities, motives, voice acting, etc. is the same. Celica is the one who feels the greatest need to remind you that she is, in fact a woman.

Male protagonists

Marth, Roy, and Eliwood speak effectively in the exact same way. They all use boku and kimi, come across as rather soft-spoken, conjugate politely when speaking to strangers and people of equal or higher rank. Roy and Eliwood also speak very politely to their parents, and also use an antiquated word for mother/father, in a similar vein to the word for "brother" that Eirika calls Ephraim, and so they come across as very respectful. Alm uses the same pronouns, but rarely goes out of his way to sound polite, the one exception I can think of is the first time he sees Witches and tries to snap them out of it.

Ephraim, Ike and Chrom speak in a similar way as well. They all use ore, shorten words to sound more masculine, the sentence-final particle zo to invoke a slightly harsher and authoritarian tone, and Ephraim and Chrom use omae as their default second person pronoun, whereas Ike uses anta. The latter surprised me, as I thought it was the pronoun used by prickly characters (think Severa and Takumi), but characters like Saber and Jesse use it as well. Unlike Ike in particular though, Chrom speaks formally when the situation calls for it, like his first few lines with Flavia before she tells him that's not necessary. Ike never does that, and I don't believe Ephraim ever speaks to someone above him (*correction: he does with Mansel in chapter 19 and employs polite speech, but still uses ore). Ike also calls Greil the equivalent of "my old man", which is a far cry from most protagonists' polite way of refering to their parents. Ike not using polite speech is, of course, a big part of his character as he never judges people based on their standing, so where someone like Eliwood would have been very courteous to someone like Caineighis, Ike speaks the same way as always not out of a lack of respect, but because he doesn't treat anyone differently - this is sometimes, of course, seen as rudeness by others.

Sigurd solely uses watashi, and uses omae to those under him, but switches to formal speech when speaking to Alvis. Meanwhile, Seliph and Leif are harder to pin down - Seliph switches between boku and watashi, sometimes in the same conversation, and like Leif, he's very polite to other people of equal or higher standing. Leif does the same, and is to my knowledge the only protagonist to use the hyper formal watakushi, although he only does it once, during his final goodbye to Seliph at the end of Genealogy where he agrees to Seliph that their friendship and the friendship between their countries should remain strong, just like their fathers before them. Seliph and Leif therefore are stuck somewhere between "formal" and "boyish", whereas Sigurd, fittingly, sounds like the oldest protagonist. His speech style seems similar to Clive's.

...And then there's Hector. Hector not only only uses ore and omae, but is also the only one who conjugates his verbs to sound more vulgar/inappropriate/less correct. For example, when conjugating negative in Japanese, the standard way of doing it (by Tokyo dialect) is ja nai; Hector says ja nee, which is very informal slang. To put that into perspective, Hector's speech style is the closest to generic bandits, although it's not quite that bad. I also seem to remember him trying to speak formally to Athos initially (besides calling him "old man"), but that also comes out more sloppily. Instead of saying desu, it becomes ssu, like a sludder.

Phew, and that's about it. Keep in mind all of this isn't necessarily indicative of writing quality, and there are many more ways of getting a character's personality across, as you no doubt are aware. This is all purely a linguistic approach to how character dialogue is written. Also keep in mind that both my limited research and lack of knowledge may have caused me to overlook something important, though I did keep this on a fairly basic level.

If you found this any interesting at all, I could touch upon some other interesting, minor characters next.

Here is a blog post about it in English and here is the Japanese Wikipedia page if you want further reading.

Edited May 6, 2018 by Thane

[Slumber]

So basically Hector is even more casual/brutish than the likes of Ike and Chrom, and Sigurd is the only "proper" lord who doesn't speak like a kid talking up to adults.

[Thane]

4 minutes ago, Slumber said:

So basically Hector is even more casual/brutish than the likes of Ike and Chrom, and Sigurd is the only "proper" lord who doesn't speak like a kid talking up to adults.

Hector is definitely more rugged than Ike and Chrom, but I wouldn't say Sigurd is the only "proper" lord. He has more of a knightly vibe to him. As for "talking up to adults", that's not exactly how it works, and even if it did, he does employ very polite speech when speaking to Arvis, for example. 

Edited May 6, 2018 by Thane

[Slumber]

8 minutes ago, Thane said:

Hector is definitely more rugged than Ike and Chrom, but I wouldn't say Sigurd is the only "proper" lord. He has more of a knightly vibe to him. As for "talking up to", that's not exactly how it works, and even if it did, he does employ very polite speech when speaking to Arvis, for example. 

I mostly meant that the likes of Eliwood, Roy and Marth keep up the formality/politeness almost no matter who they're talking to, while Sigurd will speak informally with friends and will talk down to people, but still refers to himself formally.

Calling the former group "kids trying to talk up to adults" is probably the wrong way to word it, but it sounds like Sigurd's a bit more mature than the typical Marth archetype, and will change his tone a lot more frequently to fit the situation than the others, who are all very polite/formal, or all very casual/informal.

Edited May 6, 2018 by Slumber

[Thane]

1 minute ago, Slumber said:

I mostly meant that the likes of Eliwood, Roy and Marth keep up the formality almost no matter who they're talking to, while Sigurd will speak informally with friends and will talk down to people.

Oh Eliwood, Roy and Marth are still casual, just more soft-spoken than Ephraim, Ike, Chrom and especially Hector. Eirika and Lucina are the two lords who speak formally almost regardless of the circumstances. However, Sigurd's speech style does paint him as older, yes.

[Slumber]

3 minutes ago, Thane said:

Oh Eliwood, Roy and Marth are still casual, just more soft-spoken than Ephraim, Ike, Chrom and especially Hector. Eirika and Lucina are the two lords who speak formally almost regardless of the circumstances. However, Sigurd's speech style does paint him as older, yes.

Gotcha. Japanese is an... interesting language.

Edited May 6, 2018 by Slumber

[Thane]

11 minutes ago, Slumber said:

Gotcha. Japanese is an... interesting language.

Formality in languages is not unique to Japanese. Just take Spanish and its history of second person pronouns and the modern spread of them. In Spain, vos is archaic but the standard in Argentina, while considered either formal or informal depending on other countries/regions in South America.

Even the layered formality conjugations in Japanese is not unique, as you can also find it in Korean and I believe - though I wouldn't bet any money on it - Thai, for example. 

Still, it's a very interesting language with many fascinating quirks. Geography (especially its isolation) has had a huge impact on it, and combined with earlier strict hierarchal structures, it's not wonder things like conjugations of formality and different pronouns exist.

Edited May 6, 2018 by Thane

[Slumber]

9 minutes ago, Thane said:

Formality in languages is not unique to Japanese. Just take Spanish and its history of second person pronouns and the modern spread of them. In Spain, vos is archaic but the standard in Argentina, while considered either formal or informal depending on other countries/regions in South America.

Even the layered formality conjugations in Japanese is not unique, as you can also find it in Korean and I believe - though I wouldn't bet any money on it - Thai, for example. 

Still, it's a very interesting language with many fascinating quirks. Geography (especially its isolation) has had a huge impact on it, and combined with earlier strict hierarchal structures, it's not wonder things like conjugations of formality and different pronouns exist.

I can certainly see why there are so many ways to say what would essentially be "I" or "You"(Simplifying here) in certain parts of the world, especially in a part of the world where hierarchy among people was so ingrained for millennia, but it's just a bit weird to wrap your head around when your native tongue conveys that more with tone than actual words.

Edited May 6, 2018 by Slumber

[Michelaar]

That was a very interesting read, and I would love to learn more actually. I loved reading that.

[Re: The weirdo.]

Bless you for giving me even more reasons to laugh at/ love hector

do more

[Troykv]

This a quite interesting read, I knew that Roy use the "Boku" first person; but this expand quite heaviliy my knownledge about the characters' speech.

8 hours ago, Thane said:

Celica, Micaiah and Lyn are relatively similar. Celica is very formal with Mycen, Nomah, and strangers, probably more so than the others, but all three also make ample use of a sentence-ending particle - wa - that does little other than to make the sentence sound more feminine and perhaps a little softer. This is rather rare in everyday Japanese but ridiculously common in entertainment media. Celica in particular uses this after almost every other sentence, but Micaiah and Lyn are no slouches there either. To further make Celica sound even more feminine, she also uses a sentence-ending particle - no - in statements (as opposed to only questions), where guys tend to use n da, and some distinctly feminine words like kashira, "I wonder".

This is not to say there are no differences in how they speak. Keep in mind that this doesn't mean that just because the way of writing their dialogue has similarities it doesn't mean their personalities, motives, voice acting, etc. is the same. Celica is the one who feels the greatest need to remind you that she is, in fact a woman.

Talking abbout the - wa - make me wonder; do you know how real-life women talks in Japan?

And wow, whoever decided to create the Celica's re-characterization wanted to make clear she is a woman no matter the sittuaton... That sounds... sexist XDU

[Moblin Major General]

I saw somewhere that Lyn's accent is supposedly similar to Donnel's/Mozu's accent in Japanese. I'm surprised you never mentioned this. She might speak formally, but it's with a provincial drawl. Granted, only Donnel and Brady actually have this accent outside of Japan (it being localized to a deep southern accent).

[Michelaar]

19 minutes ago, Troykv said:

This a quite interesting read, I knew that Roy use the "Boku" first person; but this expand quite heaviliy my knownledge about the characters' speech.

Talking abbout the - wa - make me wonder; do you know how real-life women talks in Japan?

And wow, whoever decided to create the Celica's re-characterization wanted to make clear she is a woman no matter the sittuaton... That sounds... sexist XDU

I think she is a secret member of the tumblr feminists.

[eclipse]

So, nitpicks:

- Change your theme to Night Forest, then reread the first post.  Next time, link the reddit post itself and summarize it.
- "Ore" can be used by women, but they're edge cases.  She's either someone who's hung around/dealt with men so much that it affected her speech pattern, or she's trying to act really tough.  Prishe in the Dissidia mobile game says this as one of her win quotes.
- Women and men speak differently in Japanese, even outside of video games.
- Comparing across regions would've been more interesting IMO.  Eirika, Tana, and L'Arachel are princesses from different realms.  In English, L'Arachel speaks drastically differently than, well, everyone.  Reyson and Rafiel are both heron princes, yet the difference in demeanor is noted in the script - and in Japanese, the difference becomes a lot more apparent.

Japanese is complicated, and it's more than just pronouns and sentence endings.  You'll need to know both the different regions (Kansai accent is a thing) and how the language evolved over time.  The latter is best illustrated by period dramas (look for those that have gotten awards) - those depicting the Fujiwara clan will sound drastically different from those that depict the Meiji era.

[Thane]

5 hours ago, Hylian Air Force said:

I saw somewhere that Lyn's accent is supposedly similar to Donnel's/Mozu's accent in Japanese. I'm surprised you never mentioned this. She might speak formally, but it's with a provincial drawl. Granted, only Donnel and Brady actually have this accent outside of Japan (it being localized to a deep southern accent).

I can't speak for Donnel, but Lyn doesn't speak like Mozu at all. If memory serves, Mozu speaks with a rural Kansai accent, and uses more regional first person pronouns and sentence-ending particles. Maybe it's something with the vocabulary, but I don't see it. Where did you read this? 

 

5 hours ago, eclipse said:

"Ore" can be used by women, but they're edge cases.  She's either someone who's hung around/dealt with men so much that it affected her speech pattern, or she's trying to act really tough

As you say, it's very, very rare to the point where I've never heard it either in real life or within the entertainment industry. The same can be said about using "kimi". I didn't bring it up due to the extreme rarity and the absence of it in Fire Emblem. 

5 hours ago, eclipse said:

Women and men speak differently in Japanese, even outside of video games.

I explicitly mention this. 

5 hours ago, eclipse said:

Comparing across regions would've been more interesting IMO

I'm sorry you didn't enjoy the topic. However, I was planning on writing about a few minor characters down the line, and Reyson in comparison to Rafiel was one thing I was thinking of looking into. 

5 hours ago, eclipse said:

Japanese is complicated, and it's more than just pronouns and sentence endings

I know. I mention multiple times that this is not the only way to convey someone's idolect, but that it is a consistent and more tangible way to do so. This was never meant to be an introduction to the Japanese language as a whole, but showing others how the main characters speak in Japanese and how it can contribute to their characterization, some of which may get lost in translation. 

[eclipse]

54 minutes ago, Thane said:

I'm sorry you didn't enjoy the topic. However, I was planning on writing about a few minor characters down the line, and Reyson in comparison to Rafiel was one thing I was thinking of looking into.

If the goal was characterization, then comparisons across regions is a must.  I'll take the trio of Celica/Lyn/Micaiah as an example.

- You did a good job of noting how Celica speaks.  Was her speech drastically different to the rest of the village kids, even when they were children?  I'd imagine that being yanked from a palace to a village would be rather jarring.

- Lyn's sticking point is her Sacaean heritage.  Her appearance is brought up, but what about her speech patterns?  Does anyone else (Sue, for example) speak similarly?  What about Rath/Rutger?

- Micaiah's most interesting points would probably show up when Yune takes over.  Would've loved to see how she spoke right after she was removed from Begnion, but the game never touches on that.  Ah, well.

I think that you're right about the fact that Japanese speech styles can give insight into a character.  Noting speech styles is one way of doing it, but those styles must have the appropriate context applied to them.  Someone who studied English may come to the conclusion that "y'all" is a universal informal way of referring to a group, rather than a regional one.