Path: ccsf.homeunix.org!news.moat.net!border2.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!cyclone1.gnilink.net!spamkiller.gnilink.net!gnilink.net!trnddc03.POSTED!f7639681!not-for-mail From: Bart Mathias User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux ppc; en-US; rv:1.7.8) Gecko/20050513 Debian/1.7.8-1 X-Accept-Language: en, ja, ko, zh-cn MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: sci.lang.japan,fj.sci.lang.japanese Subject: Re: Casual / Respectful form of family member words References: <1128460261.539503.197990@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Lines: 27 Message-ID: Date: Wed, 05 Oct 2005 02:24:14 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 72.235.28.91 X-Complaints-To: abuse@verizon.net X-Trace: trnddc03 1128479054 72.235.28.91 (Tue, 04 Oct 2005 22:24:14 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 04 Oct 2005 22:24:14 EDT Xref: ccsf.homeunix.org fj.sci.lang.japanese:846 Ben Finney wrote: > In sci.lang.japan, Squark wrote: > >>How well are the casual / respectful forms of words for family >>members distinguished in the writing? For instance, I saw both >>母さん and お母さん written. Are both of the forms correct and >>pronounced おかあさん? If only 母 is written, is it always >>pronounced はは, or can it stand for おかあさん as well? >> >>Another question: is おかあさま　more respectful than おかあさん, or >>equally respectful? Also, is it correct to write it 母様 / お母様 >>(this is what IME makes of it)? > > > In increasing order of distance: > > 母 はは > 母さん かあさん > お母さん おかあさん > お母様 おかあさま > > It may help to know that the "honorific お" (お母さん, お弁当) and the > "honorific ご" (ご主人, ごはん) both come from the kanji 御. [...] "Come from"? How could a pure Japanese form come from a kanji? Bart