さん
[Разговорник*]
San (さん) (sometimes pronounced han (はん) in Kansai dialect) is the most commonplace honorific and is a title of respect typically used between equals of any age. Although the closest analog in English are the honorifics "Mr.", "Miss", "Ms.", or "Mrs.", -san is almost universally added to a person's name; "-san" can be used in formal and informal contexts and for any gender. Because it is the most common honorific, it is also the most often used to convert common nouns into proper ones, as seen below.
San may be used in combination with workplace nouns, so a bookseller might be addressed or referred to as honya-san ("bookstore" + san) and a butcher as nikuya-san ("butcher's shop" + san).
San is sometimes used with company names. For example, the offices or shop of a company called Kojima Denki might be referred to as "Kojima Denki-san" by another nearby company. This may be seen on small maps often used in phone books and business cards in Japan, where the names of surrounding companies are written using san.
San can be attached to the names of animals or even inanimate objects. For example, a pet rabbit might be called usagi-san, and fish used for cooking can be referred to as sakana-san, but both would be considered childish (akin to "Mr. Fish" or "Mr. Fishy" to equivalate in English) and would be avoided in formal speech. Married people often refer to their spouse with san.
Due to -san being gender neutral and commonly used, it can be used to refer to people who are not close or to whom one does not know. However, it may not be appropriate when using it on someone who is close or when it is clear that other honorifics should be used.
Online, Japanese gamers often append a numeral 3 to another player's name to denote san (e.g., Taro3 conveys Taro-san), since the number three is also pronounced san.
Поделиться данной страницей:
