About Hawken

Hawken King is a fine purveyor of delicious designs & imaginative illustrations based in the heart of Tokyo. His award-winning work is often suitably diverse, emotive and far reaching.





how to say "I".

Published 16th of Jul, 2006. Stored under japan

In English, how many ways can we refer to ourselves?

I, my, me, one’s self, in person & one’s.

So in all that’s six ways. By far and wide “I” would be the most used. However some languages have a multitude of ways to refer to one’s self, and Japanese is by far the most confusing! Japanese has well over 11 ways of making self references:

  • 01. 私「わたし」”watashi”. (formal, female japanese)
  • 02. 私「わたくし」”watakushi”. (formal)
  • 03. 僕「ぼく」”boku”. (male japanese, childs japanese)
  • 04. 俺「おれ」”ore”. (male japanese, from boss or elder)
  • 05. 拙者「せっしゃ」”sesha”. (samurai)
  • 06. わたれ “wataru”. (not sure about this one, may have it wrong, childs japanese)
  • 07. 自分「じぶん」”jibun”. (one’s self, myself, in person)
  • 08. うち “uchi”. (one’s self, formal)
  • 09. 自身「じしん」”jishin”. (ones, formal)
  • 10. 自ら「みずから」”mizukara”. (one’s self, in person)
  • 11. 自我「じが」”jiga”. (one’s self)

I’m convinced there are a lot more out there, with regional dialects and so on.