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Don’t worry about the story content rule here, Ghost-of-a-Chance, because as BronxWench explained this forum is meant to be a place where authors can get help with things that are difficult or keeping them stuck. As for the gaijin thing, I am only basing my answer on my experience in Japan. I was told by my Japanese friends that it’s considered terribly rude and no person would use it around white people without meaning offence. And I think your safest bet when it comes to the honorifics is to use -san, because the tone of voice used when saying a name like “Smith-san” can imply the derogatory meaning. Just imagine the tone of voice when your relative calls people those charming names, and go from there. Also, in Japan if you insist on calling someone by their family name + san it strongly implies that you do not want to become better acquainted with them, or allow them into your inner circle of friends, so to speak. As soon as you start using given name + san it implies that you now consider that person closer to you as a peer and someone you would call a friend. I hope this helps, even though I’m only basing this on my personal experience from Japan. I’m no expert, but I have studied the language so I do know a bit.

To be fair, I did review Social Distancing

Grammarly had a blonde moment. Grammarly identified “blonde” as two different incorrectly spelled words somehow jammed together. This is why you always, always, ALWAYS either do your own proof-reading or have a beta proof-read your drafts instead of just running them through spellcheck and accepting all corrections. Grammarly’s free checker is, so far, the best I’ve come across, but it works best in combination with proof-reading. No checking program can replace proofreading.

Ah, that makes sense. Thanks for the explanation! I’ll try to keep that in mind from now on, WillowDarkling. Thanks again for your advice! Y’all are a blast!

Nothing to worry about! Willow is our forum moderator, and we have a rule about not allowing stories to be published in the forum—we’ve had people post stories here instead of the archive. So, our forum admin and Willow established a rule about no more than 10 sentences of story text being allowed. However, that really applies mainly to our challenge threads, where people tend to post whole chapters of what they’ve written in response to a challenge, to make sure the person making the challenge is pleased. That’s the sort of excess we try to avoid. In this case, and particularly given the way Japanese works (especially those dratted honorifics), giving a bigger chunk of text was more helpful. The whole idea of this thread is to let writers work out questions relating to language, or terminology. Fortunately, we have Willow, who studies Japanese and keeps me fairly honest when it comes to proper terminology. In return, I’m teaching her to curse in Sindarin.

…? I take it I missed something? Was this flagged, or reported, or did I unintentionally bugger something up? I’ve been down with a migraine all day (it’s still trying to bounce back up from headache to pickaxe pulverizing my frontal lobe) so this is the first I’ve heard or seen about anything. I’m confused... I’m still new to this forum so apologies if I misstep. The one I used to work with is...let’s just say less than reasonable, entirely unhelpful, and crawling with irrational kidults looking for a punching bag. (...stay away from FFnet’s “Writers Anonymous.” Just stay away.) When posting a question I always try to include the relevant information and keep it brief – or at least summarized and formatted for easy reading – but different opinions on relevance are a hurdle. Every attempt on W.A. got answers of TLDR, try Google and not enough info I must know everything about your story and characters including each protagonist’s blood type and pet’s maiden name or I absolutely cannot help you with anything on the exact same post. Once in a while I was lucky enough to merit a dunno, ask Jeeves. When hours and even days of searching and reading didn’t get me the answers I needed, the only way I ever managed to keep the too much and not enough repliers happy was by including snippets for context...or offering cookies and begging for intruding upon their space. The character Saschelle is being abusive and antagonistic to character Rowan so the slur is very much intended as a slur there; at least in my previous experiences, bullies don’t generally pull their punches. Glad I was able to get the attitude across there. I recalled reading that the polite term was gaikokujin, hence the exaggerated pause between syllables – a sudden and emphasized jump from feigning manners to blatant insult to throw the recipient off-kilter. I’ve gone through the lists of sites and article links in my fan-writing Notebook (thank goodness for OneNote!) but for the life of me, I can’t find the article I got my G-word info from. If this instance follows other recent ones, it means I bookmarked the article on my old computer and forgot to add a link in my Notebook. My dear old Betsy effectively went battery-up recently and has been replaced. I can’t access my bookmarks until I get Firefox working and updated on the replacement computer…or until I can manage to get Betsy working again long enough to save my research bookmarks. I’ve searched the internet but haven’t found the article again, only other sites and articles referencing similar answers. (“It’s horribly offensive and considered a slur” and “It’s not always used as a slur, it’s just a word meaning foreigner. Even sports leagues use it for foreign teams.”) No idea of how to determine which sources are accurate besides good ol’ “avoid wikis, Wikipedia, and social media sites.” Without the article I referenced I have no way to be sure but I feel like I remember something about the writer being affiliated with a college or university perhaps, maybe connected to a language or cultural arts program…? So basically using -san would be the way to go? Basically, Saschelle is using the word with a title to compound the insult - like a certain relation of mine who calls people “Mister Jackwad” and “Little Miss Bitchfest” when he’s offended by their very presence. ...crud. Now I’m not sure if the word we’re talking about is a noun or adjective. My head hurts and I need some wine.

Actually, in this instance, because the OP is looking for language guidance and not looking to publish a story on the forum, in whole or in part, I think the extra content was needed to get the correct guidance, especially in the murky world of Japanese honorifics (which still elude me after all these years of you trying to teach me). Now, the idiot who keeps trying to publish stories in the Adopt a Story forum definitely needs to be smacked with a very large thesaurus. Repeatedly.

awesome! thanks for participating! will be reading it soon!

Well. Good thing I don’t have an ego!

Considering she hunts the dregs of society. She’d probably have the possibility to earn a boon. She is a required part of the ecosystem. Now I got it in my head they should definitely meet.

I have received a final grade of 8 (out of 10) for my BA thesis in Japanese language and culture. So I will be graduating with a BA degree and a grade point average (is that what it’s called in English?) of 7,75.

I haven’t been on AFF in a while, but I just posted a review, and I realized I can’t read anyone else’s reviews. Are we not allowed to read story reviews anymore?

Gaijin is considered quite rude in most social situations regarding non-Japanese (especially white) people today, and especially if it’s said in a rude or taunting tone. The polite way of saying “foreigner” is Gaikokujin. Also for the honorifics, -kun and -chan are used when you are familiar with someone, so anyone trying to keep a “social distance” of any kind, would just use familyname-san, I think. Of course the tone of voice can always be used to convey condescension etc. -kun and -chan are also used for boys younger than you and girls, respectively, so adding the suffix -kun to the name of someone your own age, either means you are quite close, or implies that you view that person as someone below you in age and “status”, but I don’t think Japanese teens would actually use it that way. After conferring with our head archive mod, the story content is allowed in this instance as per the post below mine. The extra content is needed for context. Willow Darkling, forum moderator.