Chinese Honorifics
I have always wondered why there are Korean honorifics, Japanese honorifics, but no Chinese honorifics. China is the country with the longest history and both Korea and Japan had major influence from China, yet they both developed honorifics while China didn’t? I found that to be a bit surprising, so I decided to perform a few searches to clear up whatever questions I had in mind. It turned out that in Chinese, there are honorifics. However, most of them have dropped out by now.
Class consciousness helped promote the development of an elaborate system of honorific language in Ancient and Imperial China. Due to the social distinctions of different individuals, general pronouns were often considered discourteous and were rarely used; in place was an extensive naming and honorifics system to address people from different social strata and backgrounds.
In general, language referring to oneself exhibits self-deprecating humbleness, while language referring to others shows approval and respect.
Chinese polite language is very similar to the Japanese system conceptually; both emphasized the idea of classes and in-group vs. out-group. So the language used among friends would be very different from that used among businesspeople. Even though modern Chinese has lost a large percent of its polite language and vocabulary, the surviving polite words and structures are still used extensively for added politeness towards the addressees. While it’s true that most of Chinese honorifics have fallen out of use, these honorifics can still be understood by most Chinese, partly attributable to the popularity of Chinese historical novels and television dramas, which often employ languages from the classical periods.
Because Chinese does not have inflections, i.e., there’s no grammatical conjugation or declension, the Chinese honorifics system is not as complex as the conjugating Japanese system. Politeness in Chinese is often achieved by using honorific alternatives and dropping casual-sounding words.
I decided to check out the list of honorifics and there are a lot. However, even I understand all of them and I can use them if need be. This is, as the Wikipedia article wrote, due to the number of television serials that a number of Chinese watch. A lot of the Wu Xia films and dramas utilize the honorifics.
I was still correct with my views on honorifics though. Chinese is the least polite, Japan is more polite, and Korean is most polite. I am glad that Chinese doesn’t contain honorifics anymore though. It wouldn’t make sense anyway, since a number of the honorifics were given due to the power and high level of the emperor and his imperial administrators. In this day and age, those people no longer exist.
What I also find funny is that the self-deprecating humbleness still exists in Chinese talk, but without the use of honorifics. The response of “哪里哪里” whenever someone compliments a person just shows one example of how Chinese people try to be modest.
2 Responses to “Chinese Honorifics”
August 20, 2007 at 8:28 pm
I think Japanese honorifics are mainly only about the names though (like Chinese, but more). In Korean honorifics, it’s also in the words. I know that adding -yo onto the end of sentences is supposed to be more respectful? And many of the people I know who are taking Korean either took Japanese first or my Japanese friends who take Korean say that being respectful is like reaching a new level in the language.
August 20, 2007 at 9:35 am
That is an interesting thing… about how modern Chinese don’t use honorific, and it is even more ironic that Korean and Japanese use it when they are heavily influenced by China! And I am not sure if Koreans are the most polite with their honorific… from my knowledge of Japan and Korea, I’d say their honorific is about the same.