A neat bit of info I learned in Japanese Studies class today, which may help clarify why Barret tells Denzel to "take care of mom (Tifa)" in AC. The Japanese have a certain way of speaking called "allocentric use", which is to use reference terms that reflect the youngest member's point of view.

For example: a grandmother, mother and son are walking together. The son would call his mother "kaasan" because they are mother and son. How would the grandmother refer to the mother? If it was just her and the mother alone, she could call the mother by her name or use other references.

But because she is in the presence of the boy (i.e. the youngest member of the group), the grandmother would also refer to the mother as "kaasan" (mother) because that is how the boy would refer to the mother.

Thus, Barret calls Tifa "kaasan" because Denzel is the youngest member of the Barret-Tifa-Denzel group, and Tifa is his mother figure.

Does this explanation make sense? :sweat: Of course, that all crumbles to dust when translated to ENGLISH, and the writers should've just had it as "take care of Tifa!", but maybe they wanted to hammer in that Tifa is a mother-figure to the audience.

[EDIT] Oh, and I'm sure this could've gone into another thread discussing the line, but I really couldn't find it. >.< If someone could point one out to me, I'll merge them together.

That seems really interesting actually Lynn. Now that I think about it I do hear that a lot in anime. It does seem intuitive though (even though a lot of fans for some reason took that to mean that Tifa was the biological mother lol) but the explanation adds more weight. Wee japanese culture :)

Actually I've been looking for a good place to learn japanese, not so much the kanji but the romanized words so that I can at least be able to understand when I hear it. If you or anyone else has some good site recs please send them my way. I like learning bits of stuff like that!

Thanks, nyrin. I admit I squealed like the dork I am when we touched on this in lecture, and the first thing I thought of was the AC scene. 8D Yeah, I go to Uni just to supplement my fandom knowledge.

I think this is an example where knowledge of the background comes in VERY handy (you know, in answer to those people who say we don't need to know the background to understand FFVII).

I guess most people would've known that Barret meant "mother" metaphorically, but it's still not an everyday English-language occurrence to call someone else (someone younger, and not even related to you by blood) "mother" the way Barret did. Now I know it's simply due to the writers' Japanese backgrounds. When I heard it, it's like a freaking light bulb went off in my head. :lol:

And yeah, it helps knock it into the heads of people who think Tifa is REALLY Denzel's mother.

You probably wouldn't learn kanji to begin with, since there's a lot to memorise (I've heard the official tally is around 3000 characters, but the actual, daily figure is probably more). Most casual students (i.e. the ones who learn it just to play Japanese RPGs or skim through manga) I know learn hiragana and katakana.

Romanji is just using romanised alphabets to write Japanese words, so once you learn the writing you should know how to romanise it. I'm not sure if there's anything that specifically teaches Japanese in romanji. Perhaps someone who's taken the language (Wilhelm? HD?) can clarify. :)

I don't know any good websites, but I can ask a friend who studies Japanese on her own time. She's fluent enough to read manga, surf Japanese websites and all that. From what she's said before, though, books are the best way to go (though not those "learn Japanese in 90 days!" books).

Ee, interesting info, Lynn! ^_^ Thanks for sharing!

I think it's quite common in most Asian cultures, and not just Japan. For example my dad refers to my mom as 'Mother' and vice versa, and if you listen to people talking to small children, they also refer to the parents as 'Mommy' or 'Daddy', even if they aren't around. It's quite common to me, but I don't know if it's as prevalent in Western cultures.

I don't know about sites, but I know you start out learning hiragana, then progress to katakana, and then kanji. I learnt hiragana and katakana by buying those workbooks where you write them out over and over and over again, and by the time I got them all learnt, I couldn't be bothered to go on to kanji. :lol: I'll be studying Japanese in Uni this year though, and I think the best way for you to learn would be to take classes, so you can actually hear people speaking it, as opposed to just looking at a book or website. :)

Heh, no surprise here since my own parents did the same with me and my sisters. Mainly because it'll confuse chibi me if I hear dad refer to mum by first name, but now, I know better, but they still call each other 'mum' and 'dad' due to my younger sisters.

I'm studying Japanese, too, in high school (in America, that means middle school +1 year). Just start off with hiragana and katakana, before moving onto the harder stuff. Those lil' guys are your buddies when used as furigana.

Well really, that kind of this isn't just for asian/Japanese cultures. My parents did that too, as well as many others.

Really? I thought it translated well in English, with Barret calling Tifa Denzel's mother. Got the point across.

My parents did that too. I grew up thinking that it was standard for all parents to do that. :mellow:

I think I tried making this point in another thread before but it didn't come across all that well.

My parents too, but I think it's a little different with the Japanese. It's more like a rule than an option. Referring to a person from the youngest's POV is probably a way to make the youngest one aware of the person's role in society.

Another example, though maybe not a very good one, would be grandmother-boy's teacher who is close friend of grandmother-boy. The grandmother would refer to the teacher as 'sensei' in front of the boy, but would call the teacher by name in private.

I thought it was weird since Barret and Tifa weren't married, and Denzel was adopted into the family old enough not to see Tifa as a literal mother. I can't see either of them going around daily calling her 'mother'. But yeah, it got the message across.

I agree. It helps when you have someone to learn it with, even if you just want to learn the written version of Japanese (apparently very different from the spoken version).

But again, I fail to see how this is a Japanese thing since that's pretty much how it was done around me, too. The older parent gaurdian refers to the other adult by the "title" in front of the child, and by name when they are alone.

It's a pretty common thing around the world, actually. I'm just trying to understand how this is a Japanese-only thing, I suppose, when as I said, many, many people do this all over.

Ooo...thanks for letting us know about that tidbit, Lynn. It's really interesting, and yes, that might help explain some things.

Wilhelm would know this better than me.
I took Japanese class at the university, so just like everyone, I had to learn about all the Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji forms...and only used Romanji from there to help myself with learning the vocabs. Though I wouldn't be surprised if they have books out there that taught basic Japanese purely in Romanji for those who were only interested in speaking the language, I've actually never seen one myself. Unfortunately, I'm not aware of any sites like that either.

I know it's not purely, strictly Japanese-only since my own family does the same. But I'm not sure how common it is in countries outside Japan. Your parents do it, my parents do it; but do our societies as a whole practice it? Maybe our experiences are the exceptions?

I think that's key. Allocentric use seems to be something all Japanese practice, whereas from the confusion I've seen about Barret's line, it's not something everyone in other societies does. Otherwise there would be no confusion about it.

I'll bring it up with my lecturer on whether it's a "Japanese-only" thing, though. The way she highlighted it, it seems like it's meant to be a distinct aspect of Japanese speech.


[EDIT] Thought about it further, and I think another thing that had me go "ah-ha! allocentric use!" is that everyone whose parents refer to each other as 'mother' and 'father' are family (based on the posts here and in other threads). I mean, my parents ARE married, and so the mother/father bit isn't surprising to me.

But I find it out of place to use the same logic on Barret and Tifa--they aren't married, and no matter how much Tifa feels like a mother, she isn't Denzel's. It's just... odd. I could put it down to my personal experience, and I have before, but the idea of allocentric use just seems to fit better.