Quote:
Originally Posted by KyleGoetz
OK here are my questions.
1. You start with ぼくの趣味. Does your use of ぼくの reflect your immaturity as a writer, or is it better to say ぼくの趣味 as opposed to just 趣味?
2. Were you expected to use ます form in this essay (or in all school assignments?), or is this what kids assume they should use in school? I ask because true "essays" of the scholarly kind I see all use 普通体. We don't have such a distinction in English, so the difference between true literary work and junior high work is only in vocabulary usage, more complicated content, and other signals that reflect the increased education of the author. Of course junior high kids in Japan know 普通体, so it can't be chalked up to "lack of education in how to use 普通体."
Perhaps it's like how children in elementary school in the US are taught cursive handwriting and then forced to use it in all assignments? Just used to reinforce a skill by having it used everywhere possible...
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1. In most elementary schools (like all of them), you are simply required to refer to yourself as ぼく if you are a boy and わたし if you are a girl in both writing and speaking in class. Outside of class, like during the breaks, many boys use おれ and the teachers usually pay little attention to it.
For the title of a writing, the first-person pronoun is very often a must. If you title your compo as 「趣味」, no native speaker would think it would be a discussion of your own hobbies. It would be a very strange composition title but one would expect a discussion of what hobbies are to human beings in general.
2. By 普通体, you mean the dictionary form, don't you? If so, no, we (kids or adults) do not use 普通体 nearly as often as Japanese-learners seem to think. It would sound too bloodless and indifferent. In poetry and article-type writing, we do use it. You will see lots of です/ます endings in compositions by elementary school kids because that is the first style of writing we learn in school, which is mostly why I have kept stating on JF that we do not perceive です/ます as being particularly polite even though we may call it "polite" in name.
__________
I was thinking someone might ask about
こっぴどく from the last paragraph but no question is a good question.