First name basis

[osprey_archer]

The ESL class has been working on formality and politeness, and they had an assignment to talk to someone at the wrong level of formality - greet their roommate with "Good afternoon, Miss Hossenpfeffer" or something like that.

Most of them talked to their roommates too formally, but one girl talked to the international student coordinator - too informally, she thought. "I said, 'What's up, Tim?'"

"Oh, Aiko," said Shizuka, eyes enormous. "You are so brave."

Aiko grinned and ducked her head. "But he didn't react!" she said. "When I told him about the experiment, he said many students talk to him like that normally!" She sighed. "I wanted him to be angry. It would be a better story."

A pause in the conversation. I said, "When my dad went to New Zealand, they warned him that the students all call their professors by their first names. They said a German professor visited once, and on his first day a student dropped by his office wearing a t-shirt and swim trunks, and barefoot, and greeted him 'Hey Klaus!' The German drew himself up to his full affronted height and bellowed, 'Return when you are properly attired to speak to a professor!'"

They giggled. "In Japan we would never call professors by their first name," said Aiko. "Never."

"Sometimes we would call high school teachers by their nicknames," added Shizuka. "But not by first names, never."

I attempted to conceive of calling a high school teacher by a nickname. "But how do you call someone by a nickname without calling them by their first name?"

But then the professor said it was time for class discussion, so I didn't find out. :(

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

shikuchi said they do do that! I mean, make up nicknames. They can be based on their family names or just a characteristic.

[coraa.livejournal.com]

OT, but oh, that's a lovely icon.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Hee. This is just the way I found this icon, I saw someone else using it and went SO PRETTY. COVET.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Cultural differences are so curious. In high school we occasionally made up nicknames for our teachers - but we would never, NEVER have called the teachers by them. It would have been worse than using their first names. (Of course, some of the nicknames were not too flattering...)

Whereas it seems like in Japan, it's the opposite.

[exuberantself.livejournal.com]

I think it's so ingrained in us culturally and socially that the first name is indicative of a colloquially social relationship and so we create levels and semantic differences between those we perceive as being of a higher level than ourselves. For example, my crew calls me either Miss Karen (the noticeably older and younger team members) or KJ (those who are close to my age have nicknamed me) or just Boss, but very few of them call me by name alone; I, in turn, always refer to my bosses as simply sir. The reverse is true, of course, but it doesn't really show up as much in the language itself so much as the tone, I think.

Or, more to your particular point, my favorite professor always insisted that students called him by name outside of class, but it's simply not possible.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

My Russian professor wants us to call him by his first name. I can manage it in Russian, but in English...just no. It's just too weird.

[entwashian.livejournal.com]

Most of my kids (4th & 5th graders) call me "Miss Marion", but the one 6th grader insists on addressing me with my last name.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Do you think it's because he's older, or is he just a formal person?

[entwashian.livejournal.com]

It's because he has extreme anxiety that he will do something wrong, I think. XD

He always asks things like if he can get up to get a new pencil, or a tissue from the tissue box.