zyranda: randa discovers proper usage of chinese honorifics
chinese honorifics: the inside scoop on what to say
so today on twitter, zy and i were talking about what younger girls should call an older guy. i'm not very sure where in china zy's family originated from, but i was born in the capital of henan province, zhengzhou. anywho our main argument was whether or not gege could be used by girls. i personally have never heard any girl in my life call an older guy gege before, but maybe that's just me. or a preference by my chinese guy friends. nonetheless, i'm going to come out and talk about my semi-amazing discovery.
so let's start at the beginning. many aff users are going craycray when the oc in a fanfic calls any of the exo members gege, rather than oppa or just by their normal name. i cringe whenever i read something like that because again, i've never heard a girl call a guy gege. so let me clear some things up for zy, sha, myself, and for anyone else who is curious about what a girl calls an older guy.
before i would like to begin, i want to say thanks to jed, bao, aaron, joshua, and ryan for helping me out with this!
in my examples, i will be using my best guy friend, jidai ((or jed)). and yes, i was given his permission to reveal his name...not like it's any special anyway.
anway i have either refered to jed as "ahji" or "ahdai". 'ah' (from what i've been told ok) is a form of endearment. it's genderless so anyone can say it. you usually put it in front of someone's name if you are good friends with the person. i tend to use this a lot with my guy friends (i have many of them) but i also have a few girl friends that i use 'ah' with. although it's not that common since the ratio of my guy friends to girl friends is not balanced so i feel weird saying it.
moving on. for the longest time, i have also called jed: ji-xiong or dai-xiong. // ji-renxiong or dai-renxiong. and this also goes with a bunch of my other guy friends that are older than me. xiong means older brother, but in a respectful way. it's an alternative to ge or dage. in real life, most guys call each other xiong. it's something that males use on other males.
now for the whole infamous gege confusion. i have finally sorted this out (thanks jed! thanks dad! thanks for nothing ahzhou > < ) now, as we all know. gege is the most common honorific used by younger guys to older guys. ge just as a general guy to guy thing. there are many different forms regarding this so imma just list them below:
哥 // ge - brother
boys often use this the same way english speakers use 'bro'. they kinda just throw it around like, "hey bro!" or "yo bro, have you seen my -whatever-?" regardless of your closeness to the boy, you can use ge to people you've just met or people you've known since birth. it's pretty easy going and there's not much thought behind it. although, i've never heard a girl use ge before and jed tells me that if he ever did, he would probably double take and then continue on like nothing happened. girls, it's not a crime to call an older boy ge, jed's just being ist. if i were a guy, i would much rather prefer hearing this though rather than gege.
oh one more thing. my friend baoxiong tells me that girls can use ge to refer to their boyfriends. his girlfriend used to call him bao-ge but there was always so much confusion because he would often mishear it as biaoge (male cousin) as far as idols go, this is probably the safest bet when you're trying to talk to chinese kidols. it's general, and it also shows that you are trying to be friendly with the person, but you're not really referring to them like a close friend.
哥哥 // gege - older brother
younger boys use gege to call older guys. you all probably knew this already if you're into exo. anywho, now unlike ge, gege is not as loosely thrown around. my dad tells me that gege is used most appropriately if both guys are close friends. it would be weird to approach a new friend by calling them gege because you are not on close terms yet. although, i've noticed that most chinese boys don't even use honorifics to refer to each other anymore if there is a small age difference (like 5 years max). they just call each other by their names of given nicknames.
now let's talk about all you ladies out there. girls don't call older male idols gege (unless it's part of their nickname that the other members have given them). we aren't on close enough terms to actually by calling them gege since again, we don't really know them personally. my dad tells me gege can be used by both guys and girls. gbut the thing is, girls don't use gege to call their boyfriends. that sounds weird. there's something else for that. oh! before i forget, let me tell you a funny story about jed. (keep quiet about this though because he told me not to tell)
in 7th grade, jed started dating this one girl from another school (she's not chinese, she's korean) (i'm changing her name to hyojin for privacy reasons) so one week into their relationship, hyojin suddenly called him ji-gege. and oh boy you should have seen the look on his face! he was so confused, it was beautiful. the rest of us were dying. hyojin was so confused. of course, like most of us think, it translates over like oppa does, but it really doesn't in terms of relationships. if you call a boyfriend gege, there isn't really a good connotation behind it. it's hard to explain but if there was a way to put it, it would be like flirting in a submissive way. idek if that makes sense of not but that's the best way i can put it.
so ladies, unless you have an older brother/close guy friend, don't go around calling your oppars gege because that's strange.
大哥’ // dage - older brother
as fans, this is another appropriate way to call your oppars. at least, that's what jed and i have decided. dage is commonly used in family settings by females who have older brothers or younger boys to their older brothers. my cousin jie has a half-brother who she refers to as dage. dage does not always refer to older brothers. i've heard many of my friends call seniors or college students dage. dage is a more respectful version of gege, and it literally has the same use when it is being used by a male. but my dad says that it is alright for girls to call older boys dage, especially boyfriends. apparently that's what my mom used to call him.
the reason i think this is appropriate for fans is because dage shows respect and formality for the person you are referring to. as fans, we want to show that we are respectful of what our favorite idols do. this is also perfect because like i have said before, we are not on close terms with out idols. in real life though, like my dad said, you can use this when referring to your boyfriend. you respect your boyfriend, right? well then there you go. but when used to refer to your boyfriend, it has a more playful connotation behind it.
in our case, we should be calling mingry: mingming dage and junhui dage.
表哥 // biaoge - maternal male cousins
i don't think i need to explain this really because none of us are cousins with kpop idols (or at least i would assume) so i won't go too in depth with this. really, you just call cousins from your mother's side baoge.
堂哥 // tangge - paternal male cousins
same as above only you call your cousins from your dad's side tangge.
okay so zy. why was i so mad earlier? because ever since i met my guy friends, they told me to call them xiong rather than gege. now if you remember, xiong is used by males to other males. the reason why i was flipping out was because they made me use a male-specific honorific. sure, some girls use it but it's not very common. if a girl calls an older boy "xiong" then that means they aren't interested in anything than just friends. so they were kinda like saying that i was "one of the guys" which i don't want because:
a) i love pink to the moon and back
b) i'm super duper girly how could they do that to me ;;
c) i had a crush on one of them
d) I WAS FRICKIN' FRIENDZONING MYSELF.
another reason why i'm 500% done with them is that even when i would get so mad at them at times, i would still way call jed "ji-xiong". when i'm mad, i don't want to be respectful to them but 'xiong' in itself is a respectful honorific. maybe it's my fault for continuing to use honorifics when i could have just easily dropped it when i was mad but w/e. little did i know that when i was mad at them, i was still being respectful. what. the. actual. frick.
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