Japanese Phrase Pronoun Change

When there's a pronoun change in your Japanese phrase, how does this affect the rest of the Japanese sentence?

Actually, very little. In fact, sometimes absolutely not at all.

As I said before, the Japanese have a habit of dropping subjects from sentences when they feel that they are not particularly needed. If the subject happens to be a pronoun then that goes too.

By this I mean the "he, she, you, etc.," of the sentence.

When referring to a male, other than the person you are speaking to


  • To say "he" in Japanese, use the word kare.
  • To say "his," use the words kare no.

A note on "you," in Japanese

In the dialogues I have used this word "anata," which means "you." In actual practice, the Japanese rarely use this and either use the person's name or drop the subject entirely when understood by both parties.

When you address the person, say his name, followed by "san." This will sound really strange at first. It's like referring to a third person who is not there, when in fact you are addressing a person who is directly in front of you. It does mean that you will have to start remembering names or as I always did, just look directly at the person and drop the subject from the sentence. For example, in stead of saying: Anata(or Suzuki-san or Kenji-san)wa doko kara desu ka?" Just say "Doko kara desu ka?"

There are other words than "san." For example: kun, chan and sama.

  1. As a general rule of when to use these: Use ...sama for someone very important.
  2. Use ...kun when talking to boys or someone much younger than yourself.
  3. Use ...chan when talking to younger girls.
  4. Use ...san when talking to colleagues and older girls and as a general level of politeness.

You can't get into much trouble using ...san.



Let's practice!

We will do the simple Japanese conversation from our dialogues.

On the left side of the screen, it's in English again, but in the third person singular and on the right side of the screen is its Japanese translation.

Imagine that you are pointing at people or that you are speaking with a Japanese friend who has brought along a friend that doesn't speak any English.

Practice this dialogue until you can do it with this pronoun change, without looking at its Japanese translation.


Let's begin at step 1 and work our way through these steps to master these pronouns.

Practice like this:

  • Read the below, which is comprised of all the dialogues.
  • Take one line at a time. Read the English line and try to say the Japanese phrase, without looking at the Japanese translation.
  • Look at the Japanese translation and check if you got it right.
  • If you got it wrong, then repeat the step for that line. Otherwise just carry on to the next line.
  • Do this three times for the whole conversation, without any mistakes.