Honorifics in Chinese

[Tomsima]

Just stumbled across this excellent and thoroughly comprehensive guide to the honorific language in Chinese in the form of a wikipedia entry. I thought it seemed a bit of a shame not to share it here, as the author(s) has (have) clearly put in a lot of work into this article. I would say I know or have come across less than a third of all the words listed, fantastic to get a better understanding of a less discussed topic. 

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_honorifics

[Flickserve]

Great resource!

[zhouhaochen]

What a great article. I am going to use some of these and see what happens!

[889]

But the title "Honorifics" is misleading; it's really about Chinese hierarchical terms. That is, in spite of what the Wiki says, I don't think "self-deprecation" for example is an honorific. Perhaps in linguistics I don't know but certainly not in everyday terms.

[Tomsima]

self-deprecation = putting yourself down to show respect to the person you are speaking to. I would consider bowing or kneeling to be an act of honouring the person who is bowed or knelt to; using language in the same way seems to fit the category of honorific properly to me

[Michaelyus]

In linguistic terms, humble language is certainly a part of the language, and was culturally required in Ming and Qing Imperial Mandarin. Anyone who has learnt modern Japanese 謙譲語 kenjougo will know how essential "humble language" is as part of the system of honorifics. Self-deprecation was not and is still not a huge part of jocular self-expression in East Asia, but a huge part of societal requirement, unlike in modern English or in many European languages, although I agree the cultural differences are just points on a continuum.

[889]

There's a Wikipedia entry on Honorifics generally which says a self-referring term like your ever-obedient servant can be called an anti-honorific. As a humble unlearned, I would have thought that calling another my ever-obedient servant would be an anti-honorific.

[abcdefg]

On 10/28/2019 at 6:07 AM, Tomsima said:

self-deprecation = putting yourself down to show respect to the person you are speaking to.

 

Polite Question: 您贵姓？

Polite Answer: 免贵姓 -- 李，张，周，etc.  or 免贵，姓 -- 李，张，周，etc. 

[Flickserve]

Saying 臣 instead of 我 seems to come up quite often in period dramas when addressing higher ranking officials.

[Tomsima]

I have found that the original Wikipedia page for Chinese honorifics was flagged for being too technical and has now been replaced with an oversimplified overview of the topic. The original page is still available via archive.org for those who are looking for this resource:

 

https://web.archive.org/web/20220103224220/https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_honorifics