Did you ever figure out what's Snape's pronoun in japanese? 👀 I'm curious
I have jumped through so many hoops...
I want to buy the hardcovers in Japanese, so I didn't want to spend money just to check a word... but piracy is hard for Japanese things...
So I've signed up for an Amazon kindle unlimited thingy account
and Amazon is useless in my country nobody has a fucking amazon account
AND THEN to read it I have to download the KINDLE APP on on my PC and log into AMAZON on it uuugh whinge whinge complain tantrum
I got all the japanese books - and I've been tipped off that he might use 'Wagahai' and FUCK do I hope he uses wagahai but it seems I cannot use the search function with kanji. Nor does it seem to search through furigana. Only hiragana and katakana. uuuugghhhhhh
So I just need to... search for Snapes name in every book and scour the pages. Cool. Cool.
So I am looking through each book's every mention of スネイプ...
Dumbledore uses 'Washi' and is, as always, delightful - using the typical old man 'jya's. I hope he and Sebarusu enjoyed their umasou custard tarts. Shoutout to Suneipu's poisonous eyes at Hari- and Ron.
秘密の部屋 (p. 167)
But a note is formal. What does he call himself casually...?
「校長、一言よろしいですかな」 影の中からスネイプの声がした。ハリーの不吉感がつのった。
秘密の部屋 (p. 218) ("Headmaster, May I have a word." From within shadows came Snape's voice. Harry's sense of foreboding increased.) Unrelated - just iconic af.
HE USES WAGAHAI!!! He is SO cat themed in Japanese, what the hell... English its always bats and spiders, Japan is straight up like 'He purrs and is a cat'
...
For people who don't know: Wagahai is an old-timey male pronoun.
It's long been out of use and sounds arrogant, pompous, formal...
"I'm better than you. I look down on you. You're a peasant; I'm a Lord."
It re-gained popularity within fiction because of the 1905 book about a teachers pet cat by Natsume Souseki, 吾輩は猫である (I am a cat).
It is STRONGLY associated with that book and cats in general.
It's almost always used for non-human characters, especially to give an 'old military man' or 'from a different time' feel.
ちゃんと案内してもろて
Can I ask you to show me around properly?
レイヴンクローに入ったけど、ハリポタちょっとしか見たこと無いからどんな寮なのかも分からない。
グリフィンドールとスリザリンしか知らん…
I'm in Ravenclaw, but I've only seen a little bit of Harry Potter, so I don't even know what kind of dorms they are.
All I know is Gryffindor and Slytherin...