Initial Notes

one of my favourite things to come from the leaked mgsv script docs is this chart of what personal pronouns and forms of address the thought the characters should use for each other in japanese, so i thought i'd make an english/romaji version of it and provide some notes!

initial notes

to make it clearer to understand, the left column indicates the speaker, and the row along the top indicates the character being addressed. the top line in each cell is the second person pronoun they use for that person (first person in the case of the character talking about themselves), while the second row and below are how the character would call the other by name/title.

so first of all, this obviously doesn't fully reflect the final game, and there's still a lot of uncertainty over certain pronouns and names evident by all the ?s indicating the staff member(s) working on this weren't 100% confident in their assumption, or didn't make a guess at all. empty cells also indicate they thought a form of address simply wouldn't be used - code talker having no reason to ever talk to ishmael, or volgin never speaking to address anyone at all, for example.

something else to be aware of is the presence of a few unused names in here, namely geronimo for code talker, which was an early name for him presumably based on the real life apache leader. at this point in development they also seemed to be sticking with liquid for eli's form of address

there's also "neocon" as skull face's nickname for huey, which interestingly doesn't seem to come up anywhere else in any of the scripts! we can assume this is a play on his son's future nickname "otacon", while also referring to him as a neoconservative which is frankly so hilariously awful i can't help but feel we were robbed of this.

a crash course in japanese personal pronouns pt. 1

next i want to briefly explain what all of these pronouns mean, for those unfamiliar. this comes with a big disclaimer that i'm not japanese or even close to fluent in it, so do your own research if you're interested in this just in case i'm misrepresenting any of the incredibly specific cultural connotations everything in this language seems to have

俺 ore

most characters in the game use this when referring to themselves, it's an informal masculine pronoun that can emphasise masculinity or status around those with lesser status, although around close friends it has a different connotation of casual familiarity.

ore is used by snake, ishmael, miller, ocelot and liquid

僕 boku

this pronoun is used mostly by young boys, but can also be used by adults. it has connotations of humbleness, its use by older men suggesting they feel young. non-threatening and casual.

boku is used by both mantis and huey in each of the two contexts described above.

わたし watashi

your standard gender neutral formal first person pronoun. casually it's only really used by women, a man using it in a casual context suggests aloofness or a businesslike attitude.

quiet and skull face are the only characters that use watashi, you can interpret this as suggesting either formality or casualness for quiet, and the usual formality for skull face.

in the notes this is written in hiragana, rather than using the kanji 私, i'm unsure if this indicates anything in particular or perhaps was to avoid confusion with watakushi, the more formal variant of this pronoun which uses the same kanji.

わし washi

this is a mostly male pronoun, used frequently in fiction to represent your stereotypical old man character.

as such this is the pronoun code talker uses.

a crash course in japanese personal pronouns pt. 2

now for the second person pronouns.

real spoken japanese doesn't really use these pronouns as freely as we would with "you" in english, since in a conversation the "you" part of the sentence is usually implied from the context and using a pronoun puts specific emphasis on the other person in a way that can be seen as cold or rude.

i'll leave it up to you to see which characters use each of these towards others rather than listing them since many of them use different ones for different people depending on their relationship with each of them.

お前 omae

a very informal pronoun mostly used by men. as you can see this pairs with the first person ore, and has all the same connotations of status towards subordinates and casualness among peers. wikipedia says men use this towards lovers so... there's that i guess.

あなた anata and あんた anta

anata is the standard second polite form of "you", often used on forms or in ads when referring to someone in a general sense or used for someone you don't know anything about.

anata is almost exclusively used here by mantis, which fits his distanced nature.

anta is a shortened form of anata that is more informal, suggesting anything from contempt to familiarity, and stands out as rude in a strictly formal context. it can also be used to suggest a sense of defiance and disrespect of authority - as if the character respects the other to some degree, but not enough to use anata towards them.

anta is liquid's pronoun of choice for all characters but mantis, drawing on the latter connotation. it is also used variably by some of the main characters to refer to each other, suggesting their familiarity, rather than rudeness.

君 kimi

kimi is a reasonably informal pronoun used mostly by men to subordinates, or their equals. it can be rude when used to superiors or elders.

this pronoun tends to pair with the first person boku, and as such it get used both by huey and Mantis - although mantis only uses it for eli, demonstrating their closeness.

i find huey's use of it to be kind of a humorous way to draw attention to how convinced he is that they're all one big family and absolutely nobody here wants him dead or anything.

(zero isn't included in this sheet but he exclusively uses this pronoun in the tapes, referring to paz, skull face, kaz, ocelot and big boss with it. up to you if this is a blanket You Guys Are All My Subordinates thing or if it can suggest closeness with some of them)

貴様 kisama

less of a pronoun and more of a insult. often translated as "you bastard/son of a bitch/etc."

as you can imagine the only person they figured would use this was kaz to paz. so in this case i suppose "you spying bitch" would be the best translation.

i can't believe you read all of this

since this was made during development and reflects a lot of uncertainties and some unused ideas, i do want to go through the script and make an updated version of this with the pronouns used in the final version of the game just to have a complete resource. but for now i hope this proves interesting!