I need to fill a college foreign language requirement with a modern language. I have difficulty with many languages, and Japanese matches up with my strengths and difficulties very well. In my case, it's likely one of the easiest language choices available to me. The problem is that it is very highly gendered. The gender of the speaker determines many word choices. It just so happens that I am closeted to the point where I wear a beard to defuse suspicion. In class, I will be expected to speak as a male, and I don't want to learn that way and then have to relearn everything when I start passing, and I would prefer to speak as a woman online at all times. Does anybody have any insight or tips on this issue?
From what I know, the more polite forms of speech are used by both, but have a softer feminine tone to them, as one would expect a female to be more polite than a male. Also, usage of pronouns such as boku and ore by gender vary depending on region, apparently.
You're going to have to learn both anyway if you want to be able to understand everyone quickly...I mean if you just sat there and learned one or the other you're eventually going to come across a gendered sentence ender or some bit of casual speech and have to sit there and spent time working out what they meant...
This right here. Even if you're not going to be using certain words for the time being you're still going to need to learn them for understanding purposes.
