To Aru Kagaku no Railgun - Episode 5 Discussion / Poll

[spawnofthejudge]

Originally Posted by WildArms

will this have 12 episodes o.o?

The DVDs seem to be implying 24. (Thus, not 26...)

[Cyrus17]

Originally Posted by Oberon

Think of it as "refined high class lady"-speak, though taken to slightly ridiculous levels by the way Kuroro's voice actress speaks her lines.

Regarding Kuroko's special manner of speech - it happened by some weird coincidence that I stumbled on this article on wiki just today -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heteroglossia

Guess Railgun authors learned their lesson properly ^^

Anyway, nice article, definitely worth to read. Excerpts:

• the power of the novel originates in the coexistence of, and conflict between, different types of speech: the speech of characters, the speech of narrators, and even the speech of the author.
  
  
• Any language, in Bakhtin's view, stratifies into many voices: "social dialects, characteristic group behavior, professional jargons, generic languages, languages of generations and age groups, tendentious languages, languages of the authorities, of various circles and of passing fashions." This diversity of voice is, Bakhtin asserts, the defining characteristic of the novel as a genre.
  
  
• Bakhtin proposes that all languages represent a distinct point of view on the world, characterized by its own meaning and values. In this view, language is "shot through with intentions and accents," and thus there are no neutral words. Even the most unremarkable statement possesses a taste, whether of a profession, a party, a generation, a place or a time. To Bakhtin, words do not exist until they are spoken, and that moment they are printed with the signature of the speaker.

[WildArms]

Originally Posted by spawnofthejudge

The DVDs seem to be implying 24. (Thus, not 26...)

Woa... 2 episodes... that is such a big range until 26.... *sarcasm*

[Ansalem]

Originally Posted by MeisterBabylon

Oh yes that reminds me. Kuroko seems to speak Japanese a little differently from the rest of them. Is it some kind of dialect? I know it's not kansai-ben, but still it sounds different. The sentence endings are different for one.

I might be wrong and that it's all an artefact of her VA. Does anyone know?

I believe you are referring to her habit of ending every setence in ますの (masuno)/　ですの (desuno).

In general, Kuroko speaks in a more polite fashion than is normal for the relationships of the people with whom she is speaking. I don't know how you know about Japanese, but there are basically three levels of politeness: short-form, teinei (masu/desu-form), and keigo+humble. Kuroku pretty much never uses short-form, with which you would generally speak to friends and family, using instead more formal language.

Nodesu/ndesu/no/nda is a sentence-ending grammatical form with a variety of implications, such as showing explanation and giving emotional emphasis. Kuroku makes excessive use of this grammatical form, specifically "no." No is a variety of ndesu usually used by women (and children) when speaking casually, added to the end of short-form. However, when speaking in teinei as Kuroko usually does, it is normal to use short-form + ndesu. This is both polite and neutral. She instead adds no to the end of masu/desu, which is very unusual for a normal person. (and drives me crazy listening to her) As someone suggested, this may give her a lady-like quality to her speech I guess, since no is mainly a female-ending. She also uses the sentence-ending particle wa, which is also feminine and not irregular, but not as often as she says nantoka desuno, nantoka shimasuno.

So in summary, her speech is polite, feminine, and very weird for a high school student.

[Cyrus17]

Wow, thanks for the great info, Ansalem!

[MeisterBabylon]

I was definitely enlightened. It's neat touches like this that add to a character.

[Yufankun]

Kuroko's use of keigo seems to be derived from the fact that she goes to an ojou-sama school, tokiwadai, meaning she basicly is a rich "high-class" girl, so her speech pattern is meant to reflect that. It's part of the whole ojou-sama image that Uiharu has such a fetisch for. In the first couple of episodes we get to hear other tokiwadai students speaking and they also use keigo. In fact, the only tokiwadai student I can think of that doesn't follow this speech-pattern is Mikoto who speaks more like a normal student would.

Also, Kuroko's (over)use of no at the end of most of her sentences seems to be a personal quirk of hers. Adding the same particle at the end of most sentences is fairly common in characters that are meant to be cute/funny.

[Ansalem]

Originally Posted by Yufankun

Kuroko's use of keigo seems to be derived from the fact that she goes to an ojou-sama school, tokiwadai, meaning she basicly is a rich "high-class" girl, so her speech pattern is meant to reflect that. It's part of the whole ojou-sama image that Uiharu has such a fetisch for. In the first couple of episodes we get to hear other tokiwadai students speaking and they also use keigo. In fact, the only tokiwadai student I can think of that doesn't follow this speech-pattern is Mikoto who speaks more like a normal student would.

I hadn't really payed that much attention to the speech of other random girls from their schools, so that would make sense.