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I came across a language textbook talking about the wife of a "person", rather than of a "man":

okusan: (another person's) wife

On a following page, it defined "goshuujin" as "(another person's) husband", rather than "(another woman's) husband".

Is using the gender neutral word "person" followed by a gender specific spouse a recent phenomenon, or does it date back more than a couple of decades?

I tried using Google NGrams, but most of the hits found seem to be from legal documents, even when I tried searching only the fiction corpus.

Golden Cuy
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  • Could this not be a literal translation of the Japanese expression? If you haven't read "another person's wife" in the Australian papers or heard it being used in American sitcoms then the chances are that it is rarely said, but will, in all likelihood become increasingly popular. – Mari-Lou A Aug 01 '17 at 11:05
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    So you tried Google Ngrams and came up with zero? That's the sum total of your research. Are you a newbie? What makes you think other users will come up with something more substantive? Have you tried Google News? Have you tried Googling "(another) person's wife"? – Mari-Lou A Aug 01 '17 at 11:08
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    Just guessing here, but perhaps Japanese just has different grammatical forms for one's own and someone else's spouse/wife/husband, with perhaps an inflectional bit serving in lieu of any possessive pronoun. Two men using such a form in referring to a female co-worker's husband would not be talking about another woman's husband, since only one woman is involved in the conversation (as referent, not as speaker or auditor). Thus it might make sense to use "another person's" in the explanation of this form for anglophone readers. – Brian Donovan Aug 01 '17 at 12:23
  • You do know that in the modern world both men and women can have wives? – Stuart F Aug 17 '23 at 16:46

1 Answers1

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Another person's wife

Though grammatically (and politically) correct, I'm pretty sure that this phrasing comes from the literal translation of the Japanese equivalent.

Because an English speaker wouldn't phrase it that way. They would say "someone's wife" or "someone else's wife".

In this particular context, English does not even introduce a gender (to the person whose wife we're talking about). It's highly unlikely that this phrasing was chosen to intentionally avoid the unnecesary implication that the person is male, in an attempt to remain gender neutral (which is a relatively modern phenomenon, as you have pointed out).

I'm going to take your word for it that "another person" is the literal Japanese translation (or closest possible translation to English). If it is, then whoever created this translation was attempting to stay close to the exact Japanese meaning, as opposed to using the more commonly used English phrasing.

A response to the implication in your question:

  • okusan: (another person's) wife
  • goshuujin: (another person's) husband

I have the feeling that you are implying that the gender neutrality is done by the translator, and that the Japanese words themselves are not gender neutral.
I'm assuming that you are basing this on the fact that both words have a different prefix ("oku" versus "goshu"), and you expect them to be the same if they both mean "another person".

It's possible. I don't speak Japanese, I can't confirm it.

However, I can also show you an example where this is not the case: French. The easiest example is the use of the possessive.

English French
His father Son père
His mother Sa mère
Her father Son père
Her mother Sa mère

His/her are gender specific possessive pronouns in English.
Son/sa are gender specific possessive pronouns in French.

However, there is a major difference as to the usage of the genders.

  • In English, the gender is decided based on the gender of the owner (the child)
  • In French, the gender is decided based on the gender of the owned object (the father or mother)

Therefore, when you say "son père" in French, you have no way of knowing if you're talking about a boy or a girl!

Japanese could be similar. "Oku" and "goshu" could be different not because the owner (another person) has a different gender, but because the owned object's (husband/wife) gender is different.

Laurel
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Flater
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  • How is another person's wife "politically correct"? Seems another person's partner would be much more PC. – Arm the good guys in America Aug 01 '17 at 14:38
  • @Clare: Not if it's already obvious that we're talking about a woman. E.g. "Another person's wife was giving birth in the room next to mine". Also, I never said that it was the most politically correct. Just because Andre the Giant (2.24m) was taller than Shaquille O'Neal (2.16m), does not mean that Shaq isn't tall. If I'm being honest, I resent the downvote for a wrong inference that you yourself made. – Flater Aug 01 '17 at 14:45
  • @Clare: Oh and another thing: the topic of discussion is a translation. The point of the phrasing isn't to be the most politically correct, it's about providing an apt translation. If the Japanese word literally means "wife" (with no possibility of it ever referring to a male spouse), then translating it as "partner" is just wrong. – Flater Aug 01 '17 at 14:49
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    There is no gender of the okusan’s spouse implied in Japanese, nor do words have grammatical gender at all. There is actually no possession of any kind in the Japanese word, which just means ‘wife’, but only referring to someone else's, not your own. If you wanted to specify ‘someone else's’, though, you would do it with no gender in Japanese—you would have to add an emphatic specification to include information about gender. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Aug 01 '17 at 16:01
  • (Also note that while ご主人 go-shujin does have an honorific prefix go-, 奥さん oku-san does not have a prefix at all. The suffix -san is added to the base word which is oku, with no prefix—it's historically derived from the verbal root ok-.) – Janus Bahs Jacquet Aug 01 '17 at 16:04
  • @JanusBahsJacquet: Good to have an actual Japanese speaker chime in, thanks! :) – Flater Aug 01 '17 at 16:08