英語日記 俺のアイデンティティ問題

I think I have some kind of identity matter since my childhood. I don’t remember exactly when it started. This is partly due to the usage of the Japanese language. What I’m talking about is what pronouns you use to call yourself when talking with someone.

In Japanese, there are many different types of first person pronouns. They are different according to your gender, who you are talking to, and what kind of social position you think you have in the relationship with someone you are talking to, which is to say that they are relative and which one is appropriate to use changes according to the situation.

Regarding the pronouns I potential use as a man, there are 俺, 僕, 私, わし, おいら, おら, and so on. In my childhood, I mostly used 俺 to refer to myself when I was with my friends. When I was with any adults, I used 僕. This one is considered slightly politer than 俺. If I said 俺 to an adult inadvertently, sometimes it was okay but sometimes it was awkward. Now, as an adult, I also use 私 sometimes. 私 might be the most neutral among other pronouns. It feels kind of proper to use this in professional settings and in fact it’s very common to hear it at work.

And my matter is I don’t like saying any pronoun to refer to myself so I naturally tend to try to not use it at all in conversation with my family or friends. So I hardly say 俺 or 僕 unless there comes the situation where what I’m saying wouldn’t make sense without using it. And when I say it, I feel kind of awkward or ashamed for some reason, especially when I talk with my parents. This is perhaps because they often told me to say 僕 instead of 俺 as part of discipline or something.

This reluctance of mine to use any pronouns, or to refer to myself in conversation, so to speak, might have had some impacts on my personality formation, like my low self esteem or lack of self confidence might be coming from there.