Feminine Sentence Enders
“Debate is masculine, conversation is feminine.” - Amos Bronson Alcott
The goal with this page and the next isn’t to hit you with as many examples as possible so you memorize each sentence ender immediately. This is going to be more of a long term thing, meaning you’ll see these things and over time you’ll become comfortable with them. While you should learn the sentence enders よ and ね, the feminine/masculine sentence enders aren’t quite as important. You can take your time with them (though you eventually will need to know them, so don’t just ignore them either). I’ll explain each sentence ender to you, and even provide an Anki list you can use to study and memorize these. For now, though, just go through the information here and make sure you understand each one. Afterwards, you’ll memorize them as you go along.
の
You’ve learned the particle の (makes things possessive) but you haven’t learned the sentence ender の. The sentence ender の adds emphasis or acts as a question (this all depends on your tone – upward tone is a question, downward tone is a statement – you know how to do this).
すし を たべました の？
Did you eat the sushi?
This question was asked without a か on the end (omg!). You can do that, actually. Just make sure your tone is that of a question.
のよ
This is a combination of the sentence ender の and よ, which you learned earlier.
みんな がくせい なのよ
Everyone is a student
The の adds emphasis and the よ makes the sentence an assertion. You may have noticed the な in there as well. This is added in here to make sure people don’t think you’re saying “it’s everyone’s student’s ….” You don’t want people to think you’re talking about something the student is in possession of.
のね
This is a combination of の and ね, which you also learned earlier.
みんな がくせい なのね！
Everyone is a student (aren’t they?)
The の adds emphasis to the statement, and the ね adds agreement to the sentence. Basically what you’d expect when you add these two sentence enders together.
わ
The sentence ender わ softens the sentence. It makes it sound more “female” in a way, because feminine language is thought to be softer, kinder, and gentler.
わよ
When you combine the sentence enders わ and よ you are not only adding an assertion, you’re making it sound “softer” as well.
わね
As you can probably guess, adding わ and ね to the end of a sentence adds “agreement” or “reflection” to your sentence, plus you’re making it sound softer and more feminine.
かしら
This sentence ender adds a sense of “wonder” to a sentence or phrase. As in… “I wonder if he is Japanese?” The か is the question marker, so it’s like you’re asking yourself a question.
かれ は にほんじん かしら？
I wonder if he is Japanese?
When using かしら you’ll want to drop the です. As you’ll learn on the next page, かしら is the female version of かな (the masculine form).