It’s often exaggerated in the media, but in real life, senpai at school usually serve as role models and caring guides to their juniors. You might have first encountered the senpai-kouhai relationship in school-related manga or anime. Meanwhile, senpai are your fellow members of a group, the difference is that they have been part of the group longer than you and are more experienced. In fact, doctors and professors can also be called sensei. The sensei is responsible for all his or her students, regardless of their length of stay in the group.įor someone to be addressed this way, they should have some form of mastery or high level of skill or experience in their field. Instead, they use the noun kyoushi (教師 / きょうし) for ‘teacher’.
Sensei is an honorific title used to address someone who is a ‘teacher’ or ‘master’ (ex. It’s easy to get confused, so here’s a little background. Senseiīecause anime and manga have become popular around the world, terms like senpai, sensei, and kouhai get randomly thrown around in conversation. The senpai-kouhai relationship is one of them. In other words, a parent-child relationship was akin to ruler-subject.Īlthough this family system is not observed in modern Japan, other forms of social hierarchy are still present. The values of obedience and filial piety shaped much of family and even political structure. Daughters can inherit the headship of the family, but once they are married, their husbands will succeed instead. Inheritance also usually follows this line of succession. Following him was the eldest to the youngest sons, then his wife, then finally, the eldest to youngest daughters. Whoever is at the top of the social pyramid should be obeyed and respected by those beneath them.ĭuring the Tokugawa period, the family structure placed the father as the head of household. Obedience is one of the important values. The concept of hierarchy in Japanese society is deeply rooted in Confucian beliefs. Meanwhile, the only “m” characters are ma (ま), mi (み), mu (む), me (め), and mo (も). The word is spelled with an “n” (ん) in kana (せ んぱい), and if you check hiragana and katakana charts, the character ん corresponds to n in latin characters. The correct way to write it in romaji is senpai. Keep in mind that seniors command respect, so it’s best to use polite language when interacting with them. This is equivalent to ‘Mr.’ or ‘Ms.’ in English. Note that the most common way to address your seniors in the workplace is using the honorific -san (～さん) attached to their name. Calling someone senpai without using their name is still a sign of respect. You can also use senpai alone when addressing someone. It can be used as an honorific suffix ( -senpai / ～先輩 / ～せんぱい) by attaching the word to the end of someone’s name (ex. You can use the word senpai in two main ways.
#Sensei vs senpai license
Image credit: Kentucky License Plate: KAWAII by Douglas Muth, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Flickr. But getting noticed by your senpai simply means being acknowledged by someone you greatly admire, like a veteran sports player on your team, the smartest student in the year above you or – well, your upperclassman crush! Some anime fans associate this phrase with unrequited love or some form of romantic expression towards a crush. They are typically younger, less experienced people who are to be guided by their superiors.īecause of popular media, the ‘Notice me, senpai!’ trend blew up. The opposite of senpai is kouhai (後輩 / こうはい), meaning ‘junior’. The second character’s onyomi reading is pai (輩 / パイ), and it means ‘comrade’, or ‘companion’. It means ‘before’, ‘ahead’, or ‘previous’. The first character is read as sen (先 / セン) in onyomi or the Chinese reading. We can break down the word for senpai into two characters. They can be a higher-level student at school or a colleague at work who entered the company before you. It usually refers to someone older or more experienced than you.
Senpai (先輩 / せんぱい) is an JLPT N4-level Japanese word equivalent to ‘senior’ or ‘superior’ in English.
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