HONORIFICS

During last Friday's assembly, En Ab Hamid bin Fazal Mohamad said that he had read in the Reader's Digest that Kuala Lumpur was the third rudest city in the world. He also mentioned that the results might be questionable but there might still be some truth in it. Well, I would like to add that on that particular day I had two encounters with people in the school who were rude to me. It may be due to ignorance but nevertheless it was a disrespectful act. The persons involved were a student and a trainee teacher. Both of whom were old enough to be my sons if I had any. You see they called me Cheah Li Na straight to my face. Maybe they might not have been taught how to properly address an elder person or a teacher and thus the ignorance. However, for the Chinese it is downright rude and insulting. By right they should address me as Miss Cheah or Madam. Even some of the younger teachers should not call me by my name as their mothers and fathers should be as old as I am. If they were to do so to their parents, relatives or elders, I am sure they would have gotten an earful and labelled as not having been properly taught at home. Definitely, this courtesy is practised by people of other races. I guess in future I need to get a name tag made with Miss Cheah to help remind people to accord me this courtesy. It is with this unhappy episode that I have therefore decided to give a lesson on honorifics in this post to educate the younger generation about this matter.
An honorific is a word or expression that conveys esteem or respect and is used in addressing or referring to a person. "Honorific" may refer broadly to the style of language or particular words used, or, as in this article, to specific words used to convey honor to one perceived as a social superior. Sometimes the term is used not quite correctly to refer to a title of honour (honorary title).
Honorifics are usually placed immediately before or after the name of the subject. They may also be used to denote occupation, such as "Doctor", "Father" (for a priest), or "Professor". Some honorifics can act as complete replacements for a name, as in "sir" or "ma'am". Subordinates will often use honorifics as punctuation before asking a superior a question or after responding to an order, "Yes, sir".
When talking about someone superior in status, a speaker or writer has to use special nouns or verb endings to indicate the subject's superiority. Generally, someone is superior in status if he/she is an older relative, a stranger of roughly equal or greater age, or an employer, teacher, customer, or the like. Someone is equal or inferior in status if he/she is a younger stranger, student, employee or the like. On rare occasions (like when someone wants to pick a fight), a speaker might speak to a superior or stranger in a way normally only used for, say, animals, but it would be foolhardy to do so without seriously considering the consequences to one's physical safety first.
The system of honorifics in Japan is very extensive, including various levels of respectful, humble, and polite speech, and it closely resembles the honorific systems of the Korean language, and in some elements, Chinese. The Malay race, known to be a polite race, also has such a system of honorific. Older ladies are addressed as either kakak or makcik. The formal address would be Cik for an unmarried lady and Puan for a married one. Men are addressed as Encik.
In Japan, it is usual to use honorific titles after a person's name. The most common title is san, which means all of "Mr.", "Mrs.", and "Ms." Hence, in Japanese, Mr. Tanaka is referred to as Tanaka-san. Other common titles include, sama, sensei, kun and chan. These titles are placed after the name. They are not usually used with one's own name.
Correct use of titles is considered very important in Japan. In most situations, omitting a title when calling someone, is considered very bad manners.
In Korea, one way of using honorifics is to use special nouns in place of regular nouns with "honorific" ones. A common example is using (jinji) instead of (bap) for "food". More often, special nouns are used when speaking about relatives. Thus, the speaker/writer may address his own grandmother as (halmeoni) but refer to someone else's grandmother as (halmeonim). The honorific suffix (-nim) is affixed to many kinship terms to make them honorific; thus, (hyeongnim) is the formal term for an older sibling of the same sex (derived from hyeong), the informal term for man's older brother. Similarly, (nunim) is the formal term for a man's older sister (derived from nuna) and (orabeonim) is the formal term for a woman's older brother (derived from orabeoni, another formal variant of obba).
For the Chinese, a sister or an older lady friend is usually addressed with the honorific j'e or j'ie j'ie (elder sister). A more formal way to address a lady would be siew j'e or miss. Chinese students always address their teachers as lao t'ze (teacher).
So, after I have talked at length about honorifics, I hope that the younger generation would learn how to show some respect.