Talk Like a Ninja

“Nin, nin! de gozaru.”

Okay, regardless of who would win in a fight, can we all agree that Talk Like a Pirate Day is a tad bit–shall we say–overplayed? In honor of Ninja Week, your resident pidgin-Japanese speaker is here to teach you how to Talk Like a Ninja.

Now, sprinkling your conversation with Japanese words may not be the greatest idea; but these may help you get the most out of a sub, or playing Phantom Brave with the original language track. Here are five tell-tale marks of ninja speech–some of which were held in common in the feudal age; but these days you’re most likely to hear them from the mouths of ninjas.

Nin - I hardly have to tell you this; but it’s worth pointing out the meaning. “Ninja” is written “nin-ja(sha)” with the Chinese characters meaning “stealth person.” The nin is the “stealth” part. A serious ninja might shout it once when incanting a spell, while a comic ninja might use it to pepper their conversation.

Sessha - The ninja self-referential pronoun. Teenaged girls use atashi, tough guys use ore, the heroes of love comedies use boku, and ninja and samurai use sessha. It’s sometimes translated as “this one” or “this lowly one” - the false humility of the Japanese badass.

~de gozaru - A super-formal way of saying “it is,” ninja seem to end every sentence this way.

Onushi - The ninja way of referring to others; or at least, others of the common folk. Your lord is still dare-dare-sama&etc.

~nu - Casual, negative verb conjugation: nu instead of nai, ex. shiranu (”I don’t know”) instead of shiranai.

For proof that ninja talk like this outside of period films, look no further than the ninja pictured above, Negima’s Kaede Nagase. Note also that neither the anime nor the manga translators made any attempt to capture this completely bizarre way she talks. But one can hardly blame them; the only way I can imagine of capturing this diction would be to make her talk like a medieval knight: “Negi-sensei, thou art a pervert”