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Definition 2024


-san

-san

See also: Appendix:Variations of "san"

English

Suffix

-san

  1. Honorific ending used to indicate a person is Japanese or talking with Japanese, or treated like Japanese.
    TIME, August 1, 1983:
    Tanaka-San’s Decline and Rise
    Wall Street Journal, December 16, 2008
    Barack Obama-san
    WalletPop, January 31, 2009
    Obama-san! President's book of speeches is a huge hit in Japan

Translations


Irish

Alternative forms

  • -sean (used after palatalized consonants and front vowels)

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /sˠənˠ/

Suffix

-san

  1. emphatic suffix of the third-person singular masculine; used after velarized consonants and back vowels
  2. emphatic suffix of the third-person plural; used after velarized consonants and back vowels

Usage notes

Spelled with a hyphen after -s, otherwise without a hyphen.

  • Added to nouns (or adjectives modifying a noun) in the presence of the possessive adjective to emphasize the possessor rather than the thing possessed:
    a mhadrasanhis dog
    a gcarr deargsantheir red car
  • Added to pronouns (both simple and prepositional) to add emphasis (not to create a reflexive pronoun):
    as-san ― out of him
    siadsan, iadsanthey, them
  • Added to synthetic verb forms to add emphasis to the subject (third-person plural only as there are no third-person singular synthetic forms):
    chualadarsanthey heard

Derived terms

<a class='CategoryTreeLabel CategoryTreeLabelNs14 CategoryTreeLabelCategory' href='/wiki/Category:Irish_words_suffixed_with_-san'>Irish words suffixed with -san</a>

Related terms


Japanese

Romanization

-san

  1. rōmaji reading of さん

Scottish Gaelic

Suffix

-san

  1. -self, -selves (emphatic)

Usage notes

Derived terms

<a class='CategoryTreeLabel CategoryTreeLabelNs14 CategoryTreeLabelCategory' href='/wiki/Category:Scottish_Gaelic_words_suffixed_with_-san'>Scottish Gaelic words suffixed with -san</a>

See also