*The World of Sekai*
Extras
Whenever something pops up in Sekai that you might not have heard of, but that's important anyway, I put it in the encyclopedia... or, when it's more than one word, it's put into this category! Read and learn!
Suffixes
In Sekai, people use the Japanese suffixes to speak to one another. It's comparable with the English words as Mr., Mrs. etc., but they're not really a translation of those words. Suffixes can be used after given names and first names, depending on how close you are to someone. Using them can depend on your emotions and the situation: you can call one and the same person by -san and -chan depending on the circumstances, for example. Below, you can find all suffixes use in Sekai and their meanings!
Important: some of the uses of these suffixes might be different from the actual Japanese ones. Don't forget Sekai is a completely other world, with a mixture of all eight other worlds!
-san: commonly used. It's comparable to the English 'Mr' or 'Mrs', although not only to adults. Keiko first calls Nao Nao-san, for example.
-sama: a politer suffix than -san; shows more respect. People admiring Nao call him Ikegami-sama.
-shi: somewhere in between of -san and -sama. It's mostly used for professionals such as lawyers.
-dono: even more respectful than -sama.
-kyou: comparable to the English terms 'Lord' and 'Lady'. In Sekai, people mostly use it to refer to people close to the Ouji.
-kun: used in everyday life to refer to boys or men.
-chan: used to refer to small children or girls, though it shows affection to the person you use it to. It's mostly reserved for family members or friends.
-tan: a slang version of -chan.
-sensei: used to refer to any kind of person with knowledge superior to yours, like teachers, doctors etc. It can also be used alone, such as 'professor' or 'doctor' in English. Mizumi uses -sensei to refer to June, because she sees her as a kind of teacher.
-senpai: can also be used on its own, and is used to refer to someone with more experience or someone higher in the hierarchy.
-chama: combines -sama and -chan: it indicates respect as well as affection.
-denka: comparable to the English 'Your Highness', for people of the royal family. If the Ouji has blood relatives in Sekai and acknowledges them, they are referred to with -denka.
-heika: comparable to 'Your Majesty', for the Emperor or King. As the Ouji is a kind of King, although a dictator-like one, he's referred to as Ouji-heika.
Yobisute: used to indicate one doesn't use suffixes. This mostly means two people have a very close bond... or that one of them just doesn't know how to handle the suffixes yet.
Keigo: a term to indicate one is being polite to another one.
It isn't unusual to take the first syllable of someone's name in Japan in combination with a suffix. People in Sekai however don't often do that. You can imagine why people are surprised when Umi calls Keiko 'Kei-chan' from the very beginning now. And you can also guess why Chikao is seriously pissed off when Nao jokes he will call him 'Chi-chan'...
