General Speech Patterns in Cardcaptor Sakura

I’ll be (slowly) doing a series of posts on dialogue translation, using Cardcaptor Sakura as the material. Whether or not I can make it through all 70 episodes, I don’t know, but I imagine many things will come up again and again, and I’ll eventually give those their own pages. In the meantime, I’ll be setting this page aside for character mannerisms and repeated speech patterns.

Characters in Cardcaptor Sakura have their own ways of speaking. Because these mannerisms exist in every episode the character appears in, I’ve decided to compile them in one place, rather than repeating their explanations every episode post.

さくら

Nothing yet.

けろ

Nothing yet, but I expect this to fill out nicely due to his Osakan accent.

ともよ

ます

ともよ uses the polite form of verbs. This includes using ます, ません, ました, です, and other polite forms.

わね

The suffix わ (not to be confused with the particle は, which is pronouced the same) is a “sentence ending” used generally by females. Naoko Chino in All About Particles, page 56, writes that わ softens the tone of a statement.

The suffix ね has many uses the same as わ, but can also be used to [indicate] emotion or feelings of admiration.

ゆきと

だね

This combines だ (the familiar form of です), with a meaning along the lines of “is”, with the particle ね. As with ともよ in an entry above, ね here makes for a soft-spoken closeness to さくら and her brother in ゆきと’s speech.