If you are a man you do not want to run down the street calling out in a female manner (otherwise you just might end up on the evening news). You’ll need to practice the phrases or at least carry a list of emergency words when you do travel through Japan (as a backup in case of an emergency).
During an emergency, a Japanese speaker will either be asking or commanding someone to do something. In this situation, the Japanese speaker will indicate his or her gender by selecting the proper words or phrases which are particular to the speaker’s gender.
More specifically, a male speaker will (in many cases) replace the end of a verb with “ro” or “re” when issuing a command (during an emergency).
Female speakers will change the end of a verb to “te” (during an emergency). However, even during an emergency situation, women tend to be more graceful speakers than men. For example (see list at the end of this article), that the word “hashitte”, meaning “run”, combines the sounds shi and te. This combination places an emphasis for accent on the shi in hashitte and a brief pause on the te (Of course, as a non-native speaker of Japanese, you are not expected to know all complexities of the language).
Please see the following emergency words and phrases reference (In the following quick reference gender is indicated as follows: (M) for a male expression; and (F) for a Female expression. Those expressions without a reference to gender are common across genders).
