Japanese Language/Culture Help Thread

[NPK]

Because guys don't look good in bloomers.

[karomi]

Because guys don't look good in bloomers.

LIES.

[NPK]

This may be a personal opinion, but I don't think leg-hair is cute.

[rephira]

Thanks to everyone who answered my question. We have upped our social link by 1!

I'd like to throw out another question that is perhaps more related to the Japanese culture than the language, or my own experience?
女子中生、女子高生、女子大生 is used a lot. How come I've never seen 男子中生 or 男子高生? Like right now, when I press my space bar to convert my typing into kanji, it did it for 女子高生 and 女子大生 but not for the guys.
Oh...I ask questions all out of curiosity, so feel free to speculate and write your thoughts too. Responses don't have to be formal like rephira or takagi's (that doesn't mean I'm not grateful for all your hard work!) And please ask questions too! I don't want to be the only one asking questions.

This I actually don't have a perfect answer to, but I can tell you something that might be of a good possibility.

While there are a lot of co-ed schools now, schools above 小学校 level in the past were generally specific to one gender or the other. Since schools were first established for males only in Japan, they were the first to be called 小学校, 中学 and 大学　(高等学校 was established after Japan set up a 12-year lower education system). As schools for girls were established, the word 女 or 女子 was added on to signify that the school were for girls only. [If you remember Taishou Yakyuu Musume, Asaka Secondary is written and read as 朝香中学 while Touhou Seika Academy Girls' Secondary is written as 東方星華学園　高等女学院]

Since 男 was not there to start with, 中学生 and 大学生 naturally became bound to a male student. Even after the establishment of 12-year lower education system for both male and female, a lot of schools were still very gender-specific. This brought rise to 女子中学校, 女子高等学校 and 女子大学 which served as a female counterparts of 中学校、高等学校、and 大学 (there were some schools which added 男子 in the front, but the number was very small. With the rise of co-ed school, the male-only schools are being called 男子校, but are only referred so when the need to specify the circumstance arises). These names were then abbreviated to 女子中, 女子高, and 女子大. The pupils were simply indicated by addition of 生, and hence students of girls' school became 女子中生, 女子高生 and 女子大生. The tradition for not adding anything to the male side of the education lived on, which kept the noun which indicates them unspecific of gender. That's why the male counterparts of these nouns don't take the similar form.

Well... that's all just what I think =/

[Brutannica]

I.o.w., it's just another example of how an ungendered word in most languages has a masculine connotation, and when you refer to a female example, you modify the word. (ex. "actress," "waitress," the suffix "-in" in German)

[takagi]

[quote="Brutannica"]I.o.w., it's just another example of how an ungendered word in most languages has a masculine connotation, and when you refer to a female example, you modify the word. (ex. "actress," "waitress," the suffix "-in" in German)[/quote

Kind of like how in the romance languages, you use the masculine plural to refer to a mixed gender group....then again, different things have different connotations, like that surgeon joke.....