How did わし etc. become stereotypical "old people" pronouns


After reading [this answer](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/36795/15798)
about the pronoun あちし, I became curious about how certain pronouns came to be
associated with older people. As I see it, there are four main possibilities:

  1. People just decide at some point in their life to start using a pronoun that matches their old age. Seems unlikely.

  2. The standard pronunciation of 私 becomes difficult to pronounce as you age, leading to the variant pronunciations. However, most men don't use 私 to refer to themselves in casual speech, and these pronouns don't seem to be associated with women...

  3. Pronouns such as わし were common and fairly neutral, like 僕, about sixty years ago.

  4. It's all a lie invented by Japanese media to easily characterize old coot characters.

Which of these holds the most true, if any?

(For what it's worth, I've never heard a real person call himself わし yet.)




In English, we know how to talk like a pirate, even those classical pirates
are no more around (aye, pirates still exist, but they tend to speak
[Somali](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somali_language) or whatever...). What
is a stereotypical accent today often did originally have the speakers, but
its real-world use gradually faded away with the lapse of time only to remain
in people's memory.

So-called Standard Japanese was established in the [Meiji
era](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meiji_period) based on Tokyo dialect, which
is a well-known fact. That means, the word usage more or less reflects what
Tokyoites at that time thought people should talk like.

What you mentioned was the stereotypical "old (wise) man" talk such as
「わしは～～じゃ」 is, in fact, a living dialect in some Western Japan areas. As Kyoto
has been Japan's traditional capital, the most prestigious dialect was that of
[Kansai](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansai_dialect) until the end of the
Edo period. ~~After the Meiji Restoration, Kansai nobles and VIPs migrated
from Kyoto to Tokyo in crowds, giving people the impression that their way of
talking was how typical respectable men talk.~~ **EDIT** : After rechecking 金水
(2003), turns out that the educated upper class in Edo was speaking Kansai
dialect while commoners used native Edo dialect throughout the 19th century,
which led to the perpetuation of this stereotype after Meiji. (Thanks to
@user4092 for correcting.)

A bit off on a tangent: today, words such as おい and こら are used to scold
somebody in Standard Japanese. They are actually "you" and "hey" in [Satsuma
dialect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kagoshima_dialect), respectively. The
majority of police officers in Meiji Japan were from Satsuma Domain, as they
had been one of the main factions that overthrew the Shogunate. As a result,
their accent had been recognized as oppressive talk characteristic of a police
officer.

> _People just decide at some point in their life to start using a pronoun
> that matches their old age. Seems unlikely._

It's not that unlikely, as almost every person in Japan uses two or more
first-person pronouns depending on the situation (technically they're not even
pronouns in Japanese, so, I guess two or more "ways to address oneself"?). I
daren't say the shift to わし is common, but people can easily change their
normal "pronoun" as a result of influence from those around them.

Totally unrelated but I have an acquaintance who uses わし in casual settings
(in Tokyo dialect) for some unknown reason.




In English, we know how to talk like a pirate, even those classical pirates
are no more around (aye, pirates still exist, but they tend to speak
[Somali](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somali_language) or whatever...). What
is a stereotypical accent today often did originally have the speakers, but
its real-world use gradually faded away with the lapse of time only to remain
in people's memory.

So-called Standard Japanese was established in the [Meiji
era](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meiji_period) based on Tokyo dialect, which
is a well-known fact. That means, the word usage more or less reflects what
Tokyoites at that time thought people should talk like.

What you mentioned was the stereotypical "old (wise) man" talk such as
「わしは～～じゃ」 is, in fact, a living dialect in some Western Japan areas. As Kyoto
has been Japan's traditional capital, the most prestigious dialect was that of
[Kansai](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansai_dialect) until the end of the
Edo period. ~~After the Meiji Restoration, Kansai nobles and VIPs migrated
from Kyoto to Tokyo in crowds, giving people the impression that their way of
talking was how typical respectable men talk.~~ **EDIT** : After rechecking 金水
(2003), turns out that the educated upper class in Edo was speaking Kansai
dialect while commoners used native Edo dialect throughout the 19th century,
which led to the perpetuation of this stereotype after Meiji. (Thanks to
@user4092 for correcting.)

A bit off on a tangent: today, words such as おい and こら are used to scold
somebody in Standard Japanese. They are actually "you" and "hey" in [Satsuma
dialect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kagoshima_dialect), respectively. The
majority of police officers in Meiji Japan were from Satsuma Domain, as they
had been one of the main factions that overthrew the Shogunate. As a result,
their accent had been recognized as oppressive talk characteristic of a police
officer.

> _People just decide at some point in their life to start using a pronoun
> that matches their old age. Seems unlikely._

It's not that unlikely, as almost every person in Japan uses two or more
first-person pronouns depending on the situation (technically they're not even
pronouns in Japanese, so, I guess two or more "ways to address oneself"?). I
daren't say the shift to わし is common, but people can easily change their
normal "pronoun" as a result of influence from those around them.

Totally unrelated but I have an acquaintance who uses わし in casual settings
(in Tokyo dialect) for some unknown reason.

