Masculine/ Dominant voice in Japanese:


I am an early 30s male with upper intermediate – advanced Japanese and I had
some questions about the masculine voice. I do not use the common feminine
words (かしら、statement〜なの、using my name in third person, etc.) and have been
told I have very good standard/flat Japanese, which is good for both business
meetings and casual conversation. I recently got told by a close bilingual
friend (Japanese native) that my English way of talking sounds very masculine/
dominant (in a good way) but my Japanese voice sounds ‘too normal’. It’s not
bad, but it doesn’t sound as masculine as it does in English.  
I have searched for advice on this on the site but all of the results are
saying things like :

verb stem+てえ (e.g バスケやりてー）

Which is very young or crude in my experience.

Or things like:

〜〜かい / 〜〜だい （e.g. そうかい？）

Which are very old and also weird for me to use (unless using it
sarcastically).  
There are many examples like this on the site but they aren't that common for
30s men to say, in my opinion. Maybe I am wrong.

I am trying to figure what a middle-aged Japanese man would do to sound
masculine in everyday conversation.

My friend didn’t understand what makes someone sound masculine in Japanese, so
she couldn’t give advice, but she could notice the difference. Do you have any
advice for sounding more masculine/ dominant in Japanese? Are there any tips
that you have noticed around word choice or speaking cadence?




There are a lot of ways to make yourself sound more masculine but the key is
to do so in subtle ways that match your personality. You don't want to
suddenly transform into a Yankee or Yakuza overnight. So here are some more
subtle approaches that can match a neutral personality:

  1. 1st-person pronoun: Use 僕 for most everyday speech (excluding formal situations) and if comfortable, 俺 around close friends and family
  2. More assertive sentence endings: Add 〜んだ to the ends of assertive sentences, か to the ends of direct questions, and feel free to remove の from the ends of sentences to make it sound less soft

> 彼は来ない(の)
>
> 彼は来ないんだ - _sounds more assertive and masculine_

> これを使う？
>
> これを使うか？ - _sounds more direct and masculine_

> 昨日はどうしたの？
>
> 昨日はどうした？ - _sounds less soft, more masculine_

  3. Try substituting ね with な more often:

> それはすごいね
>
> それはすごいな - _sounds more gruff and masculine_

