a student in higher or lower grade than you

Sun14

Sun14

Senior Member
Hong Kong
Chinese
Hello, my friends,

This thread is about culture. I guess Chinese imports the words from Japan and first use it in Taiwan and then use in Mainland China. In Japanese, people call them Senpai and kōhai(Senpai and kōhai - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia), which mean "In Japan, senpai is an upperclassman or upperclasswoman, someone of a higher age, or senior and kōhaiis a protégé or junior." When we use in Chinese we tend to use it to mean a student in higher or lower grade than us. It shows the order in school and relationship among students. We said this to show use respect and care. We have terms to refer to these. I was wounding whether there are in English. I don't think upperclassman is acceptable:

1) She is a student in higher grade than me. We should respect her and try to learn from her.

2) She is a student in lower grade than me. We should teach her and try to help her.
 
    • CasparWeinburger

    CasparWeinburger

    Senior Member
    English--Canada
    When I lived in Korea, Koreans used /senior/ and /junior/ to describe those older or younger than them. I guess it is based on Confucianism. It is also one of the reasons why Koreans always ask people their age. They have special words of address for males and females that are younger and older.

    Anyways, it has been a long time, but when I was in elementary school, I would just use the grade to talk about older or younger students. He's in grade 3. He's in grade 8; grade 10. We do this in Canada even in highschool. American English has specific words for highschoolers, such as freshman, sophmore, junior, senior, which apply also to college, which we don't do in Canada. I have no idea what they do in England.
     
    RedwoodGrove

    RedwoodGrove

    Senior Member
    Northern California
    English, USA
    She's in a class ahead of me.:tick:
    She's in a higher grade than me.:tick:
    She's a junior, I'm a sophomore.:tick:
    She's ahead of me in school.:tick:

    Saying "student" is not necessary. As a side point (you didn't mention it), but you would never say, "She's in a higher class than me" as it would indicate something about her social status or ranking in abilities. "She's in a higher class than me. Not only is she a Rockefeller but she's an Olympic athlete and a Rhodes scholar."
     
    Last edited:
    C

    Cagey

    post mod (English Only / Latin)
    California
    English - US
    Last edited:
    Peter_Gabriel

    Peter_Gabriel

    Senior Member
    Polish
    RedwoodGrove said:
    She's in a class ahead of me.:tick:
    She's in a higher grade than me.:tick:
    She's a junior, I'm a sophomore.:tick:
    She's ahead of me in school.:tick:

    Saying "student" is not necessary. As a side point (you didn't mention it), but you would never say, "She's in a higher class than me" as it would indicate something about her social status or ranking in abilities. "She's in a higher class than me. Not only is she a Rockefeller but she's an Olympic athlete and a Rhodes scholar."
    Click to expand...
    And how can we say that somebody is younger.

    "She is in a class lower than me"???
     
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