Question about Japanese Language

Okay, frequently in Japanese I hear people say things after a person's name: "sama", "san", "shi", "sensei". I get the "sensei" one because it's more known to english speakers, but the other ones have me lost. What do they mean?

Let me Google that for you, Fiel-chan~
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_honorifics

They denote speaker's closeness to another person. Like If I called you Paul-chan or Paul-kun, it'd mean I'm very close to you, like a best friend or something.

d'oh. I deserved that. Thanks.

They denote speaker's closeness to another person. Like If I called you Paul-chan or Paul-kun, it'd mean I'm very close to you, like a best friend or something.

Uh....you just called him something very....insulting ish? You're supposed to say that to your little brother/sister or something .

Uh....you just called him something very....insulting ish? You're supposed to say that to your little brother/sister or something .

No. If I were very close with Paul, I could call him Paul-kun and he would be like ''oh okay''.

Honorifics mang, they are very strict about them over there.

Cool people use -tan.

Cool people use -tan.

Huh? Dialect or false? lol I know that '-han' is kansai dialect, but I've never heard of '-tan.'

Huh? Dialect or false? lol I know that '-han' is kansai dialect, but I've never heard of '-tan.'

-tan is just for moe purposes. You usually see it in anime as referring to cute or young characters, and it's sometimes used IRL for mascots and such.

I think there's a section on -tan, -chama, etc. in that Wikipedia article linked above.

EDIT: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_ho...variations

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_ho...variations[/url]

Heh... That would explain it. I've never been around otakus. I've always stayed as far away as I could from Anime and all that crap. lol