pronunciation - Am I the only one who never says "少女{しょうじょ}"?

Only a tiny extension in the first syllable separates the pronunciation of "少女" and "処女{しょじょ}". No matter how skillful one might be, those without the ability to speak with the rhythm and flow of a native Japanese cannot help but to sometimes be misheard. The extra "う" in "少女" just might not get heard in a flowing conversation.

• As "処女" and "少女" are both nouns, swapping them will not change to grammatical correctness of a sentence?



• Are not "少女" and "処女" similar enough in meaning that, in certain contexts, mistakenly saying "しょじょ" instead of "しょうじょ" does not change the meaning, but it does introduce sexuality into the sentence?


• My way of avoiding that issue has always been to say "女の子" instead of "少女". That is almost the same meaning, right?

In summary, I don't want anyone to think I am discussing the virginity of young girls. Do the similar pronunciations of "少女" and "処女" present such a risk?

Answer

Am I the only one who never says 「少女」?

No, you are not. 「少女」 is a fairly big word despite its simple appearance. It is almost never used in informal oral communication among us native speakers, either. You would look pretty weird if you used it in informal speech.

As "処女" and "少女" are both nouns, swapping them will not change the grammatical correctness of a sentence?

Correct. Even the semantically strangest sentences are often 100% grammatical.

Are not "少女" and "処女" similar enough in meaning that, in certain contexts, mistakenly saying "しょじょ" instead of "しょうじょ" does not change the meaning, but it does introduce sexuality into the sentence?

Yes and no. Mistakenly saying the other one might be overlooked depending on the situation, but whenever you say 「処女」, you will sound like you are intentionally introducing sexuality into the sentence except, perhaps, in fixed phrases such as 「処女[航海]{こうかい}」 = "maiden voyage", 「処女[飛行]{ひこう}」 = "maiden flight".

My way of avoiding that issue has always been to say "女の子" instead of "少女". That is almost the same meaning, right?

Correct. 「女の子」 is what we use in informal speech, too. After introducing the gender, you could just use 「子」 as in 「その子」 or 「あの子」 instead of repeating 「女の子」 many times.

I don't want anyone to think I am discussing the virginity of young girls. Do the similar pronunciations of "少女" and "処女" present such a risk?

Yes, it would for J-learners. I would like you to know, however, that to us native speakers, 少女 and 処女 do not sound very similar. There are a ton of other words pairs in which the only difference in pronunciation is the length of one of the vowels.