Guys, help me see my mistake here please!
I thought questions were better phrased in formal language, specially when using honorific language…
Thanks a lot!
My guess would be there’s supposed to be a ん/の at the end there (んですか/のですか).
Might be due to the ですか at the end. ませんですか isn’t correct, I’m pretty sure.
ませんか might work instead, but again I’m not sure.
I’m happy to half-decently understand 敬語, let alone try to speak it.
That said, いらっしゃらない does sound quite strange to me, I wonder if it’s actually used…
1 Like
I think it might be almost the same situation as my question here, so maybe the answers there help you too.
(Although, on further look, I didn’t see the “honorific”. Still leaving this up in case it’s useful.)
Isn’t いらっしゃらない basically a posh way of saying いない?
For 居る the least formal negation is いない, then いないです and then いません, isn’t it?
Of course I could have just totally made all that up in my head to be honest but I thought you could whack a ですonto an informal negation to make it slightly more formal.
As for the original question, I guess the person talking about the honorific person that has left, isn’t necessarily talking to someone super formally. i.e. she’s talking to her mate about the posh bloke that’s already left. She’s using an honorific to elevate the status of the posh bloke that’s left but she doesn’t need to be excessively formal with whoever she’s speaking with. That’s my take on it anyway.
Welcome @JonCastilho !
ます and です cannot be combined. Your potential options would be;
いらっしゃらないですか
いらっしゃいませんか
You can combine ます/ません with でしょう however (いらっしゃいませんでしょうか), but this is more confirmatory; you think/know Suzuki has left, you’re just double checking.
4 Likes
Not posh - honorific.
When the two people in the conversation are talking about someone who is at a higher social standing than them, they would use いっらしゃる.
Here are some examples:
Student: マシュー先生、校長先生がいらっしゃいますか。
Me: いらっしゃらないよ。
Of course, I’m a teacher, so my student uses polite language with me, and I use casual language with him/her, but the head teacher is above both of us, so when we talk about him, we use いらっしゃる.
Student’s Parent: マシュー先生、校長先生がいますか。
Me: 申し訳ありませんが、今はいません。
As a teacher and parent, we are both polite to each other, but because the customer is higher than anyone in social standing, we would not use いらっしゃる whilst talking about the head teacher in this case. However, since the parent (customer) is at a significantly higher standing than me, I would use humble Japanese.
However, if the head teacher was in the office, since the parent has a higher social standing than the head teacher (as a customer), the conversation would go something like this:
Student’s Parent: マシュー先生、校長先生がいますか。
Me: いますよ。少々お待ちください。**
[I turn to face the head teacher] 校長先生、お客様がいらっしゃいます。***
**Notice that here I use humble Japanese whilst talking to the parent, since they are higher than me, but I do not use いらっしゃる whilst talking about my head teacher, because that would insinuate that he is higher than the customer.
***Here, I talk to the headmaster about a parent, so I therefore use honorific Japanese whilst talking about that parent.
Is that easy enough to understand? I know it takes a hell of a lot to get your head around it. It took me ages to get it right.
7 Likes
Thanks a lot!