As long as I don’t work for a Japanese company and never work with Japanese clients in a service/customer setting, nobody will ever expect me to actively use 尊敬語 or 謙譲語 (except a few fixed expressions, like with ございます). 丁寧語 will be enough?
It is of course important to understand 敬語 as a reader/listener since it will be everywhere in businesses and announcements etc.
So as long as you not planning to work in Japan, understanding is enough, and maybe not worry too much about using it?
There will always be certain things that you need to keep in mind, but the main one is, who is the action that you are talking about in relation to. If it is in relation to the customer etc, then you’ll use 謙譲語. For example -
責任者がこの件について説明いたしますので、しばらくお待ちください。
‘My boss will explain about this, so please wait a moment.’
In this case, 説明 is something that is in relation to the customer, so even though the person is your boss, the focus of the action is in relation to your customer, so you’d use 謙譲語 for your boss’ actions.
Regarding your question about actions that don’t relate to the customer… That kinda breaks my mind, as I can’t imagine a situation where you would be talking to someone that you need to use 尊敬語 with, but the actions don’t actually relate to them at all. I have never even really seen this type of conversation occur. Basically if you’re telling someone that you need to speak 尊敬語 with about personal unrelated events/actions, that in itself is probably weird.
Absolutely. I have never once used anything above 丁寧語 when speaking to someone in Japan. This isn’t because I am rude, I think that it would be perhaps more strange for me to attempt to do so, as Japanese people already see me as someone that exists outside of those restrictions. That’s not a bad thing in any way, it’s just how it is. The important thing for you though will just be ‘understanding’ it (unless of course you are in a Japanese company like you mentioned).
The concept of 丁寧語 exists in languages like Spanish and German as well.
But there, it is used only when talking to people you are not close to, when talking
to strangers that are older than you, or at least in German to younger people in a business/official setting.
But you would never use the 丁寧語 equivalent inside your family or with friends, among students, people you meet regularly in a private setting.
Now from watching anime and Japanese TV series I get the impression that Japanese people actually use 丁寧語 when talking to their siblings (if older) or their parents? Or that students in school use 丁寧語 when talking to older students. That sounds very weird to me. Is this really a thing in real life?
If I used 丁寧語 in my native language to talk to my parents, they would think I was joking.
If my boss were to ask me about my language studies or holiday travel plans, for example, I could not use 謙譲語Ⅰ, not only because he doesn’t actually understand Japanese, but also because 謙譲語Ⅰ is only used with actions that are directed at a target of respect.
This. The only time it becomes confusing is drawing the line between an action that is directed at someone and an action that is not. I can’t think of a good example off the top of my head, but I assume it’s probably the same type of thing natives struggle with. Maybe something like giving a report on a situation to your boss where the situation does not involve him but he has some kind of interest in the outcome.
You are, however, technically correct. The best kind of correct .
Students in a school using 丁寧語 to an older student is a normal thing that happens in real life. Some people will even use 丁寧語 towards people in their friend groups if the friend is older than them. This is because even though they are your friend they are still technically your senpai.
Using 丁寧語 when talking to siblings is a bit strange, and I feel like if people did it, they would only do it if they were joking or being sarcastic. However, I would not say it does not happen since I knew families that made their kids use 丁寧語 when talking to their parents. Although I think using 丁寧語 with immediate family members is strange, it is common for people to use it when talking to relatives (aunts and uncles) that you are not too close with. For example, I will talk to some of my uncles like I do with my parents, but with uncles I’m not close with, I usually use 丁寧語.
丁寧語 toward your family I feel is similar to a certain style of posh speaking in English. While it is not natural, you will hear it all the time, especially with sarcasm like you mentioned, regardless of if the person you’re speaking to is older or younger. LIke 弟よ、彼女ができたと聞きましたが、それはあっていますか？ to your little brother wouldn’t sound weird to me, as it would be the same as ‘I happened to hear that you got a girlfriend oh dearest brother of mine. Would that happen to be true?’.
Learning when to use 丁寧語 jokingly may actually be harder than 尊敬語 or 謙譲語
Let me explain the type of situation I had in mind:
In my culture it is quite common to make small talk with customers/clients before or after meetings. Let’s say a client visits my company for a business meeting. I welcome the client at our company’s front desk and lead them through the building to the meeting room. We need to take an elevator and walk a bit. This takes a few minutes. We make small talk to fill the otherwise awkward silence.
Let’s say the client’s company is in Paris, so I might say something like “Has the weather in Paris been this rainy as well?”. After their answer I might continue “I visited Paris last summer with my wife and kids and we really enjoyed it. My daughters especially loved going to the top of the Eiffel tower.”
Another situation for small talk would be, if we are in the meeting room waiting for more client employees (e.g. their boss) to arrive, if they travel separately.
I just naively assumed that this type of small talk was a thing in other countries as well.
But now it seems like this is too unprofessional for Japan?
What is the difference between
お待ちください。
and 待っていただけませんか
The both are polite ways of asking someone to wait? One the 待つ is more polite with the お, and ください and 頂く are both polite versions of くれる.
I’ve been fine with keigo in Japan (as you said, I hear lots of it everyday), I’m worried about passing the JLPT given I can’t tell which one is which.
お待ちください = Please wait.
待って頂けませんか = Could you please wait?
The second one sounds more polite since it’s a question, while the first one is a command. That’s the main difference. Even in English, when you use words like “May”, “Could”, “Will” at the start of questions, they make the sentence more polite.
The actions are not something you are doing for/directed at the person, so that would rule out 謙譲語, and you’re not talking about their actions either, so that rules out 尊敬語. All that’s left would be you talking about those unrelated events using regular old 丁寧語. However, I would say that bringing up such things in general seems a bit strange to me in a setting that requires the use of either 尊敬語 or 謙譲語 in the first place.
You would ask the first question politely of course, as it relates to the client. The follow up information though, I am going to go out on a limb and say that in 95% of situations where you are not actually on friendly terms with the client, you would leave it out. If you were going to actually talk about unrelated things though, you’d use 丁寧語 (probably). I can really only answer this based on me talking to staff in shops when they’re using 謙譲語 and 尊敬語 with me, and then I asked them if they have ever visited Australia etc etc and they will start using 丁寧語 while we talk about Australia until we return to talking about the product/etc.
I am a sample size of one though, so take that with a grain of salt. I have never seen such a situation play out between two Japanese people
You mostly use polite commands when talking to customers if you’re in retail, like asking them to sit or wait or sign something. To contrast, I wouldn’t use a command if I’m offering something optional. I think you can use いただけませんか when offering a sample or something as part of a pitch.
Yeah I’m in Japan, so I see this kind of thing all the time.
I can understand it, but I don’t know which one Bunpro wants. Both お待ちください and 待っていただけませんか are keigo requests for example.
A lot of it is “vocab” in the sense that it is to do with word choice however as keigo gets introduced at N4 it probably feels like “grammar” when you are at that level. Consider particle usage, directionality, viewpoint, etc. Viewpoint can be especially diifficult and is easier to introduce as a “grammatical” concept than simply assuming it will be picked up by learners. Equally, some phrases (お〇〇ください etc) are more easy to be seen as grammar related. Also consider that at that N4 level people normally are still decoding sentences rather than simply reading them and if keigo is used then knowing which words or phrases are commonly used in place of which can help with that process.
In general, beyond the N4 keigo that is on Bunpro, I would personally agree that if you are an advanced learner learning to use keigo in speech then the main differences are to do with word choice and phrasing. At that point memorising shouldn’t be an issue and I would thnk social and pragmatic considerations are the tricky part.
Just in general the line between “grammar” and “vocab” is quite blurry even setting keigo aside so it is defnitely a fair question although it probably comes down to your level and personal opinion on what “grammar” is.
I think that for keigo at least some parts are rightly called grammar but I agree that a lot are more like vocab.
But starting with N3 and especially with N2 and N1 most of the “grammar” points could be called “vocab”.
At least when learning western languages, like maybe Spanish, Italian and German, the “grammar” parts are usually more about verb tenses, cases, modes, conjugations, sentence structure and word order. Once you are past that, everything else is more about learning common or fixed expressions with nuanced meanings. Japanese happens to have a lot of those expressions. To me, most of N2 and N1 seems to be about that.
The line between “grammar” and “vocab” is definitely blurry. But if we want to be able to understand and speak Japanese, we will have to learn or acquire those things, regardless how they’re called.
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