友達に提案をする：「もう硬い言い方はやめましょう！」
Suggesting to a friend: ‘Let’s stop talking politely !’
Litte confused. It says lets stop talking politely, which should be 丁寧言い方 , but it gives the opposite as an answer?
From the Bunpro summary: A way of speaking in which formal structures and the highest level of politeness are often used.
I’m not sure which part of the sentence you think is incorrect, but this seems like an appropriate translation of the phrase to me.
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硬い means stiff. 硬い言い方 is a stiff way of talking. It has a similar meaning to 丁寧言い方.
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I wouldn’t put “polite” as an English translation in this case, because even if Japanese allows to replace 硬い with 丁寧 in this case, I don’t feel that way about English.
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硬い言い方 may translate directly as “stiff way of speaking”, but 硬い言い方 and 丁寧言い方 are actually similar to each other. The main difference is that one is more “literary” and the other is spoken. 硬い言い方 is more like “literary style”, used commonly in reports, public speeches, news articles and the such. 丁寧言い方 is “polite”, but it’s more in line with honorific spoken language, so it’s like how a konbini or supermarket worker would speak to you (hopefully).
OP tbh I agree with your confusion, I learned 硬い言い方 as “bookish expression, written expression” as per the Bunpro page. While it does have the matome point “A way of speaking in which formal structures and the highest level of politeness are often used,” I think the page itself needs some adjustment if they want you to translate it as “talking politely”
ETA: Rather than “talk politely” I think “talk formally” could be good. I think the definition “formal expression” would be a good addendum to the offered definitions. Especially because this term doesnt mean polite in the same way teinei does. I think formal is more accurate.
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NGL I really don’t find the way this site uses the terms “polite” very intuitive, unfortunately.
this I am very much in agreement with haha