Skipping honorifics

Japanese
#1

Hey,

I have been struggling and confused by honorifics for as long as I have been exposed to them.
One thing that sticks out is that the immersion that I am doing is not covering any of those points which make reinforcement tricky.

Given that I don’t intend on living in Japan and am learning it for fun I wanted to check how necessary actually knowing all honorifics is in anime/manga immersion past N3 and whether it is useful to know as a casual user who solely intends to use it for travel/leisure in the first place.

Thank you in advance!

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#2

尊敬語をご勉強しにならないと。

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#3

I use anki mode but I think it is the same if you type the answer

just see the correct answer and type it, if you get it right several times in a row, a gramma point won’t show up again meaning you got rid of t.

honestly I only know and remember the honorifc that I find in the wild, so far I couldn’t learn any. Since they appear rarely for me, I dont mind trying to answer them ocasionally.

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#4

All I am not sure, but most is importance for certain understanding goals you may have. There is a lot of texture in the subtleties of honorifics/there lack, that represents characters and their relations. They are not 100 percent critical; yet, they barely exist in English so they are next to impossible to translate and they aid in your full enjoyment to narratives.

To survive in Japan as a tourist they only mater in so far that you recognized that that is how people at the combinis and restaurants will talk to you. No Japanese person expects or anticipates that you will know/or be good at honorifics.

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#5

Even speaking in terms of anime and manga, honorifics/polite language/etc. will appear at all levels eventually. There’s no real way to avoid it, given it’s part of the language.

That said, depending on what you’re reading or watching, some of the trickier humble forms and complex phrasings are likely to be rather rare. So while I do think it’s going to be necessary for you to understand those forms someday (assuming you continue reading/watching in the language), it should be possible for you to review them on a case-by-case basis, and get used to them that way.

When it comes to speaking with Japanese people, as a tourist it will never be expected of you to have a proper grasp on the forms in your own statements, but there’s a high chance you’ll run into them when speaking with anyone in customer service or the like. So, understanding them is also helpful at that level.

Ultimately, it’s going to be up to you to decide how important all of this is in your learning, especially if it’s a casual pastime. But if it were me, I would at least try my best to be familiar with the basics of polite speech, as it’s an integral part of the language that’s impossible to avoid in the long run with continued immersion.

Edit to say: I wrote all of this assuming you were speaking of all forms of polite and humble speech, along with honorifics, when you wrote this.

If that’s not the case and you are just referring to the honorifics used at the end of names and the like, then aside from learning the standard さん、様、etc. you’ll likely just be best off learning them as you need them.

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#6

Living in Japan, the distinctions between honorifics are not that important for me compared to other parts of the language. In my experience, it’s important to use “san” at the end of names. As you become friends with someone, it seems like you can drop the “san”, or else you come off as a bit wooden.

Other suffixes like “kun” and “chan” come up here and there, especially for kids, but for general travel and leisure, I’d argue that honorfic suffixes are not important at all. Just remember to use “san” after people’s names.

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#7

This is actually a little bit of a tricky question to answer, as you have stated that you don’t intend on living in Japan, but I am guessing you are learning it for fun/content consumption such as anime/manga? (please correct me if I am wrong).

The reason it is difficult to answer is because ‘honorifics’ refers mostly to name suffixes such as さん, さま, どの, くん, and a whole bunch of others which are perhaps more ‘endearing’ than they are honorific.

On the other hand, if you mean polite language such as structures like いたす、お～する、になる、なさる, etc etc, then it changes. So I will answer based on both.

A: (Name suffixes) - I would definitely recommend learning these, as you will see them all the time regardless of whether you live in Japan or not. They pervade every type of media you can think of.

B: (Polite language) - This one depends more on your preferences of consumption. I usually find that slice of life (school life) anime/manga does not have much polite language except for です/ます, so you can probably totally get away without specifically learning it. However, once you move into the fantasy field, it will become a mixed bag. Sometimes there will be a ‘token’ character that speaks exclusively in very very polite language, other times there won’t be anything at all. If you read manga/anime that is based on the workplace, you will run into it a lot more often, so I would recommend learning it. Lastly, if you watch J-dramas (live action), I definitely recommend learning it, as it comes up a lot more often than in anime.

Last note - If you do ever intend on coming to Japan, I definitely recommend learning them, as almost every intercom type message that you will hear in any shop/train station will use polite language almost exclusively. In addition to this people that work in shops will only ever use polite language with you unless you specifically request them to ‘not please’. :rofl:

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#8

I wrote a short essay on this topic last year and you can read it here.
It was 18 months ago so my experiences may have changed slightly since then, but it was an interesting discussion all the same. Please have a look if you’re interested.

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#9

Great post mate! Can’t believe I missed it back then!

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#10

Did you miss it?? I’m officially offended. :triumph:

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#11

Super good input, thanks everyone for your answers and apologies for not having been clear on what I meant specifically.

I was indeed referring to polite language such as になる、なさる and the likes so your input is very valuable. I’ll continue learning them but at a slower pace. I do want to understand those pesky announcements when I am in Japan :sweat_smile:

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