In Part 5 of my Fundamentals of Japanese series, I’ll be covering the characteristics of the language’s different levels of speech…
Polite Speech
Japanese comprises varying levels of speech, using honorifics, situation-specific words, and polite or impolite verb conjugations depending on how formal or casual the situation is. Because of this, there are many different ways to say the same thing in Japanese depending on how you rank to the person you’re speaking to or about. Japanese people speak differently when talking to their close friends and family as opposed to their boss or teacher.
There are three levels of polite speech in Japanese. The lowest is keigo(敬語), which is also the most common and universal. Keigo simply incorporates the constant use of です/desu, the -ます/-masu form of verbs, and certain other polite expressions. The majority of Japanese learning books teach using keigo because it’s considered the “safest” to use in terms of social situations, especially for foreigners.
Above keigo are sonkeigo(尊敬語) and kenjougo(謙譲語). Sonkeigo is an honorific way of speaking in which you elevate the rank of the person you’re speaking to or about way above yourself. Kenjougo is a humble way of speaking in which you humble yourself or lower your rank below the person you’re speaking to. Sonkeigo and kenjougo are only used in very formal situations, such as formal business meetings, an employee speaking to a customer, or a servant speaking to their master. As such, I’m not going to cover them in detail here because they’re so situation-specific and not nearly as common as keigo.
The -masu form versus casual speech
The use of the -masu (-ます） form of verbs, along with desu(です), make up the majority of keigo. I’ve already mentioned the -masu form in previous parts of this guide, but I wanted to go over it a bit more here. Like I discussed in the last section, there are many different conjugations of Japanese verbs, with the most basic present tense form being the Dictionary form. An example of this would be “aruku”(歩く), the present tense of “walk.” The -masu form has the same present tense meaning as the Dictionary form, but while the Dictionary form creates a casual level of speech, the -masu form creates the normal-polite level that’s used for keigo. So “arukimasu”(歩きます) also means “walk,” but raises the politeness of speech compared to “aruku”(歩く). Also like I went over in Part 4, the -masu form is attached to the Conjunctive base of a verb and can then conjugate into five basic conjugations. I’ve listed these conjugations below and compared them to the Dictionary form of the same verb.
Verb = 歩く(aruku) – walk
walk (present tense)
casual: 歩く(aruku)
polite: 歩きます(arukimasu)
doesn’t walk (present negative)
casual: 歩かない(arukanai)
polite: 歩きません(arukimasen)
walked (past tense)
casual: 歩いた(aruita)
polite: 歩きました(arukimashita)
didn’t walk (past negative)
casual: 歩かなかった(arukanakatta)
polite: 歩きませんでした(arukimasen deshita)
let’s walk (volitional)
casual: 歩こう(arukou)
polite: 歩きましょう(arukimashou)
Casual speech in Japanese is basically comprised of using the Dictionary and TA forms of verbs that I discussed in Part 4 rather than the -masu forms. It also involves using da instead of desu, or eliminating desu/da altogether. A good way to think of it is that if you have more than one way to say something in Japanese, the longer it is, the more polite it is. So おはようございます(ohayou gozaimasu) and おはよう(ohayou) both mean “good morning,” but the latter and shorter one is the more informal one.
Honorifics
If you watch a lot of anime, you can’t help but pick up on honorifics. Japanese honorifics are short suffixes added to the ends of names in order to imply status and relationship between the speaker and the person being spoken to. The most common ones are:
-san -さん= -san is probably the most common honorific and it’s used equally for men and women. It’s used in most situations that are not casual and can be added to either first names or last names. It’s usually translated into English as “Mr.”, “Ms.”, or “Mrs.” but it’s used much more often in Japanese than those titles are in English. -san should definitely be used for anyone who is not a casual friend or close family member.
-chan -ちゃん= -chan is most often used by girls and women, or sometimes young boys. It’s used to denote love or affection, either to close female friends or to something cute and little, like an animal or a baby. The only time a man might use -chan is to show affection towards a younger girl. -chan can also be used to make cute nicknames for very close friends, but it shouldn’t be used for anything but informal situations.
-kun -くん= -kun is used to show affection to a close male friend or a younger boy (similar to -chan for a girl). But it can also be used for someone (either male or female) of a lower rank or social status. In some cases it’s used instead of -san for male names. And like -san, it’s used for both first and last names.
-sama -さま = -sama is a more polite form of -san. It’s used to show great respect, usually to someone of a higher rank.
“You” and “I”
Like the different levels of speech in Japanese, there are many ways to say “you” and “I.” Like the honorifics, each way implies a different relationship between speaker and listener even though they all basically mean the same thing. Here are a few examples of the different forms of “you” and “I”:
I
Watakushi 私= very formal
Watashi 私= formal (same kanji as “watakushi” but pronounced differently)
Atashi あたし= female speaker only (informal)
Boku 僕= male speaker only
Ore 俺= male speaker only (informal)
You
Note: In Japanese, it’s more polite to say the person’s name or title instead of saying “you”
Anata あなた= polite
Anta あんた= familiar form of “anata”
Kimi 君= casual (used for someone lower than you or an informal equal)
Omae お前= very informal (unless it’s used for very casual situations, it’s impolite)
Temee てめえ= impolite (you might as well say “Watch it, you’re starting to piss me off.”)
Kisama きさま= very impolite (you might as well say “You bastard!”)
There are certain words that only men use and would be inappropriate for women to use. Constant use of “ore,” “omae,” “temee,” plain forms of verbs, no honorifics, etc., is considered “yakuza”(gangster) speech. You’ll usually hear the tough guys of shonen anime talk like this for example. However, it’s extremely inappropriate for women to use this speech – in fact, it’s usually inappropriate for women to use anything below “atashi” to refer to themselves and “anta” to refer to others. When in doubt, the safest route to go is to refer to yourself as “watashi,” people you don’t know as “anata” or use their name/title, and use keigo.
Comparative sentences
To end this post and offer a good way of showing how the different speech levels in Japanese compare, I’ve listed some sample sentences below; first, the sentence in English, and then the different ways of saying the same sentence in Japanese using various speech levels. I’m not going to cover every grammatical aspect of each sentence – I mostly wanted to use it to point out “the longer it is, the more polite it is” concept.
Eng.: What are you doing?
Jap. sonkeigo: Anata wa nani o nasaimasu ka? あなたは何をなさいますか。
Jap. keigo: Anata wa nani o shimasu ka? あなたは何をしますか。
Jap. casual: Anta wa nani o suru ka? あんたは何をするか。
Jap. yakuza: Temee, nani shiyagaru? てめえ、何しやがる。
Eng.: I’ll wait for you at school.
Jap. kenjougo: Watakushi wa gakkou de o-machi itashimasu. 私は学校でお待ちいたします。
Jap. keigo: Watashi wa gakkou de matte imasu. 私は学校で待っています。
Jap. casual: Atashi wa gakkou de matte iru. あたしは学校で待っている。
Jap. casual colloquial: Atashi, gakkou de matteru. あたし、学校で待ってる。
—–On to Part 6: Counting and Demonstrative Forms
—–Back to Part 4: Verbs and Adjectives
Sonkeigo and kenjougo are so hard. T_T Only learned them this year and still haven’t got my head around everything yet. Good post covering something so difficult and important!
Btw, plain negative of “aruku” is “arukanai”, isn’t it?
Yes, it’s “arukanai”. Just a typo.
The past negative is, “arukanakatta”, as well.
I fixed those typos, thanks for pointing them. I always end up making some silly mistake XP
I learned them during my college classes several years ago, but since I’ve hardly had reason to use them, I’ve forgotten a lot (plus you rarely hear them in anime either). It’s time for a review XD
Oh, and thanks for pointing out the typo. I fixed it.
You’ve got a lot of words in those articles that your spellcheck won’t pick up, that’s the fun in typing Japanese -_-.
:O The polite and casual forms of those sentences are completely different :S It’s like learning 2-3 different languages in one… I’m definitely going to have to take classes if I want to learn it. Not something that can be easily learned by just listening to it I guess…
It’s more like different tenses. In English, every sentence has a tense, in Japanese every sentence has a tense and a politeness level.
Except the Japanese make do with two tenses, while English has around twelve depending on how you count… so yeah, to each his own.
Like Cytrus said, it’s just a difference in tenses. Plus, English has a lot of things that make it harder than Japanese in my opinion; like what I discussed about the Verbs and Pronunciation parts, English has tons of exceptions to the rules one needs to memorize while Japanese has very little in comparison. All languages have their easy parts and hard parts I guess.
You can also get a good idea of a language’s culture just by how the language itself is structured. Since Japanese has things like politeness levels, honorifics, different words for “you” and “I,” etc., that shows that social status is very important in the culture.
Too many things to comment, so just some funny notes for anime viewers:
1) Watch out for stuff like “Arukimasu desu yo~” in anime – it makes completely no sense. You don’t stick “desu” after verbs for no reason, and you don’t reinforce the same level of keigo twice. In anime, it’s supposed to sound silly and cute. In real life, you might want to sound cute in some informal situations, but sounding silly doesn’t work well if you’re not fluent enough to be 100% sure you understand your own jokes…
2) The class representative scale of evilness (*usually works for guys only)
a) there are at least some female students in the class he addresses with -chan –> goody two shoes, actually has some friends in the class
b) addresses all female students in the class with -san –> nice guy / average person, not too close with anyone, but civil and pleasant enough
c) addresses all female students with -kun –> asshole trying to remind everyone he’s in charge of the class
^watch out for this, it’s fun.
And on a general note:
Guys use boku or ore in informal contexts, ore being the more common (technically the more ‘manly’ variant, where ‘boku’ is a more reserved one). Using watashi with your male friends will get you weird stares, since you’re basically telling them to keep their distance all the time… Save watashi for the ‘getting to know you’ stage of relationships and, of course, all your superiors.
Girls, on the other hand, use watashi in neutral and informal situations, including among friends, so ‘atashi’ is not a direct equivalent (in terms of usage) of either ‘boku’ or ‘ore’. ‘Atashi’ is used by ‘girly girls’, as in either those ‘reading pink magazines’ or ‘female, and proud of it’.
Don’t use anta, it’s very much rude unless you’re sure everyone in the group is close enough for it… 90% of the time, you can direct questions at the listener or make direct statements and drop pronouns altogether with no consequences – it’s a context-based language, and you speaking face to face with somebody is context enough for them to guess you’re talking about them. Well, usually… ;0
Thanks for all that fun info about the honorifics and pronouns ^_^
I sometimes think of boku as a male form of watashi; at least, the teacher in my old Japanese class allowed the male students to use it even when we were using keigo.
Unless I become totally fluent in Japanese and the right situation arises, I’ll be too scared to use anta or even atashi. I’ll just stick with watashi and anata/person’s name to avoid potential embarrassment ^^a
Boku is certainly more acceptable in polite speech than ore and the like. You might recall a scene from Bakuman where Takagi speaks to Hattori using ‘ore’, but bites his tongue and attempts to switch to ‘boku’ not to make a rude impression. Hattori tells him he doesn’t mind either way.
I use ‘boku’ all the time now, without thinking. I have to make a conscious effort to say ‘watashi’… and then I fail anyway >_<. But it's not that grave an offense. And the Japanese are usually very lenient with gaijin when it comes to keigo. They are actually very proud that their language is so difficult to master. Telling your Japanese friends how difficult you find Japanese is always a good idea. Tried and true :D.
The issue with keigo is that if you go to Japan and stay around young people, they will constantly nag you to use more and more informal Japanese, stating that it's a more 'natural' and 'better' form of the language. Being very informal actually helps you make the impression that you know Japanese well, and not just from textbooks. Most people give up sooner or later and end up making some weird habits in terms of politeness (I have an article on this issue lying around somewhere…). My keigo is in shambles, too…
If you were, on the other hand, to spend more time working and interacting in a place with a more rigid hierarchy, I'm sure you would get enough keigo practice. It's all about the domains of language use and your environment.
The two times I’ve been to Japan, I was actually around young people/people my age, and like you said, they preferred that I use informal speech, which I did. So even though my Japanese teachers emphasized keigo, when I was actually in Japan the situation called for me to use informal speech most of the time XD So I’m glad I made a conscious effort to learn both. But I still used watashi and put -san to everyone’s name just to be safe.
For me it was 死ね instead of good morning and お前喧嘩売ってるの？ when I didn’t hear what somebody said, so you sound like an ojou-sama to me.
Then again, maybe it’s just different between guys. I remember having some mostly civil conversations with Japanese girls.
The problem with instruction is that the focus is mostly focused on the polite forms rather than the casual forms… Even so, it’s not too hard to understand at the very least once you get used to it.
Also to note: In most instances, か in casual form is usually dropped and replaced with only a question mark with a raising intonation. This can also be done by adding の at the end of the sentence.
In some instances, there are different conjugations for each formal, polite and casual form. In one of my recent lessons, there are like three forms that can be used when making a request.
Formal: 宿題を手伝っていただけませんか。
Polite: 宿題を手伝ってくれませんか。
Casual:宿題を手伝ってくれない？
If you say it out loud, each one sounds differently… There is some more regarding formal speech (such as honorific verbs), but I haven’t gotten there yet.
You’re right that か can be dropped in casual, colloquial speech and replaced with just a rising intonation. の can be added as a sentence softener in many cases, but mostly by women.
Those three sentences you listed are different speech levels for giving and receiving, which I may discuss in the next section.