Honorific and humble speech

Everything in this course so far has been said at one level of politeness, the です and ます you have had since the beginner course. Japanese has two further sets of forms that change nothing about the facts and everything about who is being placed above whom, and the rules for building them are mechanical once you have fixed the direction.

Three directions, and the official five

The traditional division is into three. 丁寧語ていねいご, polite speech, is です and ます, and it is aimed at the listener regardless of who the sentence is about. 尊敬語そんけいご, honorific speech, raises the person you are talking about. 謙譲語けんじょうご, humble speech, lowers you, which has the same relative effect.

The direction rule follows from that and admits no exceptions. Honorific forms are never used about yourself or about your own group. Humble forms are never used about anybody else. A learner who says 「私わたしがいらっしゃいます」 has not been merely clumsy; they have honoured themselves, which is the one thing the system exists to prevent.

The official account is now more detailed. In February 2007 the Council for Cultural Affairs published 敬語けいごの指針ししん, "Guidelines on Honorific Language", which replaced the three categories with five. It split humble speech into 謙譲語けんじょうご I, which lowers you with respect to a specific person, and 謙譲語けんじょうご II, also called 丁重語ていちょうご, which merely makes your own actions sound formal to the listener. And it added 美化語びかご, "beautification", the お and ご on words like お茶ちゃ, お金かね and ご飯はん, which honour nobody and simply make speech more refined.

That last category is worth knowing because it explains something that otherwise looks inconsistent: お is not always a mark of respect. お茶ちゃ said to your own family is not honouring the tea.

Raising the other person

There are three ways to build an honorific, in increasing order of weight.

The lightest is the passive form, which doubles as a mild honorific: 先生せんせいが話はなされました. It is common in business speech, it costs nothing new, and it is also the source of a great deal of ambiguity, since the same form is the passive and the potential. Use it when you want a small lift.

The standard frame is お plus the ます stem plus になる.

社長しゃちょうはもうお帰かえりになりました shachou wa mou okaeri ni narimashita the president has already gone home

For Sino-Japanese words that take する, the frame is ご plus the noun plus になる: ご利用りようになる, ご説明せつめいになる. The choice between お and ご follows the word's origin, お for native Japanese words and ご for Chinese-derived ones, with a few settled exceptions such as お電話でんわ and お時間じかん.

The heaviest, and the ones you must simply learn, are the special verbs.

There is also an honorific request, お plus the ます stem plus ください, which is what you hear in shops and stations all day: こちらでお待まちください, please wait here. It is politer than てください and completely fixed in form.

Lowering yourself

The humble frame mirrors the honorific one: お plus the ます stem plus する, or いたす for a further step down.

私わたしがお持もちします watashi ga omochi shimasu let me carry that

ご案内あんないいたします goannai itashimasu I will show you the way

And again a list of special verbs, which carry most of the traffic in practice.

田中たなかと申もうします is how you give your own name formally. 資料しりょうを拝見はいけんしました is how you say you have read somebody's document. 明日あした伺うかがいます is how you say you will visit them.

Note that いただく and くださる have been in your vocabulary since the beginner course, in いただきます and ください, and since the giving and receiving lesson as full verbs. They were the first keigo you learned.

Example. Rewrite 社長しゃちょうは何なにを食たべましたか as honorific, in two ways, and then say what you yourself ate.

The frame gives 社長しゃちょうは何なにをお食たべになりましたか, and the special verb gives 社長しゃちょうは何なにを召めし上あがりましたか. Where a special verb exists it is preferred, so the second is what you would actually say. For yourself you use the humble verb: 私わたしは天てんぷらをいただきました. Notice that the same event, eating, takes three different verbs depending on whose eating it is.

Now you. Ask a client whether they have seen the document, and then say that you have seen it yourself.

The five verbs that conjugate oddly

Five honorific verbs are irregular, and they are irregular in the same way, which makes them cheap to learn. いらっしゃる, おっしゃる, なさる, くださる and ござる all form their ます stem in い rather than the expected り.

So it is いらっしゃいます, おっしゃいます, なさいます, くださいます and ございます, not いらっしゃります and the rest. Their imperatives are the same shape, which is where なさい and ください come from: both are simply the imperative of a group 1 verb with the same irregularity.

That is the whole exception list. Every other keigo verb conjugates by the ordinary rules, 参まいる and 伺うかがう and 申もうす included.

Inside and outside, again

Now the part that surprises everyone, and it is the same 内うち and 外そと distinction from the giving and receiving lesson.

Your own boss is above you and takes honorific forms, in the office. Speak to somebody outside your company about that boss, and your boss joins your group, which means you speak about them humbly.

部長ぶちょうはただいま席せきを外はずしております buchou wa tadaima seki o hazushite orimasu the manager is away from his desk at the moment

おります is humble, and it is being used about a person senior to you, because to the customer on the phone your entire company is one unit and you do not raise any part of it. You also drop the honorific title: to an outsider your president is simply 社長しゃちょうの田中たなか, with no さん.

This is the point at which Japanese politeness stops being a ladder and becomes a map. The question is never "how senior is this person" but "which side of the line are they on right now", and the line moves with every conversation.

Example. A customer telephones and asks for your section head, Suzuki, who is out. What do you say, and what would be wrong?

申もうし訳わけございません、鈴木すずきはただいま外出がいしゅつしております. Suzuki is inside your group relative to the customer, so no さん, no honorific verb, and the humble おる for existence. What would be wrong is 鈴木すずきさんは今いまいらっしゃいません, which raises your own colleague in front of a customer and is the single most recognisable keigo error a learner makes on the telephone.

Now you. The same customer asks when Suzuki will be back, and you want to say that he will ring them later. Say it.

Double keigo, and what native speakers get wrong

Applying two honorific mechanisms to the same verb produces 二重敬語にじゅうけいご, double keigo, which the 2007 guidelines call incorrect.

おっしゃられる stacks the special verb おっしゃる and the honorific passive. お召めし上あがりになる stacks the frame and the special verb. Both are extremely common in real speech, including from people whose job is to be polite, and the guidelines themselves concede that a few doubled forms have become fixed and are accepted, お伺うかがいする among them.

The practical position is the same as with ら抜ぬき in an earlier lesson. Do not produce double keigo; expect to hear it constantly; and do not assume that a form you hear from a native speaker is therefore correct by the standard the same speakers would apply if asked. Keigo is the part of Japanese that Japanese people themselves study from books, and companies run training courses in it for new graduates, which tells you how far from automatic it is.

Example. Correct 部長ぶちょうがおっしゃられました and お客きゃく様さまがお召めし上あがりになりました.

Both are doubled and both are fixed by removing one layer. The first should be 部長ぶちょうがおっしゃいました: おっしゃる is already the honorific of 言いう, so the passive on top adds nothing but length. The second should be お客きゃく様さまが召めし上あがりました, since 召めし上あがる is already honorific and does not need the お plus になる frame around it. The rule to carry away is that a special verb is complete in itself: use the frame only where no special verb exists.

Now you. Correct 私わたしが明日あしたいらっしゃいます and 社長しゃちょうは何なにを申もうしましたか.

What to actually learn

If you learn nothing else from this lesson, learn the special verbs in the two tables, because they cover most of what you will hear and are not derivable. Then learn the two frames, お plus stem plus になる and お plus stem plus する, which generate the rest. Then learn お plus stem plus ください, which you will use every time you ask anybody for anything in a formal setting.

What you can safely postpone is producing keigo fluently in conversation. Understanding it is urgent, because it is everywhere in shops, stations, offices and announcements. Producing it can be reduced, without any rudeness, to ordinary です and ます plus the request ladder from the giving and receiving lesson, which will carry you through almost every situation a learner is actually in.

Vocabulary

That is the direction upwards from です. The last lesson goes the other way, into the speech people actually use with their friends, which turns out to have as many rules as this one does.