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 Posted: Wed Mar 24, 2010 7:16 pm
こんにちは みんなさん！
けいごはすごくむずかしいですね？ 今勉強していますけど、よくわかりません。
I'm studying keigo (honorific speech) right now, and I'll admit I'm a little confused. The speech itself is difficult but I'm more confused about when it should be used. I understand the baisic concept, but can anyone give a more comprehensive explanation of when, to whom, and in what situations it is appropriate / necessicary to use keigo?
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Posted: Thu Mar 25, 2010 11:31 am
Well, you know the different levels of speech politeness, right?
For example:
Ore - can be rude if you don't know the person
Atashi/boku - casual, can be used in casual work environment
Watashi - formal, most men use boku even in work because it can seem effeminate if it's not, say, a business meeting or more formal business.
Watakushi - so formal it's not even used in 99% of situations.
Most keigo references should have examples; like when to use sonkeigo. It also depends on who is doing the talking, who you are speaking to, what your social levels are, etc.
It's just confusing......
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Posted: Thu Mar 25, 2010 7:32 pm
The basic idea behind the different levels of Keigo is in how you raise and lower the positions of the people in the conversation. Informal language puts you both at the ground level, and neutral language(the kind you often learn very early on in your language classes and books) puts you and the lister at equal and respectful level.
More humble language is a bit more involved, with Sonkeigo raising the position of the speaker and Kenjougo(also referred to as Kensongo) lowers yours, and thus shows you're willing to give more of your position to the speaker and show them more respect. Each one has it's own kinds of vocabulary, grammatical structure and rules to learn(Kenjougo, for example, lowers the position of everyone you think's in your inner circle, so doing it to someone who isn't can be quite insulting to them), and the more of it you get right, the more you can make your way through the different worlds of Japanese society.
This stuff is so serious that back in the day, if you got this wrong with figures of authority, off went your head(feel free to correct me with some historical info/sources if I'm wrong). Nowadays, it's a bit less dire if you get these wrong, and Japanese natives often play around with it when they wanna talk about different subjects(the words they use to refer to sucking the salami and backsides, for example[fera and shiri, respectively], often come with the honorific suffix o- when brought up in conversation).
There's a lot to this than I can think of at the moment, but this is the kind of stuff you should keep in mind when you're looking to speak Japanese with different people in different positions of influence.
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