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Honorific and Humble Forms
Japanese can be roughly separated into three levels of politeness: casual, polite, and honorific/humble. So far, we have already gone over the polite
forms using 「~です」 and 「~ます」. We will now cover the next level of politeness using honorific and humble forms. You will often hear this type of
language in any customer/consumer type situations such as fast food counters, etc. For now, the first thing to remember
is that the speaker always considers himself/herself to be at the lowest level. So any actions performed by oneself are in humble form while
actions performed by anyone else seen from the view of the speaker uses the honorific form.
Set Expressions
The difficult part of learning honorific and humble language is that there are a number of words that have separate verbs for honorific and humble
forms. Anything that does
not have it's own special expression fall under the general rules of humble and honorific conjugations that we will cover next.
Honorific and Humble Verbs
Plain
Honorific
Humble
する
なさる
致す
行く
いらっしゃる/おいでになる
参る
来る
いらっしゃる/おいでになる
参る
いる
いらっしゃる/おいでになる
おる
見る
ご覧になる
拝見する
聞く
-
伺う
言う
おっしゃる
申す/申し上げる
あげる
差し上げる
-
くれる
下さる
-
もらう
-
いただく
食べる
召し上がる
-
知っている
ご存知(です)
存じる
Honorific verbs with special conjugations
A number of these verbs do not follow the normal masu-conjugation rules and they include: 「なさる」、「いらっしゃる」、「おっしゃる」、「下さる」、 and 「ござる」 (which we will soon cover).
For all masu-form tenses of these verbs, instead of the 「る」 becoming a 「り」 as it does with normal u-verbs, it instead becomes an 「い」.
Any conjugations besides the masu-form do not change from regular u-verbs.
ます-conjugations
Plain
ます-form
Past ます-form
Negative ます-form
Past-negative ます-form
なさる
なさいます
なさいました
なさいません
なさいませんでした
いらっしゃる
いらっしゃいます
いらっしゃいました
いらっしゃいません
いらっしゃいませんでした
おっしゃる
おっしゃいます
おっしゃいました
おっしゃいません
おっしゃいませんでした
下さる
下さいます
下さいました
下さいません
下さいませんでした
ござる
ございます
ございました
ございません
ございませんでした
Examples of honorific form
We can now begin to see that 「ください」 is just a special conjugation of 「下さる」 which is the humble version of 「くれる」. Let's look at some actual examples.
Since these examples are all questions directed directly to someone (second person), they all use the honorific form.
(1) アリスさん、もう召し上がりましたか。- Alice-san, did [you] eat already?
(2) 仕事で何をなさっているんですか。- What are you doing at work?
(3) 推薦状を書いてくださいますか。- Can you give me the favor of writing a recommendation letter?
(4) どちらからいらっしゃいましたか。- Where did you come from?
(5) 今日、どこへいらっしゃいますか。- Where are you going today?
Examples of humble form
The following examples are all actions done by the speaker so they all use the humble form.
(1) 私はキムと申します。- As for me, [people] say Kim. (I am called Kim.)
(2) 私が書いたレポートを見ていただけますか。
(3) 失礼致します。- Excuse me. (lit: I am doing a discourtesy.)
Other substitutions
In addition to these set expressions, there are some words that also have more polite counterparts.
Probably the most important is the politer version of 「ある」, which is 「ござる」. This verb can be used for both inanimate and animate objects.
It is neither honorific nor humble but it is a step above 「ある」 in politeness. However, unless you want to sound like a samurai,
「ござる」 is always used in the masu-form: 「ございます」.
By extension, the politer version of 「です」 is 「でございます」. This is essentially the
Examples
(1A) こちらは、私の部屋です。- Over here is my room.
(1B) こちらは、私の部屋でございます。- This way is my room.
(2A) お手洗いはこのビルの二階にあります。- The bathroom is in the second floor of this building.
(2B) お手洗いはこのビルの二階にございます。- The bathroom is in the second floor of this building.
Other examples include 「いい」, which is more formally expressed as 「よろしい」.
There are also six different ways to say, "I'm sorry" (not counting 「悪いね」 or slight inflection changes like 「すいません」).
Successively politer expressions for apologizing:
(1) ごめん。
(2) ごめんなさい。
(3) すみません。
(4) 申し訳ありません。 (申し訳 is the humble form of 言い訳)
(5) 恐れ入ります。
(6) 恐縮です。
In addition, the politest suffix for names is 「様」, one level above 「さん」. You won't be using this suffix too often in actual speech
even if you speak to that person in honorific/humble speech. However, expect to use it when writing letters even to people you are
somewhat familiar with. Also, service people such as cashiers or waitresses/waiters will normally refer to the customer as 「お客様」.
Of course, royalty and deities are always accompanied by 「様」 such as 「神様」.
Honorific and Humble Conjugations
For any other verbs, there are conjugation rules to change verbs into an honorific and humble form. They both involve a common
practice of attaching a polite prefix 「御」. In Japanese, there is an annoying practice of attaching an honorific prefix 「御」
to certain (not all) nouns to show politeness. In fact, some words like 「お酒」、 「お茶」、or 「お金」
come with this prefix so often that it's become practically the word itself. In general, 「御」 is written in hiragana as either 「ご」 for words read as
音読み (例: ご意見、ご飯) or 「お」 for words read as
訓読み (例: お金、
お仕事). In fact, you may have been using this prefix already without realizing it
like 「お好み焼き」 or 「お土産」.
There are some exceptions to this rule such as 「お返事」. Luckily since
「御」 is rarely written in kanji, identifying the exceptions should not really be a problem.
Honorific Form
The honorific form of verbs that are not among the set honorific expressions given above can be formed as follows:
Honorific Conjugation: お + stem + に + なる
This kind of makes sense if you think of it as a person becoming the honorific state of a verb. All conjugations follow the normal rules of
conjugating the u-verb 「なる」. To be honest, this type of sentence formulation is rarely used.
(1) 先生はどうお考えになりますか。- Teacher, what do you think?
「見る」, which becomes 「ご覧になる」 is an exception because instead of the verb stem, a noun is used.
(2) 私の本をご覧になりましたか。- Have you seen my book?
You'll hear this as soon as you go into a fast food restaurant.
(1) 店内でお召し上がりですか。- Will you be dining inside here?
Service people want to be extra polite so they will often use this type of "double honorific" conjugation or 二重敬語. Whether it's
necessary or grammatically proper is another story.
(2) もうお帰りですか。- You're going home already?
(3) お手数ですが、これを直していただけますか。- It's a bother for you, but can I receive the favor of you correcting this for me?
Using 「ください」 with honorifics
A more often-used type of honorific expression is the combination of honorific with 「下さい」. This is done by replacing 「になる」 with 「ください」.
Yet another favorite expression.
(1) 少々お待ちください。- Please wait a moment.
Similarly, with 「ご覧になる」, you simply replace 「になる」 with 「ください」.
(2) こちらにご覧下さい。- Please look this way.
This works for other nouns as well. For example, riding the trains...
(3) 閉まるドアにご注意下さい。- Please be careful of the closing doors.
Humble Form
Humble verbs are formed in the following fashion.
Humble Conjugation: お + stem + する
You've probably already heard this before but now you know exactly where it comes from.
(1) よろしくお願いします。- I properly make request.
(2) 先生、お聞きしたいことがありますが。- Teacher, there's something I want to ask you.
(3) すみません、お待たせしました。- Sorry, I made you wait (causative form).
(4) 千円からお預かりいたします。- We'll be holding on [from?] your 1000 yen.
You'll hear something like this, for example, when you need to get change after paying 1000 yen.
Again, the 二重敬語 where 「する」 has been converted to the humble 「致す」 form when it's already in the お+stem+する humble form. Some
Japanese people complain that this makes no sense and that 「から」 should really be 「を」.
Making honorific requests
Now, we're going to look at how that's done using honorific verbs. This grammar only applies to the honorific verbs with special 「~ます」 conjugations that we
just covered. This includes 「下さる」、「いらっしゃる」、「なさる」、and 「おっしゃる」. I've never actually seen this used with 「おっしゃる」, but it's grammatically possible.
Making requests for honorific actions
Conjugate the honorific verb to the special masu-conjugation and replace the last 「す」 with 「せ」
例) 下さる → 下さいます → 下さいませ 例) いらっしゃる → いらっしゃいます → いらっしゃいませ
An abbreviated and less formal version of this is to simply remove the 「ます」 after conjugating to special the masu-form
例) 下さる → 下さいます → 下さい 例) いらっしゃる → いらっしゃいます → いらっしゃい
Now you finally know where grammar such as 「しなさい」 and 「してください」 actually came from.
Let's look at a few quick examples.
Examples
You'll probably hear this one a million times every time you enter some kind of store in Japan.
(1) いらっしゃいませ。- Please come in!
However, a middle-aged sushi chef will probably use the abbreviated version.
(2) いらっしゃい!- Please come in!
Some more examples...
(3) ありがとうございました。またお越しくださいませ。- Thank you very much. Please come again.
(4) どうぞ、ごゆっくりなさいませ。- Please take your time and relax.
I am the one thinks this is not correct. (4)千円からお預かりいたします。
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