Revising Honorific Language in Japanese – Part 1

Revising honorific language in Japanese – Part 1

🍑 REVISING HONORIFIC LANGUAGE (I) 🍑

Is anyone here thrown and flustered by HONORIFIC LANGUAGE?

HONORIFIC LANGUAGE covers: respectful language + humble language, not only respectful language as many of you imagine.

There is a great deal to learn about HONORIFIC LANGUAGE, and it is dreadfully hard to remember. So let us take it slowly, learning one pattern at a time and learning it properly, rather than getting through the lot and not being able to produce a single decent sentence.

Reaching for humble language when you need respectful language would be fatal =)) 😂😅🤣

Today MoMo introduces the 2 most useful HONORIFIC patterns:

♦️① お＋V( drop ます)＋になる
♦️② お/ご＋V( drop ます)＋ する

🍑 Structure ①: respectful language, used for the actions of someone above you, someone you are not close to, a business partner or a client.

Note that this pattern is used only with Group I verbs, or Group 2 verbs of 2 SYLLABLES or more (once ます is dropped)

先生はもうお帰りになりました。The teacher has gone home (the welcome-home greeting お帰りなさい comes from this very pattern)

社長は昨日お亡くなりになりました。The director passed away yesterday.

🍑 Structure ②: humble language, used for your own actions → lowering yourself to raise the other person.

👌ご案内します。Allow me to show you the way

✌️かばんをお持ちしましょうか？Shall I carry your bag, sir?

👌明日の日程をお送りします。Allow me to send you tomorrow's schedule

✌️明日再度ご連絡します 。Allow me to get in touch again tomorrow

This pattern and させて頂く are the two you will use again and again when you write emails to other parties.

Forget anything else, but don't forget this pattern; get it into your head right now.

❤️ How do you remember these 2 patterns? ❤️

For humble language we use お/ご＋V( drop ます)＋ する. That is: the one below is usually the one who has to DO things, so it goes with the verb する。 The one above merely になる.

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We hope this is useful to you as a learner of Japanese.
Thanks to the Tiếng nhật online MoMo fanpage for sharing.
Good luck with your studies and your exam.