Quote:
Originally Posted by KyleGoetz
In English, we call
敬語 keigo (students don't translate this, but when we explain it to someone who doesn't know anything about Japanese, we tend to say "polite language" or something like that)
丁寧語 polite [form] or "desu/masu form"
謙譲語 humble [form]
尊敬語 honorific [form]
普通体 plain [form]
Some sample sentences:
"We studied お〜になる in class, but I still don't understand honorific speech."
"When you talk with friends, use plain form."
"Dictionary form is the present tense plain form."
For reference, pretty much no student in the US learns 美化語 as a term. When talking about this, we just describe it. We never say "use bikago in polite speech." Instead, we'd say something like "Use the o/go prefix in polite speech."
And, in all honesty, we usually don't learn how to properly use it anyway except for
Most students of Japanese, in my experience, never learn to tell the difference between Japanese and Sino-Japanese words. I remember when I began being able to; it was a huge revelation. Took me about a year and a half or two years of study I think.
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Oh~~thank you so much, Kyle-sensei...!
So... 敬語 includes 丁寧語,尊敬語 and 謙譲語, and 普通体 is something that's not 敬語, right? Oh I don't remember learning the word 普通体...I'm even not sure if I've ever seen this word in my life...あほやん！どうしよう 笑!!
OK now I understand why 敬語 is not translated. Because we'd get confused with 丁寧語 if we did.
美化語（びかご）...OK I'll check my Japanese dictionary (again...).
'o/go prefix.' 今覚えました(^^)
Yes, o/go must be difficult, I guess. I don't think I can explain the usage of お and 御, I'm just using them without thinking about any rules...We say お茶 but not 御茶(gocha), we say ご飯 but not お飯(ohan). お水。お湯。お料理。お食事。ご機嫌。ご無沙汰。ご進 物。お知らせ。お尻。ご本。お豆腐。お箸。お豆さん(wh at is this さん？！ww) お言葉。お世話。お車。おみ足...！？ww お手洗い、お洗濯、ご登場、ご対面、...ルールが…難し いです～（^_^;）