Talk:Honorific speech in Japanese

shikari

I was contemplating removing "hai" from the tables at Combining respect and politeness, where it was inserted as a formal variant of "yes". It is indeed a formal word, but not exclusively so. Then I saw the word shikari in the same column. It's supposed to be a formal word for yes. Now, my level of Japanese is, all humbleties aside, very high, but I've never heard of this word before. My Kojien doesn't have it. And Kojien includes all kinds of stuff, even archaic and regional words. So I'm wondering: where does this come from? Can anyone confirm the existance of this word? TomorrowTime 14:47, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

My kojien has it. Maybe you weren't expecting it to be in kanji? しかり【然り】(自ラ変）（シカアリの約）そうである。その通りである。

That said,　I think that entire table is confusing and not really helpful. When it says that ある is formal form, it is obviously not referring to spoken language. Should we perhaps delete it? Mackan 20:54, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Naruhodo. My bad, I missed that.

Well, this: 私 (wata(ku)shi), being the general first-person pronoun, is also used by females isn't an example of a concise and understandable sentence, either. I'm not sure what should be done about the table, but for starters, I'll see if I can clarify the above sentence a bit. Oh, and I'll also remove hai from the "formal" column :) TomorrowTime 11:56, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

keigo in business

I removed this part from the Usage: Business section:

Keigo is used when attendants speak to a customer (even in the supermarket and on trains), in formal business meetings, by women in jidaigeki (in all situations) and by educated people in general.

Ok, point by point:

-attendants to customers: this part I wouldn't mind seeing re-inserted somewhere. The bracketed explanation is a bit superfluos, though.

-formal business meetings: this is already covered in the section.

-women in jidaigeki: huh? I thought the section was on keigo in business enviroments...

-educated people in general: possibly worth reinclusion, but would have to be thorougly rephrased. I've met educated people that weren't all that hot on keigo. Keigo is not a sign of education, and a lack of keigo doesn't necesarily mean a lack of education. TomorrowTime 13:57, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was move. JPG-GR (talk) 06:49, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

As noted in several comments above, this page covers a very notable aspect of the Japanese language, keigo, but the current name is misleading. One would expect to find Japanese titles or Japanese pronouns used as terms of address, and they're now both on different pages. I suggest we move the page to Honorific speech in Japanese. I think "honorific speech" is indeed the phrase commonly used to refer to keigo in English, as in the title of Miyo Okada's book; "polite speech" is used as well, but it's mostly used for 丁寧語 specifically. Keigo will continue to redirect here as expected. There's a redirect for sonkeigo as well; it may be appropriate to create kenjōgo and teineigo as well for consistency.

Along those lines, this article is clearly not the right place to merge Oneesama. Bikasuishin (talk) 10:24, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

One quick comment: the merger proposal for oneesama is the result of an AFD ([1]), and as such already discussed and agreed upon. I agree that this is not the place to merge to - Japanese titles would be a better place. TomorrowTime (talk) 12:21, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Survey

• Support move to Honorific speech in Japanese as it is a more clear title. ···日本穣^{? · Talk to Nihonjoe} 19:24, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
• Weak support, but make sure you have a redirect page. Bearian (talk) 21:29, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Discussion

The current title is not the best; the Japanese titles article belongs here instead. But are there more cited examples of English terms for keigo? One that is used in liguistics is register (linguistics). Another article that straddles honorifics and honorific speech is Korean honorifics. Should it be dealt with now as well? — AjaxSmack 01:20, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Keigo refers to a single, or rather a small range of, speech registers in Japanese. Basically, it's the formal and the more formal.

As for moving, or splitting, the Korean honorifics page, it sounds like a good idea from this non Korean-speaker's uninformed perspective. Bikasuishin (talk) 20:52, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

(Outdent) Concerning Bearian's comment that a redirect page is needed: where should Japanese honorifics redirect if the move is endorsed? Should it continue to redirect here, or rather to Japanese titles? Bikasuishin (talk) 23:06, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Japanese honorifics should redirect to Japanese titles, not here, and maybe that article should even be renamed Japanese honorifics itself. (cf. other articles at Category:Honorifics). — AjaxSmack 02:50, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

teineigo

Is there a good reason the "teineigo" section of the verb table has everything in plain form? I don't agree with some of the word choices here, but presumably they were put there by someone who knows what they're doing. I simply question the "teineigo" verbs not being conjugated in です/ます form. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 118.243.60.186 (talk) 18:02, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

言うとおっしゃる

Could someone add 'to say' to the verb table.Tibetologist (talk) 12:48, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

? It's already in the table. Oda Mari (talk) 13:55, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Needs cleanup

The article contains little to no references to external sources, and the Japanese examples are rendered sometimes in latin letters only, sometimes in Japanese script only. It really needs a serious cleanup, possibly from someone who is an expert of the Japanese language and linguistics. 80.99.14.241 (talk) 16:15, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

Honorific prefixes: oyu/ocha example

I wonder if the o-yu/o-cha example is the best that can be given. Although it is of course true that yu and cha are also used, one could argue that the 御-forms are the default whereas removing the honorific prefix results in a marked expression (cf. the fourth paragraph of the section; お金 is another example; お金 isn't necessarily polite, whereas just using 金 could sound a bit rough). This contrasts with, for example, the default 暇 and the marked お暇, 一緒に and ご一緒に. Which would mean that the current photograph of the tea machine is in fact not an illustration of how words are prefixed to mark for politeness/honorific speech.

What are everybody's opinions on this?

Niels van der Salm (talk) 01:22, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

A couple of suggestions

I know nothing about Japanese, so these may not be relevant. 1. An example in the article uses "would you like some tea?" as a rough, less polite form; wouldn't "do you want some tea?" serve the purpose better? 2. Regarding the manual keigo not being strictly correct (since nothing is "becoming", in the example given): this seems very like the over-polite and dubious use in English of "yourself" instead of "you", e.g. "what can I do for yourself?" - now often heard from UK salespeople; unsure about North America. Equinox (talk) 04:44, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

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Why does Keigo redirect here?

Since it’s called Keigo, shouldn’t the title of the article be Keigo and not Honorific speech in Japanese? GenZenny💖 (talk) 21:02, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

@GenZenny: "Keigo" is the Japanese word. This is not an English word. The English Wikipedia has a preference for English-language article titles, where possible. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 22:26, 21 November 2022 (UTC)