Chapter 4. Formality
Table of Contents
An important part of Japanese is being able to use the right level of formality in the right situation. Using formal speech in an informal setting makes you sound strange, and using informal speech in a formal setting makes you sound rude. Japanese formality comes in two flavours. Firstly, there's the plain/polite form of speech called 丁寧語, which is principally determined by the absence or use of です/ます. Secondly, there's the use of humble and honorific forms of speech, called 謙譲語 and 尊敬語 respectively, when dealing with vast social status differences between the speaker and listener or speaker and subject. These two 'flavours' are independent of each other, in that one can be plain humble or humble polite, as well as plain honorific and honorific polite, should one want to explore the full range of options.
How and when to talk plain or polite, and when to be humble or when to be honorific, depends very much on the concept of in and out group, as well as familiarity. In ones familiar in group, one can talk in a plain and informal manner, while talking to someone who is part of ones formal in group, or part of an out group, typically warrants polite speech. When one talks to someone in ones out group that is of clearly higher social status and you wish to acknowledge this fact, humble and honorific speech is typically used as well as polite form.
The two main words that determine politeness are the copula です and the helper verb of politeness ます. These two verbs will turn any sentence that is in plain informal form into something that is neutral polite, and suits most situations.
While the copula です is part of 丁寧語, it also has an informal counterpart, だ. This informal version of the copula is a rather tricky verb, and changes a lot depending on when it's used. While the conjugation scheme for です is reasonably regular, the conjugation scheme for だ is not, and there are many instances where だ changes to な or の, or even disappears when a plain form of speech is used.
Before we look at だ more closely, let us look at the conjugation schemes for です, and note a few things that are worth our notice:
| affirmative | negative | |
| present | だ | じゃない |
| ではない | ||
| です | じゃありません | |
| ではありません | ||
| past | だった | じゃなかった |
| ではなかった | ||
| でした | じゃありませんでした | |
| ではありませんでした |
We see two things that are noteworthy here. Firstly, we see that each negative has a では/じゃ pair. This is because colloquially では can be shortened to じゃ. For the negations of だ/です, however, this colloquial contracting is the de facto standard, and using じゃありません is considered formal polite, rather than colloquial. Using では instead of じゃ is considered being more formal. Most of the time you will want to use the formal polite versions of the copula, which is basically always safe, polite, language.
Secondly, we see that there are two possible negatives, one using ない and one using ありません. This hints at the presence of ある somewhere, which can be found in the more classical copula combination である (which explains the modern plain past tense だった). This classical form is considered curt in modern Japanese, so it is best avoided.
As mentioned, だ is a relatively unstable verb. It tends to change pronunciation or even disappear depending on which construction it's used in. There aren't any real rules that exist for this change (except for one), so the easiest thing is to just show what happens in which cases. Also, if we look at the bases for だ, we see some pretty funky stuff:
| 未然形 | だろ |
| 連用形 | だつ (で) |
| 連体形 | な |
| 終止形 | だ |
| 已然形 | なら |
One of the funky things is that the 終止形 is actually listed - this is because だ is one of the few words for which the roles of the 終止形 and the 連体形 are still preserved in modern Japanese, with the 終止形 being used as sentence ending form, and the 連体形 being used as predicative form. This is a good indicator that だ is not a normal "plain form" of です, but actually a different classical verb, and with this in mind we continue to look at how it behaves under certain circumstances when used in larger sentences.
| ・ noun phrases: 本だ。 ("It's a book.") |
Using this sentence as our basic clause for other sentences, we first notice that だ is in its sentence ending form だ and that all is well.
| ・ noun adjectives: きれいだ。 ("It's pretty.") |
Again when we use だ instead of です and all is well.
| ・ quoting statement: 本だと思います。 ("I think it's a book.") |
The quoting statement quotes the phrase "本だ" (the first phrase in this list). This construction doesn't change the way だ is used, so we're still safe.
| ・ reasoning: 本だから、... 。 ("Because it is a book, ...") |
Here too, we see that だ is left alone and we can use our initial noun phrase directly in our larger sentence.
| ・ implicit reason: 本なんです。 ("It's [because it is] a book.") |
Here something odd has happened: だ has changed into な. Whenever だ precedes a particle の or ん, it changes its reading to な instead.
| ・ reasoning: 本なので、... 。 ("Due to it being a book, ...") |
Same story, same change.
| ・ descriptive: 本のようです。 ("Like a book.") |
Here we see that だ has changed into の. Why it does this is not really known, but it just does. While we're really saying "本だ" combined with "ようです", the way よう works means we have to change だ into の. While this might seem like the genetive pair 本のよう, if we use it for a person, then we still see の: なお君だ, "It's Nao", + ようです becomes なお君のようです.
| ・ possibility: 本かもしれない。 ("It might be a book.") |
This and the following two cases are even more drastic. Instead of changing だ, it is omitted entirely (and has to be, putting it in would be wrong). While we want to say "本だ" (it is a book) + "かもしれない" (might be), we need to drop the だ before we're allowed to do this.
| ・ similarity: 本みたい。 ("It looks to be a book.") |
Just like with かもしれない, we must drop the だ if we want to say something looks like something else using みたい.
| ・ verbal adjectives: 大きい。 ("It's big.") |
Finally, for verbal adjectives the plain form simply doesn't use だ. Saying for instance 大きいだ would be wrong.
As you have seen, there are a few loops to だ that you have to remember when you use it, but hopefully with enough practice this will become second nature and you will simply pick the right version of the copula when forming your sentences.
Like です, ます is a principally formal polite verb, but it's not as fickle as です is. The only things worth noting are that ます relies on です to form its negative past tense, and that the negative is formed only with ん; there is no ない past tense.
| affirmative | negative | |
| present | ます | ません |
| past | ました | ませんでした |
There's much less to tell about ます than there is about です, so having looked at its conjugations again, it is best to move on.
There is one more verb that facilitates politeness, and that's the verb ござる. This verb is the polite counterpart to ある, and has a special set of bases:
| 未然形 | ござら |
| 連用形 | ござい |
| 連体形 | ござる |
| 已然形 | ござれ |
| 命令形 | ござい |
This explains why the ございます you always hear really comes from ござる, and why it shouldn't be ござります as you would expect if ござる were a normal 五段 verb (which it would be in classical Japanese). There are four more verbs that share this irregularity, namely いらっしゃる, おっしゃる, なさる and 下さる, the first three of which we shall see in the honorifics section, and the last of which will come back in the section on giving and receiving.
As mentioned, while polite speech is principally formed using です/ます form, speech tuned for the social difference between the speaker and the listener is done using humble and honorific speech. These are different from です/ます in that they can in part be formed using conjugations, but may also involve choosing different verbs that mean the exact same as their non-honorific/humble counterparts.
When one addresses someone that is socially much higher than oneself, it is customary to lower one's own status by using humble speech. One way to make verbs humble, is to prefix it with the honorific particle 御 (usually お, except for a few [音読み noun] + する verbs, for which it is pronounced ご instead), place the verb in its 連用形 form, and append either する or the even more humble いたす (致す). This doesn't change the meaning of the verb in any way, but only makes it humble - a concept that quite often trips up people learning humble/honorific form. If we examine the various possible normal and humble forms, we see a sentence that in all instances means the exact same, but is perceived as having different politeness levels:
| 断る。 |
| [I] refuse. (informal) |
| 断ります。 |
| [I] refuse. (formal polite) |
| 断りします。 |
| [I] refuse. (using noun form + する, more formal than formal polite) |
| お断りする。 |
| I refuse. (plain humble. As this is humble form, the only person this can apply to is first person) |
| お断りします。 |
| I refuse. (humble polite. As this is humble form, the only person this can apply to is first person) |
| お断り致す。 |
| I refuse. (plain, but more humble than when using する. As this is humble form, the only person this can apply to is first person) |
| お断り致します。 |
| I refuse. (polite and more humble than when using する. As this is humble form, the only person this can apply to is first person) |
All these seven forms say the exact same thing, except the perceived level of politeness/humility is different.
Not all verbs can be turned into humble form like this, though. For some verbs, it doesn't make sense to use a humble form, such as the verb 怖がる meaning "to fear", or the compound verb 扱使う which means "to work someone hard", for which a humble form is obviously out of place. Other verbs, such as 見る meaning "to see" or 食る meaning "to eat" have special humble verbs instead of a conjugated humble form.
The following table is a list of verbs and their humble counterparts:
| verb | meaning | humble counterpart |
| 来る | come | 参る |
| 行く | go | |
| いる | be / exist (for animate objects) | おる |
| 言う | say / be called | 申す |
| する | do | 致す |
| 知る | know | 存じる |
| 見る | see | 拝見する |
| 食べる | eat | いただく |
| 飲む | drink | |
| 貰う | receive | |
| 聞く | ask | 伺う |
| 聞く | listen | 承る |
| 上る | give | 差し上げる |
| 会う | meet | お目に掛かる |
| 見せる | show | ご覧に入れる |
Also a very short list of 音読み+する verbs that get ご instead of お in the humbling pattern:
| verb | meaning | humble counterpart |
| 注意する | pay attention to | ご注意する/致す |
| 注文する | order [something] | ご注文する/致す |
Just as one humbles oneself when facing someone of much higher social status, it is also customary to use honorific speech when referring to this person's actions or state. Similar to how verbs can be made humble by using the 御+連用形+する/致す, pattern, nearly all verbs can be made honorific by using the same pattern but with に+なる/なさる instead of する/致す:
| 断る。 |
| [He] refuses. (informal) |
| 断ります。 |
| [He] refuses. (formal polite) |
| 断りします。 |
| [He] refuses. (using noun form + する, more formal than formal polite) |
| お断りになる。 |
| [He] refuses. (plain honorific. As this is honorific form, this can no longer apply to first person) |
| お断りになります。 |
| [He] refuses. (polite honorific) |
| お断りなさる。 |
| [He] refuses. (plain, but more honorific than when using に+なる) |
| お断りなさっています。 |
| [He] refuses. (polite and more honorific than when using に+なる) |
Again, just like with the humble form, there are verbs that are not put in this particular pattern, but instead are replaced with special honorific verbs. Notice that the last phrase uses a present progressive instead of plain present. While using なさいます is grammatically possible, using なさっています sounds more natural.
The following table is a list of verbs and their honorific counterparts:
| verb | meaning | honorific counterpart |
| 来る | come | いらっしゃる |
| お出でになる | ||
| お出でなさる | ||
| 行く | go | いらっしゃる |
| お出でになる | ||
| お出でなさる | ||
| いる | be / exist (for animate objects) | いらっしゃる |
| お出でなさる | ||
| 言う | say / be called | おっしゃる |
| する | do | なさる |
| 知る | know | ご存知る |
| ご存知でいらっしゃる | ||
| 見る | see | ご覧になる |
| ご覧なさる | ||
| 食る | eat | 召し上がる, in this context 召し refers to summons |
| 飲む | drink | 召し上がる |
| 寝る | sleep | お休みになる |
| お休みなさる | ||
| 思う | think | 思し召す |
| (normal honorific pattern also possible) | ||
| 着る | wear (on the body) | お召しになる, in this context 召し refers to clothing |
And the very short list of 音読み+する verbs that get ご instead of お in the humbling pattern:
| verb | meaning | honorific counterpart |
| 注意する | pay attention to | ご注意になる/なさる |
| 注文する | order [something] | ご注文になる/なさる |