Shortening 〜れは and 〜れば into 〜りゃ is really common in anime, for what it’s worth, so it’s definitely well known.
I have a question about this sentence
じゃあ、ここで失礼しつれいします。
Is it grammartically clash in term of politeness? (I can’t find a better term)
じゃあ、<<< casual
ここで失礼しつれいします。<<<< Polite
From my understanding we should use the same level of politeness across the sentence or even the whole conversation. Is this sample sentence gramartically incorrect?
Thank you! I appreciate it
Guess I better watch more anime lol
Politeness is complex because there are many layers to it.
I indeed wouldn’t use じゃあ、ここで失礼します with my boss at work because じゃあ is way too casual.
But I can totally picture one using it on a school/college setting for example. You might use ですます with your senpais to show respect while still using じゃあ、because you are all students and can be casual. I would also say it to work colleagues I’m close with when it’s just the two of us or so.
I would say that for this specific example, ではxじゃ is more about formal x casual while ですます is more about politeness (in the Keigo sense)
The question may be dumb but what does ことを at the end of a sentence mean?
Sounds like nominaliser こと and then implying a predicate. Got an example sentence?
生涯にわったて、その笑顔の記憶に「苦しめられる」ことを
It’s from a game but I also saw similar sentences in manga.
Thanks a lot. I just didn’t expect to see this type of politeness clashing in a sample sentence from a learning resource. So I was a bit confuse it this is exceptable in formal writing. I’ve seen this k sometimes in anime and manga with sarcrastic feeling.
The example you gave as senpai and kohai make a lot of sense for me.
Was there a sentence (fragment) before it? Something like 「絶対に許さない」maybe?
If you listen to real people talk, it’s not unusual for politeness level to shift from sentence to sentence, unless you’re dealing with a large gap in social position. If the two people know each other well in a professional setting, it’s totally normal to see casual and polite mixed together.
Also, some expressions just always sound better polite even if you’re talking to your closest friend in the world.
There really is something like that two sentences before that この時の自分はまだ知らない。
It makes sense now At that time I didn’t know yet. This… and that…
Thanks I had no idea I would need to go back three sentences to understand it.
In what conversation context would you use 対談 as opposed to 会話?
I thought maybe 対談 might have more of a negative connotation, but the examples I found in the dictionary use it in a positive expression.
Scratching my head on this one.
対談 is not that much of an everyday word, actually.
The first image that comes to my mind of 対談 is like two experts being invited to discuss about a given topic, either live or on a written article.
If you just google 対談, most of the entries are politics or business related interviews, talk shows or articles.
会話 is the catch-all term for conversation in general, you get to hear it all the time.
Ohh, that makes sense according to the dictionary examples, too.
Thank you! <3
If you look at monolingual dictionaries, you’ll find that 対談 more strongly suggests that there are two sides in the conversation, which makes sense given that 対 – ‘to face’, ‘versus’ – is used. That aside, I think 談 might have a slightly stronger nuance of there being a lengthy exchange, but this is just a personal impression based on the examples I see under the kanji in monolingual dictionaries + what I’ve seen as a Chinese speaker, so it might not be accurate. However, I think both of these things tie into what @SyncroPC said.
会話 seems to be simply defined as multiple people talking to each other. There’s nothing implied about two sides facing each other, and the kanji literally mean ‘meet speaking’. That aside, 会話 has a specific use when it comes to talking about conversation (practice) in a foreign language that 対談 can’t be used for.
Thank you for the answer and all the specific detail, I feel like I’ll never mess up these two contextually now
Is it practically possible to be humble yet casual?
For example, can I say?
来週までに連絡をいたす
not
来週までに連絡をいたします
If it’s possible what situation should I use it?
Perhaps when you’re talking to friends about your relations with someone of higher status?
That’s when you’d use causal + honorific form, in any case.
It sounds like I’m playing a 4D chess in term of langauge.
Your explanation make perfect sense to me. I just feel like it would take me a good amount of years in Japan to be able to use it naturally.
Yes.
Indeed. However, this only works with a specific type of humble speech, and technically shouldn’t be done with the other sort.
There are two sorts of humble speech: typical 謙譲語(謙譲語I), which lowers the status of the speaker relative to the receiver of the action, and 丁重語(謙譲語II), which shows respect to the listener. The sort of humble speech that relates to status (謙譲語I) can be used in the casual form just like honorific speech – after all, both of them are about the relationship between and the relative statuses of the doer or receiver and the speaker. However, in the case of 丁重語 (which I guess you could translate as ‘courteous’ or ‘attentively polite’ speech; it’s literally about ‘giving weight’ to someone in your considerations and treating them in an esteemed fashion), because it’s about respecting the listener, it’s strange to dial it back to the dictionary form, at least in conversation, because that doesn’t line up with the expressed desire to show respect.
Here’s a post I wrote about this same topic a while back:
If you look at the article in Japanese I linked to in that post, you’ll see that「昨日部長のお宅に参ったよ」is raised as an example of something that would be strange in a conversation between colleagues, even if the conversation is casual. (It’s in section 3 of the article, if you feel like looking.)
As such,
Not really. Why? Because いたす is 丁重語. It’s a respectful way of describing your own actions to the listener, so it’s not natural to use it in a casual fashion.
Perhaps it would be helpful to see social etiquette as a 2D (and not 4D ) thing. There are two axes:
- Relative status (you could see this as being related to the ‘form’ or ‘formal’ part of politeness – it’s like a sort of protocol that you follow just because you need to show that difference in status)
- Respect (to the person being discussed, but at times also to the listener)
They’re not completely unrelated, but they’re also not that closely linked. That aside, I guess you should also consider the fact that there are always three groups of people when you describe actions:
- You (and your group)
- The listener(s)
- The receiver or doer of the action being described
Different sorts of respectful speech show consideration to different groups and account for differences in status and the amount of respect shown to each group in different ways. Maybe using these ideas to guide you will make it easier to understand.