みたい、らしい、っぽい What's the difference

こんにちは、みんな

So I just discovered the magic that is BunPro and while I was going through my lessons, I did some further reading into みたい(this is the lesson I was doing) and apparently, you could offend someone by using the wrong word (among the three in the title) but they all mean the same to me.

So みたい is basically something/someone looks like something while らしい is basically saying how something is suppose to look like and っぽい is just a whole another level.

てつだってくれてありがとう!

1 Like

There are multiple らしい grammar points, and it sounds like you’re mixing the “hearsay” one with the “is a typical example of” one (which is the one that was mentioned in this first post).

1 Like

Yeah you are right, I’m doing some reading now to clear things up… I found this…

1 Like

would どうやら fit into this mix as well?

Eh, these are all like… N4 level adjectival suffixes that are quite common.

どうやら is an N1 adverb, so I’m not sure it fits into this little difficult-to-parse category.

1 Like

All I can say is that I often come across どうやら when it’s cooperating with よう、みたい、らしい、etc.

どうやら、この先のようだ。

I assume that the translation differs depending on context but maybe you could say that どうやら = it seems that … but i’m not 100% sure.

I don’t know why I’m digging myself down this whole of fake knowledge that I’m inventing here. Don’t listen to me…

1 Like

oh you’re right @Leebo … I did a quick search in my Anki Subs2SRS sentence bank from various shows. So in a bit more than 100,000 sentences. みたい appears almost 900 times, らしい 400 times and both っぽい and どうらや only 50 times.

@heisamaniac … yes, indeed most of the time, どうやら is part of a construction with one of those.

I guess I’ll watch one of the videos explaning the differences now :sweat_smile:

1 Like

っぽい doesn’t carry any negative nuances, it’s just casual. It depends a little on what you use it with, then it forms nuances.
子供みたい like a kid (you behave like a kid)
子どもっぽい like a kid (childlike)
子どもらしい like a kid (as would be expected from a typical kid)

みたい is “makes you think that”, っぽい is just “~ish” and らしい can have various meanings, depending on which grammar point you used.

山本さんがハワイに行ったらしい (they say yamamoto is on vacation in hawaii)
田中さんが男らしい (tanaka is a manly man)
山田さんが女っぽい (yamada is a bit effeminate)

People, especially Japanese-learners, completely overestimate the impact of certain colloquialisms in speech. I can talk with my boss and say あっ、ごめん、失敗しちゃいました
This is not a completely polite sentence, but it’s polite enough to use with even my boss.

Are you just talking about your own specific situation with your specific boss? The typical salaryman wouldn’t say ごめん or ちゃいました to their boss.

1 Like

I’m talking about virtually everyone I know here. People don’t always talk in the politest possible ways, unless they’re in an environment where that’s a must. That’s not the rule here, it’s an exception.

I live in Kansai, so people often do speak less than textbook politeness to their superiors (speaking from experience at a school, which I imagine is more laid back than a large corporation), but that’s not the standard across Japan.

I don’t know what your situation is, but I can’t say that ごめん to one’s boss is considered standard.

It depends on the tempo of your speech, on the emotion you transport. A shocked ごめん sure has an effect. The more you speak in a calm environment, the more time you can take to make sentences polite, but at full speed, you brake just in time to make it ます before you crash into the wall - and that’s in Tokyo.
But even that would not be acceptable if a lowly clerk spoke with a CEO 50 ranks above them in certain companies. It’s more of a daily-life register of speech for somewhat-formal situations. A banker sure won’t speak like this.

My point was, Japanese learners tend to overthink especially politeness matters to a degree that would make a Japanese person smile.

I have no idea what real conversations look like in Kansai, would love to take extended holidays there :slight_smile:

Maybe in 99% of the situations that people encounter as travelers or English teachers… but keigo does exist and Japanese people do use it in the appropriate situations (with superiors), is all.

Most learners never do more than scratch the surface of keigo.

1 Like

Oh of course they do. :wink: And they double down on it by making it ungrammatical to make it even more polite. But they’d probably die to a stroke if they heard a foreigner speak like that, lol.

This topic was automatically closed 365 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.