~屋 vs ~屋さん confusion

Sorry if its a really noob question but:

This was a sentence from iKnow! :

昨日、友達とお風呂屋さんに行った。

I know that 風呂屋 means bathhouse, and from my basic knowledge, attaching ~さん is always done to a person’s name as some sort of respect, especially when first time meeting.

Why do they attach ~さん to a place here? How is it different without the ~さん?

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Yeah, I was taught that shop name + さん is a polite way of referring to the shop keeper without having to resort to second-person pronouns - like, for example, 本屋さん works at a bookshop, 八百屋さん is a grocer, and so forth. In よつばと, though, Yotsuba typically uses ~さん to refer to the shop itself, and noone ever corrects her on it, soooo… I guess that’s a thing?

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I’ve never seen people require that it needs to be referring to an individual in order to add さん for stores.

I imagine it comes from a time when you would actually know who the person was who ran a particular shop, but now even if we’re going to a massive international chain, I’ll hear people say 本屋さん.

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I mean if you go to a shop, go buy things at a shop, etc., you could also say you are going to the shop owner, buy things from the shop owner, etc.
So it is not outside the realm of possibilities for the ~屋さん term to have evolved to become applicable for both terms.

Isn’t it just a polite way to refer to a shop? :man_shrugging:

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Does that mean that you can translate the sentence:

昨日、友達とお風呂屋さんに行った。

as “Yesterday, I went to the bathhouse owner with my friend” ?

Which feels weird, I think? :thinking:

However, iKnow translation was “I went to a bathhouse with my friend yesterday”. I don’t still quite get it in this case. I can understand with bookshops for some reason, like you go to the bookstore owner to buy books, but this one is really puzzling, because I don’t go to bathhouse owner to take a bath, you know? (tell me I’m just overthinking this)

I also thought it was just like this, so I was hoping for some kind of confirmation haha :sweat_smile:

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I agree that it is just a politer way to refer to the shop itself.

People also add 〜さん to company names (like 任天堂さん), so there’s definitely no explicit requirement for it to be a person!

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さん is super general, you can also use it like ねこさん (Mr. Cat?) or company names like Mitsubishiさん. It doesn’t have to be a person.

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I know Japanese language tends to be really really really polite, and it is puzzling why one should use polite tone to stores :sweat_smile: Guess can’t do anything about it.

Thanks for clarifying this! :grin:

It is technically referring to the person, but it’s kind of like the difference between saying, “I need to go to the doctor’s office” and “I need to go to the doctor.” You can use both expressions interchangeably in English to mean the same thing, and it works the same way in Japanese as well. You can say, “I’m going to the bakery” and “I’m going to the baker.”

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または。。。『外人さん』、『ヤーさん』(Mr. Yakuza member)

I hear both of these…but here in Okinawa…sans さん…just 『外人』(笑)

I mean in Dutch it is the exact same. We have the same word for the Baker and the Bakery (Bakker), the same for the Grocer and the Grocery (Groenteman), the same for the Barber and the Barbershop (Kapper). Maybe that’s why this doesn’t really seem that weird to me.
Also, isn’t it acceptable to say I’m going to the Baker’s? Referring specifically to the person as well as the location?

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Hmmm since English is not my native language, I guess it never clicked to me that such was acceptable in English, forgive me. In our native language, at least in my experience, we never say it like that.

Thank you for clarifying these for me! :grin:

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I checked just in case, but it seems in English this only works as an abbreviation of a person’s shop. So I couldn’t say petrol station’s.
However, Japanese is a completely different language, so it is probably still correct to do so.

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And reading the forum from that link… feels like I’ve never studied English :rofl:

I still need to get used to ~さん being used after a place in Japanese, I guess. It’s still so weird for me.

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The kanji 屋 not only describes a place, it can also apply to a person, like 技術屋 is a practitioner, 事務屋 a bureaucrat.

It’s similar to 家 (house) as in 漫画家 (manga artist).

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I think it’s kinda cute how many things can be called a 〜さん as if it were a person :slight_smile:

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When do you know if ~屋 is used as a store/place or as a person? In context?

Well, something like 事務屋 wouldn’t really make sense as a “shop” meaning. Since a “shop that sells office work” wouldn’t make much sense. So the meaning of “a person who does office work” is really your only option.

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