Hot answers tagged honorifics
18
Chris です。
さん is never used (except jokingly perhaps) to refer to oneself. The same goes for other common endings such as くん, ちゃん, さま, 先輩 and 先生.
That's because these endings usually convey a kind of relation: for instance, さま conveys respect, くん and ちゃん convey some endearment and while さん conveys very little meaning, it does convey separation. You ...
14
You may use it in emails, especially when you contacting to another company or another department which you never contact before.
関係者各位殿 To whom it may concerned
〇〇社〇〇殿 To (someone) in company
(部署名)殿 To (Department name)
Note: I personally don't use it, because I feel that its extreme polite, but when I search mailing list in my company, I ...
14
ただいま is definitely not the right word for this situation.
It is exclusively used when arriving home (typically, when you step inside the house). Sometimes, by extension, it can be used when coming back from a trip and stepping into the airport or the train station of your destination, talking to your loved ones waiting for you (or perhaps over the phone).
...
13
"-さん" is an honorific suffix added to give respect. It can be used either with males and females, and also with given names and family names, not to your own name, though.
It can be even used attached to the name of the occupation and titles.
It's ok to use it with people that you are familiar with, but it's kind of mandatory when you are talking to ...
11
As you suspect and Nathan writes, softening the nuance may be one factor, but there is another factor. Without o-, the underlying form is te-araw-, which ends with a verb stem araw (later, the epenthetic vowel i is inserted, and wi changes to i , which is not crucial). Even though a verb stem can be used as a noun, it is often not stable as a noun. Addition ...
10
It's used quite normally. My business emails, spam mail, post from the bank or government are all normally addressed to David 様, or whatever exact name they happen to know me by. The same goes for more informal communication using 〜さん or other less honorable honorifics. A certain client of mine is addressing me as DAVID SAN in emails. Non-roman, non-Japanese ...
9
かしこまりました is by far the most formal, and is a humble form (謙遜語). It says that you are inferior to the listener. Most specifically this should be used to interface with customers (hence why wait staff at a restaurant may say it).
承知しました is polite (〜します), but not humble. It is also appropriate to use with customers or superiors.
了解です is also polite in ...
9
Since honorifics generally apply when you are interacting directly with that person, they usually aren't used for people that have died (Maybe spiritual mediums do something different because they are supposedly 'interacting directly' with the deceased, but I don't know).
Think of great people from Japanese history: 織田信長（おだのぶなが） 徳川家康（とくがわいえやす） ...
8
Most generally:
Words of Chinese (On-yomi) origin take ご
Words of Japanese (Kun-yomi) origin take お
If I recall correctly, there are also a very few chinese-origin words which take お as they are very commonly used, but I can't think of any of these off the top of my head.
Edit: One such example is お電話.
8
As others said already, ただいま is just wrong in this situation: you're not announcing people around you in your house/lab/office that you're back, but just saluting someone who basically knows nothing about you and doesn't share any private space with you.
Appropriate greetings for this kind of encounter with your neighbourhood range from こんにちは to いい天気ですね. I ...
8
It sounds like you are looking for the vocative case particle in Japanese.
Taken from wikipedia's article on vocative case:
In archaic Japanese, or when written as verse, a particle よ and や may be affixed.
少年よ、大志を抱け (Boys, be ambitious, quote by William S. Clark)
神よ、汝の誉れはその御名のごとく (O God, Thy praise is according to Thine name, from ...
7
If you talk to a teacher, it is always appropriate to use -先生. If you are a student and talk to a teacher, you should always use -先生, even outside the school. If you are a teacher and talk to a fellow teacher, depending on the relation (you are a boss or the other teacher is a boss, you are younger or older etc.), it may be also acceptable to address the ...
7
お馬鹿さん isn't "idiot"; it is softer, more like "silly". Also note the -san suffix.
If a little boy named Daisuke is looking for his cap, while actually wearing it, you could say, 今日、大ちゃんは ちょっと お馬鹿さんになってきた、ね！ 灯台もと暗し
This is soft compared to something abrupt like おまえが馬鹿だよ！
There is a need in language to have a soft way to say "silly".
This is not to say that ...
7
お…になる sounds more respectful than …れる to me. In particular, when used to ask for the listener to do something in speech (for example at a restaurant), こちらでお待ちになってください is fine, but こちらで待たれてください sounds impolite (not respectful enough) to me. I do not know whether this difference is counted as “just the tone” or not.
6
“Are they used?” and “Are they acceptable?” are different questions. The regular forms such as お借りします and お食べになります are used, but they are less formal than the irregular forms such as 拝借します and 召し上がります. Whether the less formal expressions are acceptable or not depends on how formally you want to speak.
By the way, you are confusing grammatical terms ...
6
It's fine for ski instructors and pretty much anyone else who teaches you something.
Using it as an honorific after the name is a little more formal than just using 先生 by itself. But it conveys your respect and appreciation for the fact that they are imparting their knowledge to you. I think it's possible someone might correct you and say that just さん is ...
6
様 is more respectful than 殿. The reason Ammy gets it wrong is because 殿 used to be more respectful in the past, but it has changed overtime and 様 has become more respectful. Nowadays, 殿 is used as a fixed expression in some circles. Many companies use it in their e-mails when referring to a coworker, but I would use 様 instead if I were referring to someone ...
5
I can only speak to my personal experience, but my Japanese coworkers usually refer to us as [English First Name]さん (like Michael さん), even though we sometimes sign our emails in Katakana.
Perhaps it's because the Katakana isn't always exact (in fact, some names sound completely different in Katakana because the syllables don't exist in Japanese). By using ...
5
I am not sure whether it counts as your expected answer, but you have titles with 殿 used in monarchies or for aristocrats: エリザベス・オブ・ヨーク王女殿下（Her Royal Highness Princess Elizabeth of York）. You will have to check for yourself for how to express each title, but it seems to be limited to the "highness" derivatives.
Then, as a polite name suffix the Japanese ...
5
In both forms, the お + [verb stem] is acting like a noun. The humble form is analogous to the [verbal noun] + する construction like 勉強する and the お + [verb stem] in an honorific form is followed by に which indicates that this part is a noun. Verb stems often can be used as a noun, but that does not seem to be the case with these constructions as you cannot ...
5
Do you mean o-cha instead of o-chai?
Also, 'o' can definitely be used with "o-tearai". For the longest time, I had only heard it said that way and didn't realize you could drop the 'o'. In the case of o-tearai, as in other cases, it is being used to make the utterance more polite. The talk about holiness in the first link is kind of distracting from the ...
5
Just conjecturing but based on:
tendency for longer expressions to sound more polite
みず is two morae
こおり is three morae
こおり is "one mora more polite" than みず. お in おみず makes it three and so it compensates for being short and abrupt.
Also it could just be a rather simple reason being that in isolation, おみず has a higher occurrence than みず and こおり has a ...
5
The reason is fairly simple, but probably not going to going to be as pattern based as you would hope.
お[水]{みず} is an example of a segment of Japanese known as [美化語]{びかご}, this is more or less means being more polite by using a nicer sounding word.
Some example of this are
[食]{た}べる instead of [食]{く}う
[美味]{おい}しい instead of [旨]{うま}い
お[昼]{ひる} instead of ...
5
Not only is it okay, the Twitter button on a website will do this automatically when you are using Japanese locale. For example, I recently pressed the button and it tweeted
Ursula K. Le Guin pressured to make books 'more like Harry Potter' http://blastr.com/2012/07/ursula-k-le-guin-pressure.php @blastrさんから
When replying to someone on Twitter with an ...
4
かしこまる／承知する are used mostly for answering requests from superiours (bosses, clients, etc.). Like, "Yes, I understand what you're asking me to do (and I'll do it)." 分かる just implies you mentally understand.
了解 is not formal as far as I know, and I hear it quite often. I learned it to mean almost like "Roger!" or "copy that".
4
If you're talking to somebody who is not an extremely good friend, use さん, but if you're about to start a fight with someone, you should drop the さん. If you're a foreigner and are on good terms with someone, you can often use their first name without さん, but using their family name like that will sound rude and abrasive. If you need to attract someone's ...
4
If you're talking with someone you don't really know, you definitely want to add さん. If you add it for friends and family, it might upset them as it may make the two of you seem a little distant with one another.
As to your age/respect thing, if you're below them, then just add さん. Like Matti said above, if you're just starting, you can't really go wrong ...
4
My experience has been very similar to what @Tsuyoshi Ito described. In one context, I am a student at a study group not associated with any school. Everyone always calls the teacher/expert/organizer Takase-sensei at all times.
In my work as a teacher, it seems to be part of the local culture of each school. At one university all teachers called all other ...
4
The use of ~先生 is a bit wider.
Usually it's adopted for doctors, teachers and professors, but can also be used for politicians, martial arts masters, etc. So, with anybody that has a knowledge superior to ours, or better, with anyone who has achieved a certain level of mastery or skills in a certain field or that are very popular; so, also movie directors, ...
4
I just want to add one point to other nice answers: 了解です is not a proper polite form for this meaning. The proper polite form is 了解しました. Saying 了解です instead of 了解しました is acceptable and many young people use it but decreases the formality level. It shows an attempt to be polite, but at least if it is used by an educated native speaker of Japanese, it may ...
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