Situations – keigo
Meaning, explanation and example sentences with translations.
First day at a new job: you walk up to your colleagues at their desks
です/ます plus the set phrase お願いします — humble in itself (お〜する), but everyday and unremarkable. A team is not a client: the 申し上げます option reaches for a form that raises the person addressed, and would build a distance nobody asked for.
Examples
- 田中です。よろしくお願いします。
A close university friend you have known since first year asks about lunch
Plain speech, 普通体 — and here that is the right answer, even though this whole section is about register. Keigo would be a step backwards: it would say “we are not that close”, which nobody meant.
Examples
- うん、行く。
A waiter sets the coffee down
いたす lowers the speaker towards the listener, while お〜 directs the action at the guest and raises them — the form does both at once, so it belongs to both groups at once (the character 兼 here means “and”: 謙譲語Ⅰ兼Ⅱ). That is what it is called in 敬語の指針, the 2007 guidelines of Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs, on which this app is based. In the category list such forms sit under Ⅰ. This is how service speaks to a guest, and it is heard daily in Japan.
Examples
- お待たせいたしました。
Asking a lecturer about a deadline
です/ます plus すみません to open. For a student–lecturer relationship this is the right measure and nothing more is needed.
Examples
- すみません、締め切りはいつですか。
The opening line of an email to a client you already work with
The opening formula for an **ongoing** relationship; in correspondence like that it is written every time. It does two things at once: お世話になる raises the person whose care we are in — the reader — while おります adds modesty towards that same reader. If you are writing to someone for the first time, the formula does not fit: a first letter opens with 突然のご連絡失礼いたします, “forgive me for writing out of the blue”.
Examples
- いつもお世話になっております。
Your first week in a new team: you ask a colleague you met three days ago for a document
In a company ます stays even with someone your own age, and お願いします is a set, courteous request. An office is 内 towards the world, but it is not a home. What separates it from the お願い申し上げます option is 申し上げる, not お願い itself.
Examples
- これ、お願いします。
Answering the company phone
でございます is the most formal 丁寧語: it raises the tone of the utterance, not a person. The company name is not lowered here — the whole utterance is lifted towards the caller.
Examples
- はい、山田商事でございます。
A club senior asks about practice
A 先輩 gets ます and that is all. The relationship is close but not equal, and that is exactly where です/ます lives.
Examples
- はい、行きます。
Asking a passer-by for directions
です/ます with どちら instead of どこ. A stranger in the street is not a client: the politeness should be ordinary, not professional.
Examples
- すみません、駅はどちらですか。
Asking your boss about a document, in-house
Inside the company your boss is a superior and takes the honorific. **The same boss will not take it in front of a client**, because there he stands on our side of the 内/外 line — your own people against outsiders — which we come back to at level 5.
Examples
- 部長はもうご覧になりましたか。
A message to your sister
Siblings are the innermost 内 there is. Any ます here would read as a quarrel or a joke.
Examples
- 今どこ。
In a shop, asking the assistant to show you a watch from the display case
すみません、見せてもらえますか — ですます and もらえますか are entirely enough, and that is 丁寧語. 見せていただけますか, with 謙譲語 (the form that lowers your own action), is correct too and ordinary in a shop; what goes wrong is stacking humility, not the fact that it is the customer speaking.
Examples
- すみません、この時計を見せてもらえますか。
A senior teammate you are not on first-name terms with invites you out after work
すみません at the front and んです at the end — the politeness here is 丁寧語. The reason needs no spelling out: 都合が悪くて is enough, and that is how a refusal is made in Japanese.
Examples
- すみません、その日はちょっと都合が悪くて、行けないんです。
Where this comes from
Everything above comes from the free part of the Keigo app and has passed its content review.
- Keigo: Polite JapaneseFormal Japanese for work
App Store →Free app with an in-app purchase