Saturday, February 4, 2017

keigo - What distinguishes 丁重語 from other honourific forms?


On my bookshelf I have a book on formal speech, 敬語{けいご}, and it delineates respectful speech, 尊敬語{そんけいご}, from humble speech, 標準語{ひょうじゅんご}. And it combines both of these with polite speech, 丁寧語{てねいご}, as a matter of course.


This question mentioned another form of speech, 丁重語{ていちょうご}, which I've never really encountered. Maybe I just don't hang out with the emperor enough...?


The dictionary defines it as "courteous speech", and I found other definitions online that say it "refers to language that is used to deprecate oneself." But that doesn't really tell me enough to help me differentiate it from 標準語{ひょうじゅんご}. I looked it up on Japanese Wikipedia, but I have to admit, reading about how to use Japanese in Japanese does my head in a bit.


When is it used, and what differentiates it from other forms of formal speech?




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