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KyleGoetz (Offline)
Attorney at Flaw
 
Posts: 2,965
Join Date: Dec 2008
Location: Texas
03-04-2009, 07:39 AM

Adding to what Nagoyankee said, if you want to sound extremely formal and impress your Japanese friends with your grasp of keigo (haha, yeah right), try something of the form 〜ていただけないでしょうか. I used it with a professor once and she was sort of shocked. When I lived over in Kanagawa, my uni classmates told me they couldn't even use keigo like that.

But it does sound very formal. Also, I don't think you'd ever use いただける except when making a request. And there, it's sort of the difference between the formality/niceness of "Would you..." (いただく)and "Would you be so kind as to..." (いただける).
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