Quote:
Originally Posted by StonerPenguin
Hello, sorry I haven't been on in a while, I went on a little vacation and somethin' awesome happened  I met 4 Japanese girls my age and they were super nice. Between my broken Japanese and their broken English we had a conversation! I know I got nervous and probably was difficult to understand but they looked really happy to be talking with me and we exchanged email addresses. Anyway, we talked for about half an hour or so and they didn't use polite speech (I mean they didn't use ～ます forms) the entire time we talked. I used polite speech at first then accidentally started using plain speech since they were. Though I was paranoid of sounding rude... Is it fine for us to talk that way because we're the same age?
I also asked them if they needed to leave when we first started talking. I said 「今、忙しいですか？行かなきゃか？」 then I apologized for using 「行かなきゃ」 since I couldn't remember the polite way at the time since I was nervous. So was using 「行かなきゃ」 in this case inappropriate/rude? And I'm gonna send them an email tomorrow, so should I write in casual speech or polite speech? Is it bad to use polite speech when others (esp. people of the same age) are using causal speech? Like, does it sound stiff and unfriendly?
Sorry for all the questions! I'm still thinkin' about it a lot |
Good to see you again, SP!
Young people rarely use polite speech any more even if they are talking to someone from their own age group for the first time. So, you did just fine this time. You won't sound rude by speaking plain unless you are talking to a teacher or any older person than you.
You could have said 「今忙しいの？」、「今ちょっと時間ない？」, etc.
「行かなきゃか？」 is incorrect by any standards. I couldn't say 「なきゃか」 even if I tried. You could have said 「（もう）行かなきゃダメ？」、「行かなきゃなんない の？」、etc.
Politely, it's 行かなければなりませんか.
Deciding how you should talk to them in emails is easy. You just write using the same level of politeness/casualness that y'all were using toward the end of your conversation in person.
It's never "bad" to speak politely, but that would throw them off if you have already spoken to them casually in person lately. I would assume it would be the same in other languages as well.