Quote:
Originally Posted by Sumippi
Oh, yes, 「弊社」 is a 謙譲語/けんじょうご。(but 謙譲語 in English...?? 'The humble form'...??)
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In English, we call
敬語 keigo (students don't translate this, but when we explain it to someone who doesn't know anything about Japanese, we tend to say "polite language" or something like that)
丁寧語 polite [form] or "desu/masu form"
謙譲語 humble [form]
尊敬語 honorific [form]
普通体 plain [form]
Some sample sentences:
"We studied お〜になる in class, but I still don't understand honorific speech."
"When you talk with friends, use plain form."
"Dictionary form is the present tense plain form."
For reference, pretty much no student in the US learns 美化語 as a term. When talking about this, we just describe it. We never say "use bikago in polite speech." Instead, we'd say something like "Use the o/go prefix in polite speech."
And, in all honesty, we usually don't learn how to properly use it anyway except for
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Random Japanese Teacher in the US
In polite speech, use 'o' with Japanese words. Use 'go' with Sino-Japanese words. For a few words, you have to always use the prefix with them, like with お茶 and ご飯.
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Most students of Japanese, in my experience, never learn to tell the difference between Japanese and Sino-Japanese words. I remember when I began being able to; it was a huge revelation. Took me about a year and a half or two years of study I think.