Good Keigo Materials?

[KyleGoetz]

I have a friend who wants to study keigo. I only used Yookoso (and courses that used the textbook) and spent a lot of time in a conversation club where I picked up teineigo and sonkeigo to a fairly high level through hours upon hours of conversational practice. (The same holds true for my time spent at university in Japan as well—just practice.)

Thus, I don't know of a lot of other good resources.

Anyone else who has learnt keigo (MMM? others?), I'm very interested in your opinions on various materials.

Personally, I didn't find about 80% of keigo all that difficult (おV-stemになる, etc.), but that 御存知 and "nonstandard" keigo verbs (as well as substitutions like 使用 for 使う and such, if you want to count those among keigo proper) can be tricky for a learner!

So does anyone have any good resources? Thanks.

(As it stands, I'm recommending visiting this site to the person because I think getting feedback is valuable.)

Also, I'm not sure if my friend would be able to use Japanese texts, but I know that natives often learn keigo at university or at work, so maybe Nagoyankee or Yuri can suggest something like that?).

Thank you.

[GTJ]

Middle school is around where natives learn the higher respectful forms, I believe. My girlfriend gave me one of her 中学生 level books and that's all it was. So if you wanna go the native route, that's probably where you'll start.

Companies do their on training to "fix" everybody's keigo, because a huge percent of Japanese youth have it all wrong anyway.

I used Genki to study keigo. It's hard no matter where you look, but I like the way Genki lays things out.

I also thing it's pretty tough to get feedback because a lot of the time it's a very subjective thing; even though there are set rules for how to form a keigo sentence, like I said, even the Japanese have a hard time with it, so you'll probably get mixed comments from native speakers.

Good luck (to your friend)!

[filiadragongurl]

It seems a bit ironic, but I learned the forms/words you mentioned in college from my "Japanese: The Spoken Language" textbook which we were just discussing in another thread XD It starts off teaching you polite Japanese & keigo and gets to informal Japanese later on.

[MMM]

Most, if not all, textbooks start out with keigo. I would be wary of one that didn't.

[KyleGoetz]

Originally Posted by MMM

Most, if not all, textbooks start out with keigo. I would be wary of one that didn't.

I should clarify that when I'm talking about keigo, don't mean mere ます form. I'm talking about humble and honorific forms. I'm assuming that's what the friend is talking about.

My fault for not being specific enough.

And don't get me started on my pet peeve of textbooks teaching any keigo before they teach plain form.

[GTJ]

Originally Posted by KyleGoetz

And don't get me started on my pet peeve of textbooks teaching any keigo before they teach plain form.

Some do?? Jeez, that's not even practical. The Japanese are impressed enough if you even attempt to speak their language, never mind their reaction when you bust out sonkeigo and kenjyougo. I can't imagine starting from there; it'd probably mess you up real good from the get-go.

[Hatredcopter]

As far as I recall, the Genki series contained keigo sections, certainly enough to get the basics down.

[KyleGoetz]

Originally Posted by GTJ

Some do?? Jeez, that's not even practical. The Japanese are impressed enough if you even attempt to speak their language, never mind their reaction when you bust out sonkeigo and kenjyougo. I can't imagine starting from there; it'd probably mess you up real good from the get-go.

As the ます form is keigo, you should realize that pretty much all textbooks start out with keigo (as MMM said above). That's my point: They shouldn't.

Textbooks are unfortunately written to get people to a simple level of conversation ability quickly, not to improve the chances of long-term growth in ability.

I can't tell you how many times I've on my own noticed little tricks about the language that would be obvious to anyone who learned plain form first but weren't to me since I started with polite. I'd point these tricks/interesting things out to my classmates, and they'd all be shocked, having never noticed this stuff themselves.

Starting with plain form, you teach past. Then say "switch all the ending a's in past with e's and you have the conjunctive form.

Instead, te-form is taught on its own out of left field before you even get to plain form. Silly.

Additionally, starting out with polite form first seriously screws with people's later understanding of the difference between ます and the honorific and humble forms. "Wait, how can I do a plain honorific? Don't they cancel each other out??"-type stuff.

I'm just saying teaching masu before plain form is pedagogically unsound unless a university only cares about teaching the basics.

But thansk for the suggestions thus far. Yookoso covers keigo quite well. I was just wondering if there were supplemental things out there, like ALC has put out for some very high-level Japanese stuff.

[japanesewords]

One good source for upper level speaking and keigo is the Business Japanese Proficiency Test (BJT). The test is based around professional and polite forms used in business and professional settings. There are a number of study guides for this test, that would make good study materials. I should point out that most materials are pretty advanced and many are in Japanese. I hope this helps.

[GTJ]

Originally Posted by KyleGoetz

Everything you said

That's fantastic, I never even realized that. I just kinda trucked through my Japanese classes in America and then in Japan. Yeah, I was kinda miffed that when I got to Japan, I could only speak ます form, and therefore my social life was bunk for the month until I got plain form down. Ugh.

I agree totally with what you're saying about how backward it is. I do so relish those moments when your mind goes *click!* and you notice something about the language, like a trick, or a pattern, or even something etymological.

I'd like to continue learning Japanese from someone like you! Are you offering classes anywhere in the Kansai area?