掲示板 Forums - Formal and informal language in japanese

The word for "informal speech" is タメ口. There might be a more technical term for it, but that's what I hear people say. It's practically an umbrella term, that can also be used as an interjection.

敬語 = "formal speech". You will hear people use it to describe the way someone speaks.

～ます is called ます形 (けい).

Edit: Let me know if you'd like more information about grammar terms. For example 書く is a 動詞 in ジショ形 (辞書形). 活用 is used when talking about conjugation/inflection. 書いて would be テ形, etc.

to me an easy way to remember at a high level is that japanese has 3 different types of this. in english and in some other language, there's formal vs informal. but in japanese, you have

teneigo, think about as like in the sense of are you being like extra (or not) polite to them as a person themselves (polite is different than respect)

sonkeigo, think about as in the sense of is the person higher rank, like are they ur boss or a teacher, you elevate them when they are the subject of a sentence. not just boss or something but a group/class of people "higher"

kenjougo, think about like a way to make urself more humble based upon your own action, so you move yourself down, when a subject of a sentence. and not just yourself but group/class that is lower

you can mix teneigo easily with the others, you can show different levels of politeness to someone that is higher level or to someone to whom you are lowering urself, or to a neutral person in your group/class/rank. u can mix sonkeigo and kenjougo as well, if u have different perspectives in the sentence.

u can think of sonkeigo and kenjougo are "one type" of thing if u want, so there are 2 different systems, one for politeness/formality and one for hierarchy/rank.

in english we usually just are "polite" or "neutral" or "rude" without these different ways of expressing it. i guess we express in english like "I humbly request that" type thing, but that's just "polite" in general.

i thought about writing a sentence with all three but im not very good at using them, i just look for things like gozaimasu for teneigo, forms like irasshaimashita for sonkeigo, forms like moshiage for kenjougo. there are templates for how to conjugate verbs into different levels of keigo, but then there are also irregular verbs and then there are special adverbs and other things u can sprinkle into sentences as well. u can also see really formal/archaic stuff in classical literature or in anime or manga about those perioeds or in comedy that does it for a joke.

if u are going to work in japanese company, there are books and resources online just about keigo so u learn phrases like ご無沙汰しております and thing like that.

1 more thing, if u read old stuffs which i want to read when i get better, you have older type words that arent really keigo but are jidaigeki type speech like from samurai and things u probably see in some anime, copula like 候 instead of using です so you say verb stem + にて候　or verb stem + いたし候。

拙者は侍にて候。I am a samurai.