Japanese Learning (A4 S19): Sentence Endings for Polite and Concise Style.

There is a big table for exercise A4 in Section 19 in the textbook of Minnano Nihongo. The table is divided in two columns. The left column is titled as Polite Form, and the right column as Normal Form at the top. By saying “Form”, they seem to be a kind of conjugation patterns like Te-form and Ta-form. But for today, it is better to think these polite form and normal form are different of speech style.

It is so important to know that, in Japanese language, how you speak must be in accordance with the person who you are talking to and the situation where you are in. In order to make your speaking appropriate, not only your face, attitude, intonation and prominence are adjusted, but wording also needs to be changed.

So, think about the big table is about sentence endings for polite speech style or concise style.

– Polite sentence ending is for conversation with people, for example, in public space.

– Concise sentence ending is used in casual conversation with your friends and family members often with some final particles (-yo, -ne, -yone, and so on) at the end. Concise sentence ending is also used in newspapers, technical reports, and contract documents for which conciseness is necessary. But, of course, final particles are not used for these articles. Other situation that you use concise sentence ending are studying Japanese grammar, talking to yourself, and writing a diary.

Examples of polite/concise sentence endings will appear tomorrow. Just a little example is as below;

– Polite Style: Tsukaimasu.

– Normal Style: Tsukau.

I think you can find that the polite style “Tsukaimasu” is Masu-form, and the normal style “Tsukau” is Dictionary form. So, be aware that these Tsukaimasu and Tsukau have dual properties about conjugation pattern and speech style.

Today I dealt with A4 S19 as a matter of sentence ending, because I want to talk about matters about speech style and about nested complex sentences separately. For the latter, soon you will see the expressions of “- to Omoimasu. (I think that -)” and “-to Iimashita. (He/she said that-)”. You need to use normal form in front of “-to”. The section 21 is to explain these expressions.

This post was written with reference to the exercise A1 on Section20 of “Minna no Nihongo (2^nd Edition)” published by “3A Corporation”