Respectful language: What is 尊敬語 (sonkeigo) in Japanese?

In Japanese, 尊敬語 (transcribed sonkeigo), or “respectful language” is a way of speaking that elevates the person you’re talking to, acknowledging that they are respected. This is one of the main types of Japanese honorific language, or 敬語 (transcribed keigo).

You’ll generally use 尊敬語 (transcribed sonkeigo) both to talk to someone who is respected and to talk about a respected person or their actions. That respected person can be a formal superior, like royalty or your boss, but it can also just be someone you generally respect, like a doctor or an elder.

In this post, we’ll talk about the features of respectful language in Japanese. We’ll look first at how to put words into a respectful form, and then we’ll talk about some broader sentence-level rules for speaking respectfully. Let’s have a look!

In Japanese, we use respectful language to speak to or about a respected person. Respectful language is kind of like a linguistic “pedestal” on which you can put someone — it’s a way of demonstrating with words that you hold that person in high regard.

Here are some examples of the types of people you might use respectful speech with:

• Individuals with authority in a business setting, like customers, collaborators from other companies, superiors in your own company

• People with political authority, like royalty, politicians, or judges

• Deities and higher powers (by believers)

• People with respected jobs or roles, like professors, doctors, or religious leaders

• Other people’s family members, like a friend’s mother or your boss’s husband

• Anyone else to whom you wish to show deep respect, like an elder, someone you deeply admire, or new acquaintance.

Words and phrases that describe such a respected person or their actions will be in a special respectful form, whether you’re speaking to the respected person or about them. For example, consider a receptionist greeting a customer:

• First they speak to the customer:

  Please wait here.

  This word for the action, “wait” would be in a respectful form, as it represents something the respected customer does.

• Next, they speak about the customer to a coworker:

  There is a customer waiting at the front desk.

  Because the customer is respected, their action “waiting” will still be in a respectful form.

So the first step in learning to use respectful language is to learn to create these “respectful forms.” We’ll talk first about that and then we’ll look at some ways you can make your sentence structure more respectful.

In Japanese, words that describe a respected person or their actions often have a special “respectful” form. This mostly affects verbs, but it can also affect other parts of speech.

In the following sections, we’ll go through how to create respectful forms of verbs, adjectives, and nouns. When speaking respectfully, it’s important that all of these different parts of speech match in level of formality. If your verbs are respectful, your nouns and adjectives can’t be casual—they have to be respectful too.

This sounds like a lot, but chances are you’ve already heard many common instances of respectful expressions. Let’s take a look!

In Japanese, 尊敬語 (transcribed sonkeigo), or respectful speech, a verb that describes the actions or situation of a respected person will be given a new base form. There are three ways to create these base form:

1. Special honorific forms → Some common verbs just have an unpredictable or irregular respectful form that must be memorized.

2. Regular → Other verbs can be made respectful by adding a prefix, お (transcribed o) and an ending になる (transcribed ni naru) to the polite stem.

3. Passive → Though it is slightly less elevated, sometimes a passive verb can be used in place of a respectful form, as this is slightly easier to say.

Let’s have a look at these three main ways to form honorific verbs in Japanese!

Most adjectives do not change forms when we use respectful languages, but there is a small number of them that do. These respectful forms are formed by adding the prefixes お (transcribed o) or ご (transcribed go).

You may recall that beautification words are formed with the same prefixes. However, here the prefixes have a slightly different function. Where beautification words are simply used to sound elegant or refined, respectful adjectives are used to show respect to the person they describe.

Here is a list of the most common adjectives that can take お (transcribed o) or ご (transcribed go) to become more respectful.

The prefixes お (transcribed o) and can also be added to nouns to elevate the level of respect ご (transcribed go) shown to the person they are related to. They are most often seen decorating the names of items belonging to, or people associated with, the respected person. This is very often applied to familial terms such as お母さん (transcribed okā-san).

Not all nouns can take お (transcribed o) or ご (transcribed go), so let’s take a look at some of the most common ones, besides family, that do. Once again, remember to not use the respectful forms for people or items associated with yourself!

In Japanese, 〜ている (transcribed te-iru)structures are used much like you might use “be verbing” constructions in English: to express that an action is in-progress. In plain speech, they’re composed of two parts: a main verb (in the te-form) and the verb いる (transcribed iru, meaning “to exist”).

There are two main ways to form a respectful equivalent of a te-iru construction:

1. Replace the verb いる (transcribed iru) with its respectful form

2. Remove になる (ni naru) from the respectful form of the main verb

Let’s have a look at each!

The most common way to form a request in respectful speech is to replace the になる (transcribed ni naru) after the verb with ください (transcribed kudasai, meaning “please”), following the pattern below:

But what if you are using a respectful verb that doesn’t end in になる (transcribed ni naru)?

• Some of the irregular respectful verbs, such as 召し上がる (transcribed meshiagaru, meaning “to eat; to drink”) can still roughly follow this pattern. You just add though ください (transcribed kudasai) after the respectful form:

  irregular respectfulrequest ending

  どうぞ お召し上がり ください。

  Transcription: Dōzo omeshiagari kudasai.

  Translation: Please go ahead and eat!

• Other irregular respectful verbs can’t be used before ください (transcribed kudasai).

  irregular respectfulrequest ending

  ❌ 何かコメントがあれば、ぜひおおしゃりください。

  Transcription: Nanika komento ga areba zehi ooshari kudasai.

  Translation: If you have any comments, by all means say them.

  With these you’ll need to use the normal te-form before ください (transcribed kudasai) instead fo the respectful form:

  te-formrequest ending

  ✅何かコメントがあれば、ぜひ おっしゃって ください。

  Transcription: Nanika komento ga areba zehi osshatte kudasai.

  Translation: If you have any comments, by all means say them.

  Some common verbs like these include:

  • いらっしゃる

    Transcription: irassharu

    Translation: to exist
  • おっしゃる

    Transcription: ossharu

    Translation: to say
  • なさる

    Transcription: nasaru

    Translation: to do

When you’re speaking respectfully, you’ll often use the polite form of respectful verbs, but there are some cases where you should use the plain form instead. Let’s have a look at a few common cases:

• Always use the polite form when speaking directly to the respected person or people:

  respectful stempolite ending

  市長、もうお帰りになりますか。

  Transcription: Shichō, mō okaeri ni narimasu ka.

  Translation: Are you going home already, Mr. Mayor?

• You can use the plain form to speak about the respected person, as a way to see intimacy toward the person you’re speaking with while still showing that the person under discussion is respected. For example, when talking to a friendly coworker you might say:

  respectful verb

  市長は毎朝コーヒを三杯召し上がるって。

  Transcription: Shichō wa maiasa koohii o sanbai meshiagaru tte.

  Translation: The mayor told me he drinks three cups of coffee every morning.

• Always use the plain form in subordinate clauses. This is a general rule in Japanese, which you can read about in our post on the plain vs. polite form.

In this article, we covered the basics of respectful expressions and how to use them to show deference to people in higher social positions. Here are the main things to remember:

• Respectful language is used to discuss actions taken by respected people, or sometimes qualities, objects, or people associated with those individuals.

• All verbs have a respectful form. There are a couple ways to do this:

  • Some verbs have an irregular respectful form that must be memorized.

  • Other verbs follow the お (transcribed o) + Verb ( masu) + になる (transcribed ni naru) pattern, or a related pattern.

  • In some contexts, you can just use the passive form of the verb.

• Some adjectives and nouns also have respectful forms, formed with prefixes お (transcribed o) or ご (transcribed go).

• We covered how to form certain sentence structures such as:

  • The respectful equivalents to 〜ている (transcribed te-iru) structures (using the respectful form of いる or using the short respectful form of the main verb).

  • How to form polite requests using ください (transcribed kudasai).

Thanks for reading! For more practice with respectful expressions, check out these Japanese respectful language activities!