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What keigo actually is (and isn’t)
Keigo (敬語) is the part of Japanese that adjusts your words to the person you’re talking to. It has a reputation as the hardest thing in the language, and that reputation mostly comes from how it’s presented: as a long list of special verbs to memorize. As a native Japanese speaker, I’d describe it differently. Keigo is a small set of patterns, and which one you use depends on who you’re talking to and where.
Three types get named in most explanations:
- Teineigo (丁寧語, polite language). The polite style built on です and ます. It doesn’t raise or lower anyone in particular; it makes the whole sentence polite.
- Sonkeigo (尊敬語, respectful language). It raises the other person by using special forms for what they do or have.
- Kenjougo (謙譲語, humble language). It lowers your own side, meaning you or your group, when your action involves the other person.
The easiest way to see the difference is one action in four versions. Eating, in plain speech, is 食べる (taberu). Polite is 食べます (tabemasu). If you’re talking about your teacher eating, the respectful form is 召し上がる (meshiagaru). If you’re talking about yourself eating what your host has served, the humble form is いただく (itadaku). Same action, four different words, and the choice depends on who is involved. Japanese-language references sometimes divide these categories further, splitting the humble type in two and adding another for words like お茶 and ご飯, but you can ignore that split at the start.
Two questions cover most decisions. First, how much respect does this person or situation call for? Second, whose action am I talking about? Japanese also draws a line between your own side and the other side, not just between junior and senior. When you speak to a customer, your own boss counts as your side, and that changes which forms you use, as you’ll see in the sonkeigo and kenjougo section.
It helps to know what keigo isn’t. It isn’t one big skill you have to finish before you can speak. It isn’t the same as being polite in a general sense, because plain です/ます Japanese is already polite. And it isn’t something native speakers have perfected. Plenty of Japanese adults second-guess their keigo, and companies often run training for new employees for exactly that reason. You can treat it as a set of forms to pick up as situations call for them, not a test to pass before conversations begin.
The one form you actually need first
The form to learn first is です/ます (desu/masu). Use it as your default with everyone except close friends and family. It covers shops and restaurants, strangers, neighbors, teachers and coworkers you don’t know well yet: 学生です, 食べます, 行きます, ありがとうございます. For a large share of everyday situations, that’s the whole job.
It works because it’s polite without being elaborate. It’s the style adults generally use with each other outside close relationships, and it doesn’t require you to track who is senior to whom. You can hold a conversation with almost anyone using only this form.
When you’re unsure, choose です/ます. The two ways to get it wrong aren’t equal: being too casual with someone you’ve just met, or someone older, is more likely to land badly than being slightly too polite, which rarely causes a problem. Once a friendship develops, the other person will usually start using casual speech with you first, and that’s your signal that you can follow. Let them lead. The casual side is covered in Natural Japanese Phrases Textbooks Don’t Teach.
You may already know more of this range than you think. ございます in ありがとうございます is a polite form of ある, and お願いします and すみません are part of the same everyday polite vocabulary. None of it needs special study; it comes with learning the polite style.
One note on timing. Sonkeigo and kenjougo are usually an intermediate topic, because they sit on top of grammar and vocabulary you need to have first. If です/ます still takes effort, or basic sentence patterns aren’t automatic, keigo isn’t your next step. The JLPT N5 roadmap covers what to learn first, and you can come back to this once the foundation is in place.
Sonkeigo and kenjougo: when they actually come up
Outside a few settings, you can go a long time without producing either one. These are the places they show up:
- Work. Talking to seniors, clients and other companies, on the phone and in email. This is where many learners who work in Japan first run into the difficulty.
- Customer service. Staff in shops, restaurants and hotels use these forms with customers all day, phrases like いらっしゃいませ and お待たせいたしました. As a customer you mostly hear them, and you don’t need to answer in kind. If you work in one of those jobs, you’ll be producing them.
- Formal introductions and family occasions. Meeting a partner’s parents, or being introduced to someone much older or of high standing.
- Interviews, applications and formal letters. Situations where the tone is set in advance.
- Announcements and signs. Train and store announcements use keigo constantly, so recognizing it is useful even if you never produce it yourself.
For most learners the goal is recognition first and production later. If you can understand what a hotel clerk or a colleague is saying, you’ve gotten most of the value before you say a word of it yourself.
Some forms follow patterns you can apply to many verbs. For respectful speech, お + the verb stem + になる: 読む becomes お読みになる (oyomi ni naru). For humble speech, お + the verb stem + する: 持つ becomes お持ちする (omochi suru), and with a noun of Chinese origin, ご説明いたします (gosetsumei itashimasu). Other verbs have their own special forms that are best learned as vocabulary. A few of the most common:
- 言う: おっしゃる (ossharu) is respectful; 申す (mousu) and 申し上げる (moushiageru) are humble
- 食べる / 飲む: 召し上がる (meshiagaru) is respectful; いただく (itadaku) is humble
- 見る: ご覧になる (goran ni naru) is respectful; 拝見する (haiken suru) is humble
- する: なさる (nasaru) is respectful; いたす (itasu) is humble
- 行く / 来る: いらっしゃる (irassharu) is respectful; 参る (mairu) is humble, and 伺う (ukagau) is humble for visiting someone
- いる: いらっしゃる (irassharu) is respectful; おる (oru) is humble
- 知っている: ご存じ (gozonji) is respectful; 存じている (zonjite iru), usually said as 存じております, is humble
You don’t need all of these at once. If you’ve introduced yourself as 田中と申します (Tanaka to moushimasu), you’ve already used a humble form of 言う. Start with the ones you’ll hear most, such as いらっしゃる, おっしゃる, 召し上がる and いただく, and add the rest as they turn up.
The inside/outside line is the part that surprises many learners. Suppose a client phones and asks for your manager, who is out. Even though your manager is senior to you, you speak as a member of the same company, so you use humble forms about them: 部長は席を外しております (buchou wa seki o hazushite orimasu), “the manager has stepped away.” Saying 部長はいらっしゃいません would raise your own manager in front of an outsider, which sounds off. The rule underneath is that inside and outside the group matters at least as much as rank.
A small starter set of fixed phrases is worth learning as whole expressions, without breaking them down: お待たせしました (omataseshimashita), よろしくお願いいたします (yoroshiku onegai itashimasu), かしこまりました (kashikomarimashita), 申し訳ございません (moushiwake gozaimasen), and 失礼します (shitsurei shimasu). They cover a lot of ground in workplaces and shops.
Common mistakes learners make
Most keigo errors fall into a few patterns. Native speakers make some of them too, so they’re worth knowing regardless of your level.
Using keigo where it isn’t needed. Full respectful or humble language with a friend or a classmate can sound cold, as if you were keeping them at a distance. Match the situation. In a casual setting, です/ます is already more than enough, and plain speech may be better still.
Mixing up sonkeigo and kenjougo. This is one of the mistakes that stand out most. The fix is to ask whose action it is. If it’s the other person’s, use respectful forms; if it’s yours, use humble ones. A classic error is saying お待ちしてください to ask someone to wait. お待ちする is humble, meaning “I will wait for you,” so it can’t be used for their action. The right phrase is お待ちください. Another is using 申す for someone else’s words: 社長が申しました should be 社長がおっしゃいました. And the reverse happens too, with learners saying 私がいらっしゃいます when they mean 私が参ります.
Double keigo (二重敬語, nijuu keigo). Adding a second layer of respect to a verb that’s already respectful. おっしゃる is already the respectful form of 言う, so おっしゃられる stacks another respectful ending on top. The same goes for 召し上がられる and お読みになられる. One layer per verb is the rule. Some doubled forms are common in everyday speech and won’t wreck a conversation, but business-Japanese guides generally treat them as mistakes, and the single form is safer.
Raising your own side. Using respectful forms for your own family, company or teacher when talking to someone outside the group. 母がいらっしゃいます, for example, raises your own mother in front of an outsider, when it should be 母がおります. As a native Japanese speaker, I’d say this one is worth watching for, because it can sound odd even to people who otherwise understand exactly what you meant.
Fixed phrases used in the wrong direction. A well-known example: ご苦労様です (gokurousama desu) has traditionally been said to someone junior or to a service provider, so it can sound like you’re talking down to a colleague. お疲れ様です is the safer greeting between coworkers, and it’s explained in more detail in the natural-phrases article linked above.
A practical way to handle all of this: if you’re unsure whether a keigo form is correct, use です/ます. A plain polite sentence is usually safer than a keigo sentence you aren’t confident about, and learners’ mistakes are generally understood. The one to avoid is pointing the wrong direction at your own side.
Where to actually practice this
Keigo depends on the situation, so it’s hard to learn from a table alone. The most useful practice is role play: you name a situation, the tutor plays the other person, and you respond in real time. A few situations that work well are answering a phone call for a manager who is out, greeting a customer at a hotel desk, introducing yourself at an interview, or asking a senior colleague to check a document. Tell the tutor which of these you actually expect to face, because the level of formality that’s right depends on the workplace and the industry.
Ask the tutor to explain why a form is right, not only to fix it. A correction like “use いたします here” helps once; an explanation of whose action it is and who’s listening helps every time after that. Ask them to point out double keigo and mixed-up directions in particular, since those are the errors learners rarely notice on their own.
This is where italki is a good fit. It’s pay-per-lesson, so you can book a single session focused on one situation, such as a job interview, without committing to a course. You can also look for tutors who describe business Japanese or workplace conversation in their profile, and try one or two before settling on someone. Preply suits the other approach, where you build the skill over several weeks with the same tutor, which helps if you’re preparing for a job or a longer stay and want the same person tracking what you’ve already covered. Its subscription renews every 28 days, so check the cost of a full cycle before you start. If you’re still deciding between them, Best Online Japanese Tutors compares both and a few other options.
Between lessons, listen for keigo in the wild: station and store announcements, customer service phone lines, and workplace dramas. Write down phrases you hear more than once and bring them to your next lesson to ask what they mean and when you’d use them.
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