Covering Japanese Casual Slip-Ups With Politeness
If you are talking to your boss, a customer, a client, an elder, someone senior to you, someone you just met, then you are probably in polite mode. Things are going well into you slip in an 俺 (casual I used by young males), a ぜ (casual sentence ender used by young guys to show emphasis), or a だよね(casual “right?!”). You’ve broken your politeness vow. What do you do? How can you naturally glide back in without looking foolish.
This is often an instantaneous problem that requires lightening flash reflexes. As you say the inappropriate word, you realize your error, and immediately are in need of a fix. There is no time to flounder.
No matter what you do, the other person will catch on, but you might as well adjust your politeness like the Japanese do when they make the same obvious errors.
There are 3 basic rules:
1. If your sentence starts with a casual word (like 俺), immediately follow it by the polite version (私 or 僕)
2. If you have already proceeded through the sentence, and can’t fix the first word, make sure to at least end the sentence with the polite form (です、ます、etc.)
3. If your casual slip-up comes up at the end of a sentence, just add a です(the polite sentence ender) regardless of whether it is grammatically correct. So your 明日行くよ, should become 明日行くよ…です
Let’s put it all together with a manga scene and an awkward attempt at covering up casual Japanese.
Does he pull it off well? Of course not. But at least you can be like him…
Any other strategies you use to recover from a casual slip-up?
Founder of Jalup. iOS Software Engineer. Former attorney, translator, and interpreter. Still watching 月曜から夜ふかし weekly since 2013.
My strategy is to attach an んです to the end of just about everything. Here’s an excerpt from my favorite manga on the exact same thing!
https://twitter.com/nikonikokuremi/status/357620161659944961/photo/1
Your tweets are private. D:
Oh haha. I forgot about that. Never mind then! Just imagine the hilarity! ^.-
That definitely does work smoothly sometimes. Unless you have already hit another sentence-ender like だ, ね, よ, etc.
Oh my gosh, whenever I feel I’ve been rude to someone in Japanese, I apologize with a long explanation like, “私はまだ初心者のでbぁえjふぉいj・・・”
It’s TERRIBLE. Hahaha!
So now you can try replacing your long apology with just a well placed/slightly awkward です at the end!