Today I’d like to talk about a concept that is very important in Japanese culture, and that has a big influence on the language: “uchi” (内) and “soto” (外). They mean inside (the house) and outside, which is the society. Society (社会 – shakai) is very important to Japanese values. That’s why Japanese people often care about “sekentei” (世間体) which is how we appear in the eyes of society. But I will talk more specifically about sekentei in another post.
Back to uchi and soto: in Japan, we speak differently whether we are at home and with family, or outside the house in society. The difference is more obvious than in English or in French. For example, I remember as a child, it always amused me how my Japanese aunt would speak completely differently the second she answered the phone. Usually her voice was low, but when she said “moshi moshi” (hello), her voice would instantly become high and sweet! I noticed it because I had not seen that in Switzerland.
And so, this fact impacts the language too. In French for example, for the pronoun “you,” we have “tu” which is used with friends, and “vous” which is used with people we do not know well — the “vous de politesse” (vous of politeness). That means, we have two levels: one friendly/casual, and one polite/formal. These differences are mainly in pronouns and verbs, as well as in casual or formal expressions. That is more or less it.
However in Japanese, not only do we have more than two degrees of politeness, but we also have two (or more) versions of nouns and verbs according to the politeness, even for simple words. For example, “tomorrow” in Japanese is “ashita” (明日), which we use in our everyday life. However in a formal context, such as work, we tend to use its formal version “myounichi” (明日). (You may notice that the kanji are the same in this case, they are read differently, the Chinese reading being more formal usually.) That’s why we tend to say “ashita” at home, and outside, “myounichi”, even though we still use “ashita” outisde home in a friendly environment, but almost never “myounichi” at home with our family or good friends.
For verbs and adjectives, the ending changes according to the degree of politeness, and sometimes we have also other formal versions. And Japanese language has many more degrees of politeness: the forms vary whether we are talking with a close friend, just a friend, an acquaintance, a boss, a client, etc. We have degrees of politeness that are “super friendly,“ “quite friendly,” “medium polite,” “quite polite,” “formal,” or “super formal”. It’s like a gradation, also like if we were wearing a tuxedo with a tie and leather shoes, or a shirt and jacket but with sneakers, or a t-shirt and pants, t-shirt and jeans, shorts and flip flop, etc.
Let’s see a concrete example of variations. We can say “it is not beautiful” like this, from very casual to very formal:
きれいじゃない kireijanai
きれいじゃないです kireijanaidesu
きれいじゃありません kireijaarimasen
きれいではないです kireidewanaidesu
きれいではありません kireidewaarimasen
きれいではございません kireidewagozaimasen
Next, I will talk about the different levels of politeness in polite suffixes (similar to the English “Mr, Miss, Mrs”).