this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2025
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I am literally friends with a woman that decided when she lived in Japan that the more lower classl/colloquial form of Japanese was easier and only spoke that. So there is a white, Ph. D., upper class woman that speaks fluent Japanese, but only like a Yakuza.
How do Yakuza speak?
I don't speak Japanese, but it is a combination of slang and lack of formal addresses, conjugations, or cases. Like Romance languages having formal and informal versions of "you" and using terms like monsieur.
It's not that she decided it was easier, it's just a fact. For example:
casual: taberu - [subj] eats. This is the form listed in the dictionary and can be used as is.
basic polite: tabemasu. Used with strangers.
humble: itadakimasu. Used to talk about your own eating when in conversation with a superior.
honorific: meshiagarimasu. Used to refer to a superior eating.
Basically the more polite something is the longer the verb form. One of the be-verbs goes from casual to polite as da --> desu --> degozaimasu
I practiced most of my Japanese conversation skills by hanging out in bars so I know the struggle with using polite forms.