Humbling yourself, honoring others—a guide to honorific speech in Japanese

When you first started learning Japanese, you likely learned words and phrases using the desu / masu (-です

/-ます ) form. Your teacher may have told you that this was the "polite" way of speaking. But like a lot in Japanese, it goes much deeper than that.

Keigo can feel intimidating to learners. There are multiple levels of politeness, all with new polite humble/honorific versions of some normal words, and cultural rules that aren’t always obvious from a grammar textbook. But the truth is, keigo isn't just about sounding “fancy” or “formal”; it's a window into how Japanese society operates.

Let’s explore how keigo helps you speak humbly of yourself and honor others!

What is keigo?

Keigo often gets lumped into “formal” or “polite” speech, but it’s more nuanced than that. At its heart, keigo is about showing respect—either to the person you're talking to, or the person you're talking about.

It’s not a single thing, but rather an umbrella term for three different primary types of respectful speech:

This is unfortunately just a starting point—there are a few other categories of speech (like the dictionary form) and some of these categories can be combined (you can be honorific and polite at the same time)—but, so long as you know these three levels and when to use them, you’ll be well on your way to understanding the rest.

... But what if I don't want to show respect?

If you speak pretty casually in your native language, the idea of speaking politely and formally in Japanese might be a bit off-putting. Can't you just speak casually in Japanese, too?

Well, unfortunately, no.

You see, keigo is not just about being polite—it’s about understanding the context and background of a social interaction, and showing awareness of hierarchy and roles. Using respectful language to talk with someone doesn't actually mean you respect them: it just means you acknowledge that, given the situation, you are expected to talk this way.

Here's an article that goes into more detail on how that works: On the Notion of Wakimae.

Generally speaking, though, Japanese people tend to be fairly forgiving of foreigners who get keigo wrong.

All the same, keigo is more than a cultural quirk: knowing keigo is key to knowing Japanese. You can't speak properly without at least understanding it. Even if you don’t plan on meeting the Emperor anytime soon, it’s important to be able to talk with people in a manner appropriate given your relationship and the situation—and that's exactly what keigo is for.

Being respectful vs. being polite

Another common sticking point for beginners is the difference between being respectful and being polite—after all, these terms are quite interchangeable in English. In Japanese, though, there is a notable difference between them.

This gives two basic dials you can play with in any particular sentence:

Different relationships and communication mediums tend to have different "defaults" on these spectrums:

Long story short, using more formal language isn’t automatically more polite, and vice-versa. It's all about context.

Teineigo (polite speech), Sonkeigo (honorific speech), and Kenjōgo (humble speech)

Now let’s look at each type of keigo more closely and see how it functions in real communication.

Teineigo (丁寧語), or the "polite form" of ordinary speech

This is the default polite form you use when you’re not close to someone, like when speaking to a stranger, a teacher, or someone older. It shows a basic level of consideration, without suggesting too much about the context of the situation.

If you’re not sure what level to use, 丁寧語

(teineigo) is a great place to start.

Conjugating words politely

If you’ve learned “-masu” and “-desu” (i.e., “行きます

” vs. “行く ”) forms, you're in luck! This is teineigo, and you've already started using it.

If not, please refer to the below table. We won't be walking through how to conjugate words politely here, but you'll notice that the polite form of verbs ends in ~masu.

Sonkeigo (尊敬語), or the "honorific form" of keigo

When you want to show respect toward the person you're talking about, you use 尊敬語

(sonkeigo), or respectful language. This has the effect of elevating the listener's status in relation to your own.

This goes a step beyond conjugating words like teineigo, and instead sonkeigo often changes the word completely.

Conjugating words into their honorific form

Sonkeigo starts easily enough:

Alternatively, the れる/られる verb form doubles as an honorific form.

Words with sonkeigo doppelgangers

Unfortunately, several of the most common words actually have an entirely separate respectful counterpart. In other words, you'll need to know a neutral word and a respectful word.

Here's a quick example demonstrating the above:

Each sentence means essentially the same thing—someone said something—but you use a different verb to reflect the status of the person who said the thing.

Kenjōgo (謙譲語), or the "humble form" of keigo

While sonkeigo raises the status of others, kenjōgo lowers your own status.

What humble speech means

You might think of humble speech as being modest. We don't really often use this language in English, so translations can look quite self-effacing—things like my lowly self—but it's entirely normal in Japanese. There are just times in Japanese where it's expected that you "step down" to highlight the higher status of the listener.

Conjugating verbs into the humble form

As with sonkeigo, kenjōgo conjugations start out pretty straightforward:

Then, する actually has a kenjōgo doppelganger: いたす

（いたします ）. As such, you'll also hear ご連絡いたします . It means exactly the same thing, but is a bit more humble. You'll regularly see both the お〜します and お〜いたします variants.

Words with kenjōgo doppelgangers

As with the sonkeigo examples above, there are several common words that have an entirely different humble counterpart. Again, this means that you'll have to know both the normal word and the humble variant.

How to use keigo

Rather than thinking of keigo as a strict set of rules, it might help to think about keigo as a set of options you choose based on social distance. If you're reading this article, you likely feel comfortable choosing whether you should speak casually or whether you should speak politely. The choice to use respectful or humble language is just another option you have on top of that.

Another great tip is to pay close attention to those around you.

As with many things in Japanese, being a careful listener and observer is one of the best skills you can pick up.

One word, multiple forms

To really drive this home: when you use a polite, humble, or respectful word, you are really just using a different form of a normal word.

Check out the following table:

All these words mean the same thing: “to say” or “So they said,” but the "feel" of each one is quite different. The words all mean the same thing, but they aren't interchangeable. You'd use each one in different circumstances, depending on the situation you find yourself in and who you are talking to.

Keigo FAQs

ファイト！ (Keep at it!)

Let’s try to answer some of the most common questions beginners have about keigo before we wrap up.

How do I know which form to use—respectful or humble?

This is one of the biggest sources of confusion for learners. The key is to focus on who is doing the action.

This may feel backwards at first—why do you use “better” verbs for other people and “lesser” ones for yourself? But it’s all about showing deference and humility, which are deeply valued in Japanese communication.

Can keigo be too polite?

Absolutely. In fact, this happens even among native speakers—especially when they overuse sonkeigo or string together layers of humble expressions to the point of sounding overly stiff or unnatural.

Being “too polite” can make people feel awkward, distanced, or even subtly insulted—like you’re treating them as a customer instead of a peer. This is especially true in social settings or among people of equal status.

So how do you strike a balance?

Pay attention to what native speakers say in similar situations, in real-life scenarios like in business settings, or in media like casual drama dialogue.

How do I learn keigo naturally without sounding robotic?

Keigo isn’t just a grammar system—it’s a reflection of relationships. To use it naturally, you have to experience how it’s used organically.

Try starting with some common set phrases, often used in daily life in Japan:

Interactions that heavily feature keigo tend to be more “scripted” than other random conversations that come up in daily life, which are more on-the-fly in nature. An easy place to get started with keigo is to learn how business emails are structured and also to make note of the routine phrases used by clerks or service people.

... but what if I just want to learn Japanese?

You can! Keigo is used in pretty specific situations, so, depending on how you use Japanese, you could very well get pretty far without ever stumbling into heavier-hitting keigo.

But keigo is also just Japanese, and if you want to learn it, it's not bad.

In our Migaku Japanese Academy course, we walk through all of the Keigo forms (in addition to about ~300 other basic grammar points.)

Rather than asking you to just memorize this stuff outright, we'll instead have you develop an intuition for them by learning practical sentences. We cover roughly 1,500 sentences in total, each one introduces a single new word, and each flashcard is supported by spaced repetition, ensuring you eventually remember the words, sentences, and grammar points.

With about 1,500 words under your belt, you'll be ready to start exploring real Japanese content, like this formal business apology (hey, we don't judge). We generate subtitles for YouTube videos and let you click on them to see what they mean.

If a word or phrase seems useful, you can click on that orange button in the top-right corner of the dictionary to make a flashcard. The whole process takes less than a second and results in a media-rich flashcard like this:

And bam! You now know how to drop a big-leagues apology in Japanese. Now, if you happen to find yourself shilling your product to a group of unsuspecting readers, you can follow up with a 大変ご迷惑をおかけし、誠に申し訳ございませんでした。

(I have caused great inconvenience and sincerely apologize for my actions).

In this way, as you go on consuming whatever Japanese media you personally find interesting, you'll gradually acquire the key keigo phrases you need to navigate life in Japan.

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Japanese keigo: More than just politeness

Keigo often gets described as “polite speech,” but that doesn’t quite capture its deeper role in Japanese communication. More than just polished grammar or respectful vocabulary, keigo functions as a social tool—it helps define relationships, manage hierarchy, and preserve harmony. When you use keigo, you're not just choosing more formal words: you're actively shaping the emotional and social tone of the conversation. It's how people navigate workplace dynamics, serve customers, show gratitude, or soften requests.

This will be difficult to wrap your head around at first, but it's also a problem that will eventually be solved via pure exposure. As per The Golden Rule of Language Learning: