The Main Difficulties in Studying Keigo and Ways to Overcome Them

The Japanese honorific language (keigo) includes 5 polite categories, which are used in neutral or humble/polite style. Keigo shows one’s true feelings towards others and plays as one of the main tools of self-representation, albeit many people face difficulties, which prevent them from shifting styles of politeness. The purpose of current research was to identify possible ways to overcome the difficulties faced by native- and non-native speakers in learning keigo by such methods as data collection, data analysis, classification, conducting public opinion polls among students, search for the relevant content for the future exercises. Our goals were: a) to characterize keigo as a grammatical and social phenomenon; b) to reveal frequent mistakes in keigo; c) typologize the common difficulties; d) to draw up example of exercises to overcome difficulties in studying keigo. Firstly, we characterized keigo as a grammatical and social phenomenon in Japanese society, discussed the main functions of keigo in modern Japan. Secondly, we revealed the most common mistakes in using keigo. For that purpose, we have conducted search and analysis of 50 web-sites on Japanese, and 200 questions of non-native speakers to native speakers about keigo on the web-platform “HiNative”. Thirdly, with accordance to the results, we have classified frequent mistakes and typologized the main difficulties in studying keigo: the lack of any similar keigo-system in the native language; the lack understanding of factors influencing the choice of style of politeness; an abundance of rules for verbs; an abundance of synonymous or words and expressions with similar meaning; difficulties in learning the rules for constructing speech messages. Lastly, have found and draw up several exercises which may help to overcome difficulties revealed. Finally, we have included our comments on each of the exercise in order to make it more useful.