When you speak English, you often adjust your language by using different words or changing the tone of voice depending on who you talk to, right?

You probably don’t speak to your boss the same way as you talk to your friends.

In Japanese, you change not only the tone of your voice but also conjugate verbs when you speak politely.

So when you learn phrases, you need to learn both casual and polite forms.

Let’s look at how the verb Miru can be conjugated into the polite form:

As you can see, the polite forms are longer than the informal forms so it can be a little harder to learn but trust me it’s not as hard as you think it is.

Because as I already said, there are not many irregularities in Japanese conjugation so once you learn the basic pattern, it will be quite easy for you.

Throughout this course, we will call the informal form Tameguchi, and the formal form Keigo.

We will learn the use of Tameguchi and Keigo in detail in future lessons.