Usage
Although honorifics are not part of the basic grammar of the Japanese language, they are a fundamental part of the sociolinguistics of Japanese, and proper use is essential to proficient and appropriate speech. Significantly, referring to oneself using an honorific, or dropping an honorific when it is required is a serious faux pas, in either case coming across as clumsy or arrogant.
An honorific is generally used when referring to the person one is talking to (one's interlocutor), or when referring to an unrelated third party in speech. It is dropped however by some superiors, when referring to one's in-group, and in formal writing, and is never used to refer to oneself, except for dramatic effect, or some exceptional cases.
Dropping the honorific suffix when referring to one's interlocutor, which is known to as yobisute (呼び捨て?), implies a high degree of intimacy and is generally reserved for one's spouse, younger family members, social inferiors (as in a teacher addressing students in traditional arts), and very close friends. Within sports teams or among classmates, where the interlocutors approximately have the same age or seniority, it can also be acceptable to use family names without honorifics. Some people in the younger generation (roughly "born since 1970") prefer to be referred to without an honorific, however, and drop honorifics as a sign of informality even with casual acquaintances.
When referring to a third person, honorifics are used except when referring to one's family members while talking to a non-family-member, or when referring to a member of one's company while talking to a customer or someone from another company—this is the uchi-soto (in-out) distinction. Honorifics are not used to refer to oneself, except to be arrogant (ore-sama), to be cute (-chan), or sometimes when talking to small children, to teach them how to address the speaker.
Use of honorifics is correlated with other forms of honorific speech in Japanese, notably use of the polite form (-masu, desu) versus the plain form—using the plain form with a polite honorific (-san, -sama) can be jarring, for instance.
Read more about this topic: Japanese Honorifics
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