日本・日本語: A Surfeit of お
One of the Japanese patterns that semi-vexed me when I was a wee 初級 (shokyū, elementary) level student was the 敬語 (keigo, polite speech) variation of ～を伝える (o tsutaeru). This is the phrase used to pass on information to someone, or to ask someone to pass on information.
The super easy keigo version of this is お伝えします (o-tsutae-shimasu). If you say this in the appropriate context of a conversation, that’s all you need to say. Everything that you are going to communicate to someone and who that someone happens to be is all wrapped up in the context, and all you have to do is say that you’ll pass it on. お伝えします。
One of the informations that can be passed on is よろしく (yoroshiku), such a friendly thing to share in Japan. However in this case, I was always confused about one point in particular: Was the direct object marker を necessary?
I asked this on Twitter once eight years ago and got an answer.
A quick Google search also reveals about a 288,820 hit difference between to two, clearly showing that を is unnecessary and that the correct phrase is よろしくお伝えください (Yoroshiku o-tsutae-shimasu). This is a tremendously useful phrase, especially once you have friends in Japan and then friends of friends in Japan. If you’re back visiting and can’t meet up with everyone you know, get someone you are able to see to relay the よろしく for you.
A surfeit of を is unnatural, but a surfeit of お may or may not be unusual, even for native Japanese. お gets used to mark polite speech in Japanese, both in front of nouns and verbs, as we’ve seen above. But can there be too much of it?
This is what one questioner asks on Yahoo Chiebukuro:
お気軽にお声をおかけください。
これは文章として間違えてないですか？
「お～お～お～」で違和感を感じまして。
Here’s the translation:
お気軽にお声をおかけください (Okigaru ni o-koe o o-kake kudasai, Reach out anytime)
Is this correct as a sentence?
There’s a repetition of O~O~O~, which felt a little strange
We get this response:
「お気軽」→丁寧語。
「お声」→尊敬語。
「おかけください」→「お～くださる」という型の尊敬語。
という構成です。
二重敬語の定義は、「ひとつの語に対して、二重に同じ種類の敬語を使っているもの」なので、これには該当せず、正しい表現になります。
ただ、「声をかける」を一つの動作（語）として考えた場合、若干、くどい表現になっている、つまり、二重敬語っぽい印象を受けます。
こうした場合は、動詞を優先するのがいいようで、先行回答の方がご指摘のとおり、『お気軽に声をおかけください』とするのが、最も適切な表現になるように思います。
And the translation:
The construction is:
お気軽 → This is polite keigo.
お声 → This is respectful keigo.
おかけください → This is respectful keigo in the form お～くださる
The definition of redundant keigo is “Using the same kind of keigo twice on a single word,” so this does not apply and it is a correct phrase.
However, if we think of 声をかける as a single action (word), it’s slightly tedious. In other words, it gives the impression of being redundant keigo.
It seems best to prioritize the verb in these situations, so I think the most appropriate phrase is, as you noted, お気軽に声をおかけください.
Redundant keigo should be a relief for all us second language learners. It’s important to be polite, but there’s such a thing as trying too hard. Even Japanese get it “wrong” sometimes.
An example of a redundant keigo phrase: ご覧になられますか. In this case, both the use of ご覧になる (goran ni naru) for 見る (miru, to look at) and the conversion of なる (naru) to passive polite なられます (nararemasu) are respectful keigo, and thus redundant. ご覧になりますか is enough.
I thought this explanation of a similar phrase in another thread was also helpful.
「声をおかけします。」で合っています。
これを「お声」と言うと声が相手の声の意味になるので
「お声をかけます。」これだと相手の行動になります。
「お声をおかけします。」これだと誰が誰になのか不明で不自然。
「かけます」が自分の行動なのに「お」をつけてもＯＫなのは
その行動の対象への敬意を示している表現だからです。
And the translation:
「声をおかけします。」 is correct.
When you say お声 it means the voice of the person you’re addressing, so お声をかけます would be that person’s action. With お声をおかけします it’s unclear who is doing what to whom, and it’s unnatural.
It’s ok to add お to かけます despite the fact that it’s your own action because the phrase is expressing respect for the object of the action.
The really critical point, I think, is that you should try and memorize larger phrases. Rather than trying to られる a verb any time you need respectful keigo, try to memorize the verbs that you can use with this construction: もう少し飲まれますか (Would you like a little more to drink?) or どうされますでしょうか (Dō saremasu deshō ka, What will you do? - This phrase needs more context but is very useful when asking someone for a selection).
And don’t get yourself in the weeds with grammar. Don’t sweat the を too much. Look for usage to model your own rather than trying to anatomize every single sentence you encounter.
ビール: RIP Tasty McDole
Like many people my age and younger, I learned how to brew beer on the internet.
I discovered HowToBrew.com (likely an early inspiration for HowToJapanese.com) through a quick Google search in 2000, and when I started brewing more seriously in 2013, my first instinct was to look for podcasts. I discovered that John Palmer, author of How to Brew, had a podcast on The Brewing Network. The BN has a massive catalog of podcasts, some now defunct like Brewing With Style, hosted by Jamil Zainasheff, a legendary homebrewer who is now the owner of Heretic Brewing.
I started digging into these a month or two after moving to Chicago in July 2013. I was in a long distance relationship, had only a few friends in the city, and was starting to feel the itch to do something. That something was brewing. I found it easier to spend my time brewing beer than I did working on pirate fiction. In anticipation of getting started, I went through the podcasts.
The result is that as I was discovering the city—learning the bus routes, checking out new breweries and restaurants, visiting Frank Lloyd Wright houses during Open House Chicago, commuting to work—I had friends with me wherever I went. Jamil, Palmer, and their cast of brewing characters were always in my ears. On Brew Strong, I learned about mashing and lautering, and on Brewing With Style, I learned recipe basics for nearly every style of beer.
So it was sad to hear that Tasty McDole passed away in early October. He was another homebrewing legend who won the Sam Adams Longshot competition in 2008 and was often on Brewing with Style with Jamil. What I’ll remember most: his quiet, gravelly voice, Janet’s Brown Ale, his technique for “fast lagering” (which has gained a lot of traction), his technique for brewing a double-strength Pilsner that he then diluted down with carbonated water.
Tasty’s voice really brings me back in time. I have this incredible sense of nostalgia for the loneliness of that first year in Chicago. There’s a vividness of experience that reminds me of other times in my life: the summer of 2003 when I was exploring Shikoku on my own, the day I moved from a local homestay to my own apartment in Nishiaizu, wandering through Atré and Ito Yokados in Tokyo, going on long runs in Shinagawa and Ota-ku, getting up early to ride the trains to an onsen, and a winter day in 2014 I spent writing.
I’m far more connected now than I was when I moved to Chicago, but the pandemic has induced a similar solitude to that first year, and I’m fairly certain there will be moments from this year that stand out in a similar way.
Perhaps a day like Sunday a couple weeks back: I picked out a random Chicago bungalow for sale on Redfin, biked over to take a look at it, bought a dosa on Devon, and came home. There will be a lot more moments like this before the world is closer to whole.
While it has been far more challenging than I expected, I think I will be sad to see it go. Stuart Dybek’s story “PET Milk” comes to mind: “It was the first time I’d ever had the feeling of missing someone I was still with.”
いろいろ
I kept a running diary during my reading of David Karashima's new book Who We're Reading When We're Reading Murakami and posted it on the blog this week. One of my favorite little discoveries is that designer Shigeo Okamoto did both the cover for A Wild Sheep Chase, Murakami's first English translation, and 回転木馬のデッド・ヒート (Dead Heat on a Merry-go-round). I wrote my thesis on Dead Heat and published an edited version over at Neojaponisme. Both covers are great, but they're dramatically different.
Please send me recipes. Points for dishes that are easily batch cooked and can be frozen and saved for later. It’s soup season: Two I’ve cooked and highly recommend this month are Moroccan Chicken and Cauliflower Stew and Thai Coconut Red Lentil Soup. I also made chāshū from this recipe! I’m embarrassed to admit that for the longest time I thought chāshū came out of the pig rolled up like that. I never knew it was basically bacon that had been, for lack of a better word, hog tied. My very second blog ever (and the first I tried to start while on JET, just before How to Japanese) was a JET recipe blog that did not last very long. Major points for anyone who can track it down. I'm not even sure I can at this point.
I’ve kept a running list of the music I’ve been listening to during the pandemic. This isn’t something I’d actively done before. I usually relied on Spotify to tell me what I was listening to at the end of the year (2017, 2018, 2019). Check out my COVID playlist here. Revelations include Joan as Policewoman, Nels Cline, Ana Egge, and Jackie Mittoo. “Evening Time” is, as one of my friends from JET put it, “a vibe!” If you need something uplifting and funky, give it a listen. Mittoo was a keyboardist for the original incarnation of the Skatalites and the album predates very, very similar sounds from bands like The Meters. My top two lyric-less albums for writing or working: “SOAR” (“1677” is on repeat at the moment) and “Einfluss.” And “Ahmad’s Waltz” has been my favorite jazz discovery, although I haven’t been as blown away by the rest of Ahmad Jamal’s music so far…still searching for something equally syncopated.
Matt Alt discovered that Japan has reached peak gashapon:
This is it. The pinnacle of mundanity. The most boring subject for an action figure ever. And I love it. Meet the “externally mounted air conditioner” capsule toys.
I think I did my best ever tweet this past month, lol:
Back in early March, about a week before the U.S. shut down, I wrote about COVID-19 for The Japan Times. It’s somewhat surreal to read over this, but I’m still pretty happy with how it holds up. An article on the same topic now would have a lot of different phrases, although I’m not tapped into Japanese media to be able to write it well enough. One interesting phrase that has popped up is “withコロナ,” which I had a conversation about with some folks on Twitter back in August.
Don’t forget to submit your Kanji of the Year! (Submit by November 23.)
