Keigo Pattern Library
The Keigo
Pattern Library敬語パターンライブラリ
You can pass N2 or N1 and still freeze writing a business email, thanking your partner's mother, or asking a client to reschedule. That gap is not a vocabulary problem. It's the part of the language that decides whether years of input show up when it counts. This library organizes that layer — by verb, by pattern, by relationship, by scenario. Browse it cold, drill it warm, or look something up the morning of the meeting.
語
The Five Categories, and the direction of respect
Most textbooks teach a three-way split: respectful, humble, polite. The Bunkachō's 2007 guidance — now the standard reference — splits humble into two categories and pulls beautification out as its own. The reason matters: once you can see whose action is being talked about and toward whom the respect flows, almost every keigo decision becomes mechanical instead of guesswork.
Exampleおっしゃる · they say
Example伺う · I visit (a respected person)
Example参る · I go (anywhere, politely)
Example行きます · I go (politely)
Exampleお茶・ご飯
Verb Reference — thirty verbs, four forms each
The verbs that actually appear in business and family Japanese. Click any verb to expand example sentences and usage notes. Toggle furigana in the header. Filter by JLPT level or semantic group to narrow the list.
| Plain · 原形 | Respectful · 尊敬語 | Humble · 謙譲語 | Polite · 丁寧語 |
|---|
One prefix, opposite directions
The single highest-leverage pattern in keigo. Verbs starting with o or go reverse direction depending on whether the ending is ni naru or suru. The first elevates the subject; the second lowers it. Internalize this and most verbs become predictable — even ones not in the table above.
Respectful form
Humble form
The Context Map — who gets which form
The part of keigo that isn't in your Anki deck. Knowing 伺う doesn't tell you whether to use it with a coworker (no), your boss (yes), your partner's mother (depends), or a customer (always). This map gives the default register for the six relationships that account for almost everything an adult professional encounters.
Reading the dots
Each card shows formality intensity (dots), what register you use for your own actions, what register you use for their actions, the dominant email tone, and the failure mode that catches Western learners.
Cushion Phrases — softening the ask
Before any request, refusal, or sensitive question in business Japanese, a buffer phrase is expected. They aren't optional — leaving them out reads as bluntness, the same way "Send me the file" without "Could you" feels off in English. Mix and match within each group as the situation calls for.
From casual to business-grade
Whole-sentence rewrites, not just verb swaps. Each pair shows where the line lands in life — the tag indicates the relationship or channel where the business version is the expected register.
Business Email — building blocks and full templates
Tab A is the parts catalogue — openings, requests, apologies, closings — each with a brief note on what it does. Tabs B–E are four complete emails. Read them as scaffolds, not scripts; the brackets are where your specifics go.
Anti-Patterns — the mistakes that mark you
The errors that signal "foreign learner who hasn't been corrected" even when the underlying Japanese is otherwise strong. Some are grammatical, some are conventional — items marked contested are widely tolerated but still flagged in workplace settings. The why matters more than the what.
Reference Tables — names, kin, register
The vocabulary substitutions that have nothing to do with verbs but everything to do with sounding like an adult. Companies have a four-way system. Your own family loses its honorifics when you talk about them to outsiders. Written Japanese has its own register of formal time words.
Company names
| Your company, to outsiders | 弊社 |
| Your company, internally | 当社 |
| Their company, spoken | 御社 |
| Their company, written | 貴社 |
| Their bank (spoken / written) | 御行 / 貴行 |
| Addressed to a company | 御中 |
| Addressed to a person | 様 |
Family terms
| otōsan · papa | 父 |
| okāsan · mama | 母 |
| onīchan · big brother | 兄 |
| onēchan · big sister | 姉 |
| grandfather / grandmother | 祖父 / 祖母 |
| son / daughter | 息子 / 娘 |
Spoken vs. written
| kinō — yesterday | 昨日 → さくじつ |
| kyō — today | 今日 → ほんじつ |
| ashita — tomorrow | 明日 → みょうにち |
| ato de — later | のちほど |
| sakki — earlier | さきほど |
| sugu ni — at once | さっそく / ただちに |
| kocchi / socchi | こちら / そちら |
Scenario Practice — ten situations from real life
Each question is a moment you might actually find yourself in — answering the phone, declining tea at your in-laws', writing the apology email. Four options each, with the registers people genuinely confuse. Get it wrong, read the explanation, move on.