Regarding honorifics I feel a bit confused.
Lately I have been studying Japanese sentences from native sources, like my dictionary. I've been importing many sentences, it still seems fuzzy at times but it's getting better.
But due to all this, and the media I listen to- I rarely hear honorific speech.
My girlfriend is Japanese and we skype all the time, and just the other day her mother
and brother jumped into the conversation and began to talk to me.
It felt awkward to me, because I did not know how to respond or talk to them. I was so
used to speaking "informally" with my girlfriend, as I have met her before and we talk all
the time, but I have yet to meet her family yet.
I did not study grammar much, only in the very beginning of my studies- and I thought
honorifics were to be used when you have not really met someone yet, but her family
did not use it when speaking to me.
Her brother initiated the conversation by saying ”何やってんだ”　which obviously is not
honorific. Her mother used ”だ”　Instead of ”です”　I still managed to converse, but it
felt awkward. Did her mother not use "honorifics" when talking to me because she feels
she knows me already due to her daughter?
Is "honorifics" really as essential as the grammar books say they are?

There are a few possibilities. Most people would not use actual honorific language (like o-verb ni naru, irassharu, meshi-agaru, etc.) in this context unless they were elderly or high-class women from Tokyo. But desu/masu would be normal in this situation across a wide spectrum of age, gender, and geographics.

So why didn't they even use desu/masu? One possibility is that they may have thought as a foreigner you don't know honorific language. Natives consider even desu/masu to be somewhat advanced because children don't really use it until they get a little older. They may have thought that as a foreigner you're not really in the social hierarchy so they don't need to use honorifics. They may feel that because you are their daughter/sister's boyfriend they can use plain language with you. Or if they are not from Tokyo they probably don't use honorific language as much in real life. The mother might not use it because you're much younger than her, and the brother may be young enough that he doesn't regularly use polite language with anyone except teachers or other authority figures. It's hard to say without knowing more about the situation.

In general, especially in Tokyo, you do use desu/masu for people that you don't know well, unless they are clearly below you in rank/status (in that context), or significantly younger. If someone is speaking to someone below them in age/rank they have the option of using desu/masu or not; whether the person does or not depends on a lot of factors, including individual personality.

Wow, thanks for the incredible feedback!
Very detailed, I can tell you really know the ins and outs of Japanese!
Thank you so much!

It would be interesting to know the relative ages of everyone involved and roughly where her family is from. It's really funny how frustrating seeing "brother" is without the context of knowing if he's older or younger than her.

[Zgarbas]

I thought it was acceptable for people higher in rank to not use honorifics, but that you are expected to use honorifics when talking back?

Zgarbas Wrote:I thought it was acceptable for people higher in rank to not use honorifics,

Depending on the in-group / out-group relationship involved, it could come across as derogatory, as opposed to close. 君 maybe a honorific safely utilized in respect to lower status. It seems a little rude to drop the suffix altogether, unless the person is rather familiar.

Quote:but that you are expected to use honorifics when talking back?

This is something I also understand as accurate, being that regardless of how someone of a higher status addresses you, it is expected to address them properly.

Zgarbas Wrote:I thought it was acceptable for people higher in rank to not use honorifics, but that you are expected to use honorifics when talking back?

There is no symmetry when a person of higher rank talks to a person of lower rank in Japanese. The higher rank person has an option to use or not to use です・ます when talking to the lower rank person but the lower rank person is obliged to use です・ます when replying.

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Arupan Wrote:あ、言い忘れていました。男同士だと、「君」を使っても全く問題ないと思いますが？

男子同士じゃなくても問題ないと思いますけど、相手の名前を知ってたら「名前＋さん」のほうがより自然に聞こえるかもしれない。
個人的な意見ですが、「君」は普遍的なyouという言葉に相当しているんじゃないかと思います。部下に対してよく使われそうな言葉でもあると思いますけど…
僕はちょっとふざけているのが親しい話し手にはっきりと表せるなら、「お前」まで使ってもいいと思います。

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Zgarbas Wrote:I thought it was acceptable for people higher in rank to not use honorifics, but that you are expected to use honorifics when talking back?

Once again, it really depends on what you mean by "honorifics" -- that term is really vague and tends to get used for a wide variety of different things in Japanese. I'm assuming you don't intend it to mean the name suffixes like anime fans use it for, but do you mean desu/masu or actual 尊敬語 like o+verb+ ni naru?

In Japanese they usually talk about 5 kinds of 敬語, which wikipedia has a good article and table on.

尊敬語 is used with predicates that refer to people you wish to honor (typically higher rank).

謙譲語 is used with predicates that refer to yourself, when you are talking with someone you wish to honor (usually higher rank). The predicates have to involve the person you're talking to in some way and often they're being done for the person's benefit.

丁重語 is used when you are talking to someone higher rank than yourself, with predicates that don't refer to them. This includes words like ございます and 参ります (when used going to places that have nothing to do with who you're talking to). This type of language is mostly used by service personnel -- it used to be common for women to frequently use it as well but it has somewhat fallen out of use.

丁寧語 is used when you are talking to someone that is not lower ranking than you. This is です・ます.

美化語 includes the お and ご prefixes (when applied to things not directly related to the person you are honoring) and just shows general politeness without any particular honorific effect.

One important thing to know is that 尊敬語 does not require talking to a person you want to honor. If you are talking to another student about a teacher, it is appropriate to say something like 今、先生は教室にいらっしゃる？ You don't use desu/masu because you're talking to another student, but you do use the honorific いらっしゃる talking about the teacher. Whether or not someone will use 尊敬語 in this context depends on the person and situation.

The honorific suffixes are what most anime fans know, but in real life they really don't vary that much. Most of the time you use さん. ちゃん and くん may be used with some friends, and さま can show up if you're writing a formal e-mail or letter, or on official documents. The others are either dialect or rarely occur outside of anime.

EDIT: I said above that ございます had fallen out of use except for service personnel -- it's still used in set phrases like おはようございます, but something like テレビはございます is not something you would hear except from a store clerk.

Arupan Wrote:ついでに言っておきますが、外国人だからといって、毎回許されるわけではないでしょうから、丁寧語も敬語もある程度身に付けた方がいいでと思います。

許すかどうかというより、敬語を正しく使わなければ、ずっと外国人として扱われるでしょう。

Quote:あ、言い忘れていました。男同士だと、「君」を使っても全く問題ないと思いますが？

その「君」は「きみ」ですか？「～くん」ですか？

Its already been covered quite thoroughly, so I just wanted to add that when in doubt, be polite. Worst that will happen is that they'll say something about it in a teasing fashion, and you can take that as a cue to speak plainly. Even better, just ask your girlfriend. Thats a perfect source of information, no idea why you're asking us lol.