Page 140 - Easy Japanese - Learn to Speak Japanese Quickly! (TUTTLE)

Pronunciation More enunciated
Pitch, pace Higher pitch, slower Lower pitch, faster

Body language Stiff Relaxed

We started this book with the careful style because it is socially less risky. This is
the style typically observed between people who have just met, between
strangers, and in business situations. On the other hand, casual speech style is
used in informal settings when the speaker is conversing with people close to

him such as a friend, family member, child, or himself. Speech styles indicate
the social and psychological distance between speakers. However, the distance
can change even during the course of a conversation between the same pair of
speakers. Each shift carries some linguistic and social meaning. Mature speakers
will switch styles appropriately in a full range of linguistic arenas.
In this chapter, we introduce the most prominent feature of casual speech, the
Informal forms of predicates.

GRAMMAR NOTE Informal Forms of Predicates

All Japanese sentences contain a predicate in either Formal or Informal form.
The choice is binary. Masu, desu, and their negative and past forms are all
Formal forms. Dictionaries do not list words in these forms. They list the
Informal forms. How do we make Informal forms from the Formal forms?