One expression you’ll hear frequently on radio or podcasts is お送りします, which is used to mean “broadcast”.Īs a general rule, don’t arbitrarily add these prefixes, only use them in cases where you’ve heard/seen a native use them. Here is an example of it’s usage using the verb 手伝う (てつだう, “to help”). You can see this debate discussed here.Ī related usage of お is to make a verb more polite. Technically speaking, ご返事 is correct since 返事 (へんじ） uses a chinese reading, but the word お返事 has become widely used. One example of ご usage you’ll see commonly on online message boards is ご質問.Īctually, in some cases Japanese themselves can get confused whether ご or お should be used, and if you do a search in Japanese you’ll find several people asking on forums how to distinguish between these two. This is because these words are generally more frequent in Japanese, at least in my experience. You’ve probably noticed all of these examples used お, not ご. Words that typically use a honorific prefix but aren’t particularly polite or respectful はな = can be mean nose (鼻) or flower (花）Ĥ.おゆ = hot water, but has a connotation of being more ‘clean’ and is probably water that is meant for drinking.Words that change nuance when the prefix is added おにぎり = a rice ball, often triangular shaped, with nori on the outside and something inside (fish,ģ.にぎり = a type of sushi where a slice of raw fish is placed upon an elongated rice ball.Words that change meaning when the honorific prefix is added This is the simplest class where a word can be written normally, or with the appropriate honorific prefix for additional politeness.Ģ. Words that work either with or without honorific prefixes I’ll break it down into a few categories, with an example or two in each.ġ. It would be great if it were that simple, but there are some tricky things about this pair which I’ll go over now.įor example, you can’t just arbitrary add these prefixes to any word, and some already have them ‘built in’. ご : used for words with the 音読み (“onyomi”), or Chinese reading.お : used for words with the 訓読み（”kunyomi”), or Japanese reading.The usage of these two prefix is defined as follows: In Japanese, the prefixes お and ご are used to add a feeling of politeness or respect to a word.

How to you pronounce rose in japanese