敬語

You know, I can practically see some bored and crack-brained Noldo sitting somewhere some thousand years ago going "Oh, I know, let's invent a language with so many different layers that it's subtle and blunt at once! It shall have ambiguity and the means to hide that ambiguity so it's all open for wild interpretation! Also, let's break up every lexical field on different levels all dependent on context, direction and rank of the speakers! So many levels, in fact, that it's well-nigh impossible to keep them all ordered! And they shall all be interweavable, so that you can be polite about being impolite or really impolite by being polite! And I shall devise a writing system for it that is incredibly difficult to learn unless you're born to it, but at the same time, I shall make sure that anyone who does not use that writing system will be helplessly confused because of the many homonyms and the limited field of possible sound-combinations! So everyone who truly wishes to understand that language has to use my letters! Mine! Mine! Muahahahah!"

And lo! there was Japanese.

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( Keigo )

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